Christmas Vacation: Uruguay

Montevideo

Sorry for the delay! The trip has been great, but internet has been more scarce than I anticipated. Here's our ten days in Uruguay:

We spent our first couple days at a fancy hotel in Montevideo and then switched to a hostel with a couple peace corps buddies.

In Punto Del Diablo we amassed a group of nine people, mostly PC folks. We stayed in an awesome house and spent our days playing on the beach, buying fresh fish, cooking amazing meals, and hanging out with locals and other travellers. Here's some pics of our time there:

Successful retrieval of TK's wedding ring, which fell under the porch

This is Stefi and Phil from Colorado. TK met them at the border crossing and couldn't quite part ways. They camped in our backyard. In the background David's singing a love song he wrote for his girl in Paraguay.

Christmas morning 

Fish fry. This may have been Christmas dinner...I can't remember. There were several fish fries.

When our time was up at the lovely Casa del Arbol, the whole group packed up and moved to the remote beach town of Cabo Polonio. We hitchhiked, bused, and dunebuggied several hours to get there, and showed up with no reservations because we hoped to camp. Turns out Cabo Polonio is a national park that strictly prohibits camping, and the few hostels were booked or expensive. We found this cozy little gem, with an attic of wall-to-wall mattresses where we all nine slept. We were a little weirded out when we realized that the guy who rented us the place actually lives there too. We returned from the beach on our first day to find him “showering” by the well, with buckets of water. My uneasiness dissolved, however, when he cooked us the most delicious fish I have ever tasted. We gathered around a campfire at night, because there was no electricity (and because we love campfires). We had vague intentions of making salami sandwiches for dinner, when our host, Dani, started cooking up these fish –corvina?- over the fireplace inside. So delicious. We devoured them.

After a few hours of drinking, talking, playing guitars, and eating fish after fish, Dani announced that we must come see the bioluminescent plankton. We followed him to the sea, with flashlights off at his demand, to appreciate the brilliance of the stars. I had never seen bioluminescent plankton before and was thoroughly amazed. We had to agitate the water to light them up, and then it was like bathing in Christmas lights. Even the sand at the water’s edge shimmered with glowing footprints where we stepped. Most of us frolicked knee-deep, and TK stripped down and ran full speed into the black ocean. Unfortunately no photos of that night.

Sea lions! Cabo Polonio became a national park in order to protect one of
the largest colonies of sea lions in the world.

Don't let that face fool you - these guys were so hostile. Lots of fighting,
shrieking, biting, and zero cuddling.

The next day we celebrated TK and Kevin’s birthdays.  We caught a beautiful sunset from the sand dunes, then found an amazing restaurant where one little old lady cooked up delicious meals by herself on a tiny old oven. Stefi and I had planned to bake a cheesecake and a carrot cake for the boys, but couldn't figure out how to do it without an oven or a refrigerator. So Stefi found some kind of pastry cake in town and snuck it into the restaurant.

Here's our album cover..now we just need a band.

Tk and Kevin awkwardly clap for each other as we sing Happy Birthday
in 5 languages - English, Spanish, Guarani, Polish, & Portuguese. The
Portuguese came from a lady at a nearby table who was pretty drunk. 

The whole crew, sans Kyle. Was he taking the picture? I thought the drunk
Portuguese lady was...

After Cabo Polonio, we all parted ways. TK and I headed north through Argentina, the Yancey brothers south on the way to Antarctica, Jonny back to the states, Kevin back to Paraguay, Phil and Stefi to Argentina, and Kyle back to Punto del Diablo. It was a wonderful group to spend Christmas with and we'll hopefully see everyone again, if not in Bolivia then in the states.