After completing a full circle, we finally headed to a new country, Uruguay. We explored Montevideo our first day. I was completely stunned at how laid back this city was. This city is home to over one million people but walking through the streets you would never be able to tell. Kids play in the streets, random soccer games are played, and people fish off the piers without a care in the world. As I was walking through the old part of town I could tell something was not right. Then I realized what it was, it was completely quiet! No hustle bustle city life could be detected. The only sounds I could hear were children and parents playing in the plaza. Aaah…if only all big cities could be this peaceful. This big city has the soul of a small town. It was quite a contrast to the craziness of Buenos Aires.
We wanted to get out and explore more remote areas of the country so the next day we rented a car. We were only allowed 250 km a day unless we wanted to pay more so sadly we were somewhat limited in what we could see. We followed the coast the whole drive and after passing through many cool coastal towns we were looking for somewhere to spend the night. It was pitch black and we turned into some random dirt road heading toward the coast. We found a little drive to park in and we spent the night there in the car. We were hoping that we were not breaking any laws but it did not really matter as there was nobody around to catch us. We had miles of coastline all to ourselves. The darkness was overwhelming and we could not see the ocean but the deafening sound of the waves let us know it was there. The next day I woke up and saw what we could not see in darkness. The ocean sat right in front of me. Adam had already left the car to go explore. I walked onto the coast, looked in both directions and saw no trace of anybody and I broke into laughter. I could not believe how cool it was! We did not drive as much the next day as we visited a couple more small towns. The most notable town was Punta Del Diablo. This small town was a little more touristy than others we saw but had really cool sand dunes that bordered the ocean. It took very little walking to get away and have dunes and coast to yourself. After visiting that town, we drove a little further and turned on a random dirt road that led to this huge lake. We drove to the end of the road and got out of the car. Again, there was not a trace of anybody to be found, although there was an excessive amount of cows. We explored this new area and discovered beatiful beaches with giant boulders, and fields that looked like something out of the African plains. If you pretended the cows were giraffes and zebras, you could almost convice yourself. We spent the night there. I slept in the car and Adam sent up my tent, not being able to sleep well in the car the day before. We both woke up early and explored. As I was walking through the fields I was shocked to see two gauchos coming toward me with a zillion dogs. I was hoping we were not wandering through private territory. We ended up just exchanging greetings and talking about what a nice day it was. That was a relief! After that we drove back to Montevideo. We stopped at a few cool places. One of my favorite moments of that day came when we were driving on a dirt road near the coast and two horses began running along side us. However, it was not cool when they bolted in front of the car and Adam had to slam on the brakes! Also, on a dirt road the tail pipe got jarred loose and was dragging on the ground. As we were determining how to fix it, two guys stopped who were very knowledgeable about cars. They got their tools out and fixed it in 5 minutes. I said a quick thank you to God for that one as we defenitely did not want to pay for any damages. We arrived back in Montevideo and found a hostel. We watched Memoirs of a Geisha in theaters also. I thought it was a good movie but it could have been better. The next day (yesterday) we were productive. We got bus tickets out of here that leaves tonight back to Argentina, we returned the car, and we got hair cuts finally! Having short hair feels so good! We also saw Crash in theaters. I saw it at least 4 monts ago on dvd but Adam had never seen it and it really is a must see movie. So today, we are just waiting around mostly to leave. Love you all! We’ve posted pictures in our cool new Uruguay album as well as a new album of Buenos Aires pictures in Argentina. Be sure and check ‘em out!
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