Uruguay

Devon and I decided to would be a good idea to take a Vacation… from our strenuous travels, and spend a few days relaxing on the many beaches Uruguay has to offer.

We arrived in Montevideo Uruguay around 4:30 pm Wednesday January 21^st and Montevideo greeted us with 90 degree weather accompanied by tons of humidity. Great tanning weather… bad walking weather.

Although we spent a brief amount of time in Uruguay, 5 days, relaxing and trying to make our skin darker on various white sand beaches in Uruguay, we still made some great cultural observations and epic adventures.

Observations

Mate City: Mate without a doubt is Uruguay’s drank… Argentineans consider Mate their staple drink, but Uruguayans take Mate, a leafy, highly caffeinated tea, to a new level. 1 out of every 6 people in Uruguay can and will be seen sipping their leafy green beverage from their fancy bombillas, straws, placed inside their hallowed out gourds and while holding a large thermos, filled with hot water, underneath their armpit. Uruguayan Mate sippers can be spotted walking through busy streets, sitting on beaches, strolling through grocery stores and malls, or even driving their cars. I decided to become paparazzi for a day and secretly snap pictures of mate sippers in their different environments. Below are a few Mate sipping Uruguayans.

Beaches: The beaches in Uruguay are great.

Devon and I spent a lot of time on various beaches in Montevideo and Piriápolis, and very tiny swimsuits are very popular amongst Uruguayans, this observation was made for strictly cultural purposes, nothing else.

Tiny swimsuits can be great, but they aren’t for everyone, which definitely didn’t register for many Uruguayans hanging out at the beach. For instance, while Devon and I were lying on towels awaiting UV rays make our skin darker, I noticed, with my well trained cultural eye, that the girl to our left was definitely blessed with beauty and wearing a teeny weenie bikini and it’s safe to say the bikini fit her nicely. Since I was making cultural observations of Uruguayan women’s beach fashion and nothing else, my eyes didn’t linger on the woman to our left for more than 3 minutes. So, I quickly glanced to my right, to obviously make more observations on Uruguayan fashion and a woman, whom I’m sure has a great personality, was also wearing a teeny weenie bikini. After glancing in her direction for roughly 3/10’s of a second I came to the conclusion that the person who invented the teeny weenie bikini was probably not thinking of this woman when he/she invented. As I spent more time on the beaches in Uruguay, I noticed the small swimsuit pleasant looking or not was worn by people of all shapes and sizes.

I'm sure there are some interesting swimsuits in this picture

Epic Adventure

Piriapolis, an epic name for a town, and the area where our Epic "Homeless" Adventure took place.

I’m not sure why we went to Piriapolis, it is a small town and there are quite a few more tourist friendly towns in Uruguay with bigger beaches and bluer oceans, but as said a few times before, I am an Economical person, and the hostel in Piriapolis was 230 Uruguayan pesos, 10 dollars, compared to 660 Uruguyan pesos, 30 dollars, in more tourist friendly towns like Punta del Este or Punta del Diablo. Also, I know you are probably already thought of this or are thinking this right now, but Piriapolis is such a fun name. Just say it in your head two more times… Piriapolis… Piriapolis. It’s so fun.

Now to the Epic Adventure. We arrived in Piriapolis, and we walked around the hot hot heat with out large backpacks for 30 minutes trying to find our prospective hostel. After finding the address of the hostel in an internet Café and asking for directions from a guy renting bicycles on the street we finally found Hostel Piriapolis, which turned out to be 2 minutes away from the bus station. Hostel Piriapolis is a huge hostel with 204 beds, a beach volleyball court, 2 minute walk from the beach, and a cheap price.

Unfortunately, 25 seconds after our grand entrance in Hostel Piriapolis, the receptionist informed us, there was absolutely no space available. Zip Zero, 204 out of 204 beds were occupied. The receptionist told us a hotel could… maybe have space, but straight up there was no way I was going to spend 50-100 dollars to stay in a hotel for one night in Piriapolis. So Devon and I decided to sit at the beach, and think of a plan.

We threw out numerous ideas of where to sleep that night, such as in a tent on the beach, without a tent on the beach, in a tent in a park, on a park bench, in Macdonald’s play place, or maybe just rough it and not sleep at all. After talking over the many illegal and unappetizing potential spots to lay our heads, I suddenly remembered seeing a supposed campsite while looking up the address to Stupid Hostel Piriapolis. I quickly threw on a wife beater and decided to find this mysterious campsite.

After walking around for 30 minutes, I finally found the campsite. So I gleefully jogged to our Home on the beach and informed Devon of the good news. We eventually made our way to campsite, set up our tent, which is a bug tent which means it is made of pure mesh, so it is see through and doesn’t block rain, but either way it was a legal place to spend the night.

Devon and I slept 2 inches apart and with pillows made out of rolled up jeans and dirty t-shirts, despite these less than ideal sleeping conditions, mostly just the close proximity to Devon, talk about eww, I slept very well. Unfortunately my good sleep was ended by tiny rain drops, and within ten minutes it was down pouring. Great Luck! We packed up or stuff as quickly as we could, and sat in the bus station for the next two hours trying to dry off. We spent the rest of the day, sitting on the beach and in the bus station, and using Macdonald’s bathroom when we had to dispose some stuff from our bodies. After being homeless for the entire day we finally made our way back to Buenos Aires.

Overall, Being Homeless for a day was more than enough Homelessness for me.

Our home on the beach

Peace out Uruguay, thanks for the cultural observations, epic adventures, and most of all thanks for providing a nice golden brown base coat for my tanning excursion in Brasil.