Of giant frogs and neo-colonialism

´Living with hippies in Uruguay, no phone, no electricity, just love. ´

Eleanor´s facebook status essentially summed it up, however, the tale continued...

My stay at Bouland taught me more than the mas rapido routas to the bottom of a pot of dulce de leche, amongst my rapidly expanding spanish vocabulary (not difficult when you start at yr 9 spanish class memories) now includes useful phrases like ´did you remember the forks?´ and ´there is a giant tree frog under my bed´ although not yet ´is it poisonous?´ which was the next step. this said sab and eleanor find it hilarious that i just guess what sounds alright from a latin/spanish base and assert it as truth until it´s falsehood is uncovered!

Our buses to Colonia via montevideo went perfectly smoothly and although $17 they did take us the whole way across country. That said the standing room on the way to Montevideo became increasingly squished whilst eleanor had managed to sweet talk the conductor into giving her his seat! The poverty of the 1m (1/3 of Uruguay´s population) in Montevideo was evident by the street performers and beggars roaming the streets but since we only had a 2 minute changeover i largely missed this 1/3 of the country! Arriving at our hostel (El Viajero) we whipped out a squash, onion and tomato bought in the la barra market along with the puy lentils + chicken stock that had been slow cooking in my bag from victoria road - delish and made a few friends to boot! At a local bar on Flores we sipped on cafe colonial (grappa, secret ingredient and coffee) and poured over the lonely planet guide for the most important feature of the next day... lunch!

Back at our hostel we were relieved to find that the naked engineer had decided that staying in his bunk was a better plan. However, around midnight the snoring from the bunk below eleanors became so loud as to rival dad at which point a starkers Eleanor hopped down and pinched his nose with a hiss. This appeared to startle the man somewhat unsurprisingly although it did mean we all got to sleep before the next outbreak... little did we know about the builders awaiting us!

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