No one understands me when I say: Uruguay

For real. I always feel like I'm saying it the way you're supposed to it say in Spanish, but no one ever knows what I'm talking about. Story of my life here. 

I present to you, my final blog post about my adventures traveling during the South American summer. And heck, It’s only several months late. Oops. 

After Rio, the Extremely Gringo Travel Gang headed back to Santiago. Soph and Dan were headed for the good old U.S. of A. Ryan’s parents were visiting Santiago. And I… well, I was sleeping copious amounts. We’re talking a LOT of sleep. However, after about a week, Dan and Sophie were gone, Ryan had said goodbye to his parents, and we realized that there was traveling still to be had.

We set out on our adventure of Uruguay. Said to be a “hidden gem” of South America, Uruguay is nestled between Brazil and Argentina on the Atlantic Coast. We flew into Montevideo and spent our first few hours there trying to figure out how to work ATMs and eating at our first parilla. This blog post could have probably been entitled “The trip that never happened” or “Ryan and Sarah eat and drink their way across Uruguay.” The first title would be due to the fact that while there are many pictures of our trip to Uruguay, we’re not in any of them. The second is pretty self explanatory.

The next morning we hopped on a bus to Colonia del Sacramento, a quiet old town on Rio de la Plata, just across the way from Buenos Aires. (Mind you, Rio de la Plata is pretty ginormous.) The town was pretty touristy, but man was it beautiful. We strolled along the cobbled roads, walked all the way down the riverfront path to the other part of town, and ate and drank. 

Colonia del Sacramento dock.

Pretty picturesque, eh?

Rio de la Plata near sunset.

Looking for a parilla to eat dinner.

We only had about 24 hours in Colonia before hopping back on a bus (after sleeping in and almost missing it) toward Paloma. Now, I know that 24 hours probably doesn’t seem like enough time, but there just wasn’t THAT much to see in Colonia. So to Paloma we went. You see, there wasn’t that much to see in Paloma, either, but that was kind of the beauty of the whole trip. We feel asleep when we wanted; we woke up when we wanted; we took siestas whenever we wanted; we lounged on the beach when we wanted; and we ate and we drank when we wanted. Paloma is a tiny beach town on the Atlantic Coast of Uruguay. It’s truly one of the quietest places I’ve ever been. It was the type of town where families from Uruguay probably go for vacation. It’s also the only place where a picture was taken that I’m actually in. The only proof I’ll ever have of my Uruguay adventure.

I told you I went to Uruguay.

After two days in Paloma we headed back to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. Montevideo is a cool city. It’s one of those cities where there aren’t a whole lot of huge impressive sites, but there are thousands of interesting ones. Laura and Elaine happened to be in Montevideo the day that we arrived, and after trying to contact them, we ran into them on accident walking along the Rio de la Plata boardwalk. We spent the evening eating churros and drinking mate (a South American tea) before the two girls caught their bus to Brazil. The rest of our time in Montevideo was spent doing what Ryan and I do best. Eating all the food and drinking all the drinks. We visited every parilla we could find and were introduced to a Montevideo favorite, “Medio y Medio.” It’s basically a bottle of half white wine and half champagne, and it’s wonderful. We also visited the Montevideo port and the first FIFA World Cup Stadium and all those things you’re supposed to do when you’re a tourist, but I think it’s pretty important that you keep in mind all the parillas, too. 

Montevideo plaza thing.

Montevideo cool building thing.

Montevideo beautiful sunset thing.

First FIFA World Cup stadium.

The fabled Medio y Medio. So good.

Montevideo port market with so many parillas.

MORE MEDIO Y MEDIO!

All the grilled foods. :-)

Although visiting Uruguay wasn’t the shiniest most exciting part of my South American adventure, it was the perfect way to end it. It offered a real retreat from the craziness of the previous eight months and helped prepare me for what was about to come.

When we returned to Santiago, we had about a week’s worth of calm before the storm that is our lives teaching in Chile.