Our short little trip to Uruguay - 1 May - 7 May

So the plan was to get out of the city and head to the beach for some fun in the sun, cause the Mavrix were turning a little see through pale. This meant catching the ferry into Uruguay and hitting their famous, world class, not to be missed, white sand, bikini bearing, sun glass wearing beaches.

We began our trip in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Cologne de Sacremento just a short jump across the river from BA. This little town has beautiful cobbled streets, picture perfect houses, old cars and not a hell of a lot more to do! Especially when you are on a South African style budget! But we made the best of it, i.e did everything that was free :) this means walking everywhere, using the hostels free internet and eating crackers and R4 pate on the pier instead of Crayfish at the restuarant just next to our picnic spot. Same view only a whole lot cheaper - Mavrix style!! By the way we really did like this little town, but it should be treated as a one day pit stop rather than a destination in itself, there are after all only so many crackers one can eat...

Next we went to the World famous Punta del Este (what you havent heard of it??) All the brouchures show white sand beaches and tanned barely clothed bodies soaking up the sun (some are wearing speedos not bikinis but you get the idea). Unfortunately nobody told us that Autumn in Uruguay is what Autumn should be, cold, windy and a little rainy. Still Punta is a pretty beach town that probably erupts when the summer is in full swing and we enjoyed sitting on the beach watching the sun dip its head under the water. Actually watching the sun go down in Punta seems to be the locals favourite pass time as every sunset had at least a 100 spectators. Their other favorite pass times are riding their scooters in large circles around the Punta never seemingly actually going anywhere, drinking Mate´ and teen pregnancy (this last item however seems to be a South American pass time and is not resticted to Punta).

*Mavrix note* There is actually something in South America called ¨children of the carnival¨, it refers to the fact that almost 9 months to the day after carnival the hospitals see an influx of teen Moms sprouting new borns. They even intesify their sex ed over this time to try bring the numbers down but we arent sure if this really helps, the kids just like the diagrams and free condoms (probably to blow up rather than to use judging by the hospital records 9 months later)!

La Paloma is a really pretty surfer town - Que Lindo! the locals would say! However due to the fact that Autumn IS actually Autumn in U-r-gay the Mavrix were the only unfortunate uninformed tourists in the whole town! This of course meant that we had a hostel all to ourselves, Hostel Iribita or OUR Hostel as we would come to call it, is a cute little Hassienda style house with the cutest little old couple running it! The fact that they spoke no English made them even more endearing as did their hobbit like stature. They even left us the keys to the hostel one night and told us how to lock up since they were going out of town for the night...this really DID make it OUR hostel, so we made a fire, drank a large bottle of the cheapest red wine the Supermercado had to offer and watched the only thing in English on TV. Vix passed out later infront of the fire leaving M to clean the kind of mess that only the Mavrix can make without actually driving a truck into the place.

The next day we did something we hadnt done before, something that seemed strange and otherworldy to do, at first we werent comfortable doing it but we knew that it was the right thing to do and that ultimately it would help us.... We checked the weather report in the next towns.... yup Autumn is Autumn in Uruguay, so we decided to stop chasing the sun cause it had too much of a head start and back track to BA where we would meet up with our old Amigos Americanos - Frances and Cooper. We tried to give them a good super hero name like Mavrix but the best we could do was Frooper, somehow it suits them.

So... after a long bus drive and a misadventure involving M almost losing his warm jacket, the Mavrix returned to BA, strangley there was no welcoming parade or camera crew at the bus station, once again we had evaded the paparazzi......ok so no one cared but we were back and used the day to shower and have a decent blow dry for Vix´s hair.

That night we would board the FULL Cama bus (thats the one with fully reclining seats and as much wine as you can drink) to Iguazu with the Froopers.

Next Iguazu...