Uruguay: La Paloma & Montevideo (11/30-12/7)

We left the community before our week was up, and there was a distinct change in the peoples' attitudes toward us after we announced our departure. The first thing we did upon leaving the place where we'd felt so restricted was to buy beers and walk to entire distance to the milk factory, brandishing our bottles at the cars rolling past, whose drivers must've thought it odd to see two gringos drinking beer at 10am.
One of the drivers (in a open-top Jeep) was so amused by the sight that he offered us a ride, which we gratefully accepted.
We caught the bus without much trouble, although one of the people waiting at the stop looked suspiciously like one of the men from the community - a spy? Soon we were Buenos Aires-bound, beers clutched thoughfully in our hands as we watched the countryside slide past. I thought I was close to falling asleep for the remainder of the two-hour ride, when I suddenly realized that the beer had gone straight through me; I needed to pee. Fortunately, when I crawled up to the front of the bus, my pitiful expression was enough to tug on the heartstrings of the driver and his sidekick. They stopped the bus at a toll plaza, and the 50 passengers waited patiently as I ran to the nearby restrooms, relieved myself, and ran back. That never would have happened in Bolivia...

Cycling along "River Plate" in Montevideo

In Buenos Aires, we were struck suddenly with indecision. We'd left the community on the pretense of meeting our friends in Buenos Aires, which was true, but the first of our friends wouldn't be there for another two days. After some deliberation (over all-you-can-eat parrilla, or grilled meats), we booked a hostel for the night, with the option to cross the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay for a quick few days the following morning.
[Aside: Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, and Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, are the geographically the closest capitals in South America. They are separated by the mouth of a large river, Rio de la Plata, which drains on an east-west course between the two cities. Now, the literal translation of "Rio de la Plata" is "River of Silver," or, more colloquially, "Silver River." However, at some undisclosed point in history, someone must have mistranslated the name into English, and as a result, every person/map/guidebook/sign that attempts an English translation of the river does so as "River Plate." Because, you know, "plata" kind of resembles "plato." I have no idea how this agonizingly glaring mistake continues to be perpetuated without fuss, but apparently the Argentinians have no problem with it. If you don't believe me, look for the river's name on this map, the soccer team named after the river in this headline, or the team's actual website. It could definitely be that I'm missing something here, but I think it's hilarious.]

Beer pong at our hostel in Montevideo

The next morning found me offloading some of our more heavy-duty camping gear and some dirty laundry into the hostel's storage room (I wouldn't return for these items for almost two weeks - whoops!), and the two of us barely catching the Buquebus (boo-kay-boose), a giant boat that would ferry us across the river. One three-hour ferry and a two-hour bus ride later, we were in Montevideo, Uruguay's capital. We booked our bus to La Paloma, a small beach town about four hours north of Montevideo, for a few hours later, then went to drop our backpacks at the baggage guarderia. Unfortunately for us, the baggage employees seemed to think that the saddlebags and tent (Scott's) attached to our backpacks counted as separate pieces of luggage. I managed to convince them that the saddlebags were part of the original design of the packs, and they relented. When I asked if I could leave my canvas handbag as well, they informed me it would cost 10 Uruguayan pesos. I decided to hold onto my bag. They would not, however, allow Scott's pack to remain intact, and demanded that he separate the tent from it's convenient nesting-place on the rear of the pack. Frustrated, Scott did so, but when they told him it would cost 30 Uruguayan pesos to check the tent (approximately the same size as my canvas bag), Scott got annoyed. He tried to ask why the price of leaving the tent was different from that for the bag, and the employees called their manager. A tall, thin man arrived, took one look at Scott, and informed us (not-too-politely) that we would not be allowed to leave any of our bags at their counter, and would we please step out of the way so that the people behind us could be helped. It took several minutes and a choripan (fresh bread roll with a grilled chorizo sausage stuffed inside) before Scott had calmed down from the blatant injustice and the manager's effrontery.
We caught our bus to La Paloma a few hours later, and I napped on the sunset drive up the coast. We arrived in the tiny beach town well after dark, and asked at the bus station for camping options. We were directed generally towards a sparse forest of evergreens behind the station, and began walking uncertainly into the dark. A few minutes later, in the midst of barking dogs and a trailer-truck graveyard, we met a lanky man who pointed up a dirt track through the trees. It took us another few stops and strangers' vague directions before we located the campground, whose office had closed within the last 15 minutes (it was 10:45pm). Not wanting to backtrack, and adamant that we would not stay in a hostel, I began sneaking around the premises until I found two men in a lit doorway. One was the proprietor, and a few minutes later we'd registered and paid for the night.
He told us a bit about the campground as he walked us to our site, and it turns out that in the peak of the summer - January 15th to 31st - it has a pool, its own grocery store, an internet cafe, a fingerprint scanner to enter the park, and space to accommodate 7,000 campers. We asked him to repeat himself.

Scott was ambivalent about his new haircut

Fortunately, while we stayed there, there were only ever two other groups: an Australian couple who we christened The Most Boring People We Met In South America, and enormous crew of adolescent boys who claimed to be part of a family reunion of traveling musicians. Their favorite activities involved yelling at our tent, stealing our bread, and making lewd pantomimes at the naked blowup doll one of them had produced. Their gestures never failed to elicit the same low-volume group laugh.
The next day we did the (boring) 20-minute walk into town, only to find that La Paloma's economy lies entirely in providing services to the thousands of tourists (Uruguayan and otherwise) that descend upon the town during two weeks in January. Because we were visiting outside of those two weeks, however, we noticed a distinct lack of stores/restaurants/businesses being open, and certainly none of them adhered to the hours posted on their storefronts. Despite these setbacks, Scott successfully rented a surfboard from a surf shop, and I rented a bicycle from an old mute in his apartment. Consequently, Scott spent the next few days surfing, and I spent them riding blissfully through the woods and along the verdant, windy coastline. There are few things I love more than bicycles.

Returning bagfuls of liter beer bottles

We also did a decent amount of cooking in our BBQ pit - I'd left our frying pan in the hostel in Buenos Aires, but Scott still had the tin plate we'd bought as a makeshift lid, and we used that coupled with a scarf-potholder to cook eggs, chorizo, onions, peppers, and toast. (We'd planned a full-on breakfast for my birthday morning, but awoke to find that the adolescent minstrels had stolen many of our groceries. I left them a pity-inducing note saying they'd ruined my birthday, which was untrue.)
We left the morning of my birthday, and after an interesting bus ride with an entire futbol team, we made it to Montevideo. My one request for my birthday was that we stay in a legitimate backpacker's hostel (as opposed to a cheap hotel), so that we could make friends, take advantage of computers/TVs/games, and have resources to get linked into the city's best offerings. We settled on a hostel, then went out for lunch (with wine). After lunch we picked some fizzy wine coolers, and sat in a main square drinking, chatting, and watching kids play with defunct soda cans.

Family party at the hostel!

Later, we headed back to the hostel to wait for Scott's friend, Peter, who came to join us from the United States. In anticipation of his arrival, we made a water-filled condom balloon, which we dropped on him from the rooftop as he emerged from his cab. The boys spent the night catching up and playing my least-favorite drinking game: quarters. At some point, Scott stuck candles my mom had sent with Peter into a cranberry bread loaf (also courtesy of Robin Moller, via Peter), and they sang. However, we'd started drinking early, and by the time it was late enough to go out, I was exhausted and went to sleep instead. I was also disappointed that none of the hostel's inhabitants had decided to join us; we later found out that everyone else in the hostel was actually a study-abroad student, and it was their finals week.
The next day, Scott felt badly that my birthday had been overshadowed by Peter's arrival (I think I was a bit jealous that after five months of traveling with Scott, I suddenly had to share his attention with someone else). In order to rectify the situation (as he saw it), he offered to let me cut his hair, which I'd been trying to convince him to let me do for several weeks. What's more, he said I could cut it however I liked...I'm fairly certain he was expecting me to say no, because as my face lit up, his fell. Moments later, I'd obtained a pair of scissors and a comb, and we were up on the rooftop. I chose to model the haircut after this one I found online, and I think I did a fairly good job. Scott even forgot about the weird, South American douche-style cut I'd given him, and it wasn't until almost a week later that he finally had me cut it normally in Buenos Aires.

Caldron of clerico

We spent longer than we'd anticipated in Montevideo, and drank 25 liter-sized beers during our stay (we later returned all the bottles in bulk to a grocery store - the combined rebate was enough to buy us a whole bottle of rum). These we consumed while playing beer pong in the hostel, swimming in "River Plate" in the company of showering bums, and riding rental bikes miles along the beachfront in the sunshine. We also spent one evening with all of the foreign exchange students (all of whom were from Argentina or Brazil) at a birthday party for the hostel's dueño (owner), which featured lavish appetizers, many family members, and an absolutely gigantic vat of clerico - a sort of white sangria with tons of fruit in it, sometimes served in a hollowed-out melon.
Another night, we'd gone for a late beer run, and Peter decided to show off his newfound pole-climbing capabilities. He shimmied up a street sign, and Scott and I were so delighted by it that we made him do it again...unfortunately, he must've stepped in dog feces at some point, then smeared it on the pole from his shoes, so the second time he came down from the pole, his shirtfront was covered in it. He ran back to the hostel to change, and when he returned, Scott and I were engaged in a fascinating conversation with a potentially-homeless man named Marcelo, who turned out not only to have terrible facial hair, but also to be a racist.
All too soon, it was time to return to Buenos Aires to meet my college friends, Ben and Daniel, and to wrap up the very end of what had become the trip of a lifetime.