Nossa! Nossa!

doesn't our bench look comfy?!?

Keeley and I were Uruguay bound on Friday night, slightly sore after a park workout that we did on Thursday to prepare our beach bods for Punta del Este, boarding the Buquebus ferry at midnight.  We were hoping to sleep for the three hour journey, as our prospects for sleeping upon arrival in Uruguay were not so great (more on that later.)  However, unfortunately for us, the ferry turned into a full on symphony of snoring.  No joke, I have never heard so many people snoring at the same time.  Most people know I am the worst sleeper ever, and if someone so much as breathes too loudly I just lie there getting more and more annoyed with said breather.  The man kitty corner to my seat, literally sounded like a fog horn.  Having forgotten my trusty earplugs at home, I whipped out my ipod and attempted to drown out the snoring with some classical music (can't listen to words when i'm trying to sleep-i know, im a nightmare. haha).  So I wind up listening to this wordless music full blast in my ears...not very relaxing.  Only later did I realize that it was slightly ironic that I was listening to the Titanic soundtrack, while on a ferry, crossing frigid waters, in the middle of the night.  Anyways, after my sleepless journey (Keeley could sleep thorugh anything), we arrived in Colonia, Uruguay at around 3am Saturday morning.  Sleeping arraingements were not ideal, all the cheap hostels had been booked, and our broke college student budget did not include an $80 per night room....soooooo we ended up crashing like homeless people on the cold, unforgiving, metal benches in the bus terminal.  Comfy.  Bet you can guess how well I slept on those!!

Beautiful ocean

After a seemingly endless night, we rose with the sun to explore Colonia, a romantic little beach town where Porteños escape too when they need to get out of the city.  It's the oldest town in Uruguay and was designated as a World Heritage Site.  We strolled around the cobblestone streets, checked out the lighthouse, had some breakfast (Keeley wanted beef stroganoff at 8am), and then headed to the beach for a full day of lounging in the sun.  Later that night I discovered that I had managed to a sideburn onto my face, literally burnt a strip from my forehead down to my chin.  How do I always manage to mess up my sunblock? We then boarded a five hour bus ride to Punta del Este, a tourist hot spot in the summer (kind of like Mexico for Americans).  In our hostel we ran into two other guys from our program and we spent the following morning on the beach with them, which included our photo shoot at the famous Monumento al Ahogado (or the Hand) statue, which is a set of concrete fingers rising out of the sand in front of the ocean, meant to represent a hand drowning as the waves are a lot stronger on this side of the point.  We spent most of the day body surfing in the waves, tanning, and reading (managed to read the entire first book in the Hunger Games trilogy before we saw the movie Tuesday night!!).  Later, the boys told us about this place called Casapueblo that they had just found but didn't have time to go see as they were getting on an early bus.  So Keeley and I decided to take advantage of their find and hopped on a bus to Punta Ballena (Whale Point) and walked along a seemingly abandoned road for a while before stumbling upon Casapueblo which is the home of famous Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró who built it as homage to his son who was one of sixteen survivors of a plane crash.  Story goes that Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which was carrying a rugby team and family members,  crashed in the Andes in October of 1972, and out of the 45 people on board, only 29 survived the crash and immediate aftermath.  Eight were later killed by an avalanche that left them buried.  The final 16 that were rescued more than two months later had survived by eating flesh from their dead comrades who had been preserved in the snow,  a decision they didn't take lightly.  The survivors were only found after 72 days when two of the survivors made a 10 day hike across the Andes to a Chilean huaso who alerted authorities.  So Vilaró's Casapueblo was built as a dedication to his son who survived the horrific incident.  We walked up to it and immediately thought we had arrived in Santorini, Greece, with its completely white walls made of adobe rising out of the rocks is strange formations and curves.  The home is now open to the public and a museum has been built into it to exhibit some of the works of the artist.  Very cool.

The next morning we walked to a place where we had heard you could get american style waffles, cannot begin to tell you how excited we were, only to find out that it was closed.  Serious let down so we hopped on the bus to Montevideo, the capitol of Uruguay and spent a cold, rainy afternoon walking around.  To be honest there's not much to do/see there so we ended up convincing a Buquebus travel agent to let us hop on the earlier bus and fast ferry to get home earlier.  For only twenty bucks! Oh, South America, so easy going!