The Reads, Hana, and the Weirdest Uruguayo Ever...

Since coming back from Patagonia I have been pretty bad about keeping up with the blog and for that I apologize. For all you people out there that have been waiting for a new update with bated breath, you are now in luck.
Sidenote: I'm extremely hopped up on Yerba Mate right now (and no, that is not a drug and yes, it is legal).

The last few weeks have been really amazing. My buddies from Oregon that I went trekking with all came back to Buenos Aires after their respective trips (some to Iguazu, others to Mendoza). The Read Brothers also made an appearance (with their buddy Jeff). We all ate, drank and laughed together. It was a grand ol' time. So many people I have met here have merely been passers-by so it feels like every other night there is a fiesta de despedida (going away party), this of course was the case with all the American guys here. Trevor was the first to go. We spent his last night here at La Bomba de Tiempo, a very famous weekly drum orchestra concert that turns into a large outdoor party. I'll hopefully have some video of it up soon. Even though everyone was starting to head back to the States, Hana was coming here to visit me for a couple weeks.

Hana's time in Buenos Aires was incredible. The weather for the most part was perfect, not too humid. We spent a lot of time eating, drinking really good wines (the best wine I have had in Argentina was at La Brigata, a very famous restaurant here that's known for cutting your steak with a spoon to show you how tender it is), going to ferias and parks and doing generally touristy stuff that I would have probably been too lazy to get around to had I not had a guest. We really only went out late her first night here when we all went to Bahrein on their drum-n-bass night. The music was intense and I guess everyone we went with hated it but we had fun. The second day she got here we went down to Plaza de Mayo. It was a Wednesday which meant that the weekly Mother's protest was going on. For those that don't know, Argentina went through what was known as the Dirty War in the 70's when the country was under a very cruel dictatorship where some 30,000 people simply disappeared. Every Wednesday starting at 3 pm, mothers of those who disappeared march around the plaza with pictures of their sons. They've been doing this for nearly 30 years. It's pretty haunting.

The highlight of the couple weeks Hana was here was Punta del Este, Uruguay. The original plan was to get out to Colonia for a day and then come back to go down to Mar del Plata, a big coastal city in Argentina. The beaches in Uruguay are much more incredible though so we decided to forego Colonia and Mar del Plata and just head out to the Atlantic coast in Uruguay. After taking a ferry directly from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, we hopped on a bus for Punta. The total travel time is about 5 hours (3 hour ferry, 2 hour bus). I had gone ahead and booked a place to stay in advance because this place is one of the most popular summer destinations for people in the region. We got in a cab (which are all cream colored brand new Mercedes' by the way) and headed to the hotel/hostel. As we drove further and further away from the downtown area and into what looked like the forest, I could feel Hana's disappointment radiate from her being. Oh man I thought, I really hope I didn't blow it. We arrived and were immediately greeted by Rodrigo, the owner. This guy would become one of the strangest people either of us had ever met. He gave us a tour and then gave us a map to look at to orientate ourselves. When shown to our room there was a standard skeleton key sticking out of the key hole but you could tell it wasn't the right size or anything. We asked if it worked and got a classic response from Rodrigo, "oh the room doesn't lock, no one steals things here." Luckily he was right, we never locked our room and nothing got stolen. The city really isn't very big and it turned out we were a 20 minute bike ride from the farthest point of the city so it ended up being really nice location-wise. His longtime girlfriend who he had a kid with then came out to explain the map to us. This was a funny situation because Hana really had to go to the bathroom and this woman was blatantly stoned. She moved very, very slowly and kept talking about all this stuff that we couldn't care less about. All the while Hana is like, ok lady, HURRY UP!! She survived though. After getting settled in we went down the road to rent bikes. Each of us got a beach cruiser for 3 days, which came out to about $5. The great thing about Punta del Este is that it's like the St. Tropez or South Beach of South America but at discount prices. Our days basically consisted of riding around all over the place on our cruisers, chilling on the beautiful beaches, and eating good food. There's not really much else to do out there.

Some explanation of the weirdness of Rodrigo I was referring to. For one, he was always up in your business. He seemed to show up around you all the time which I found to be incredibly annoying. He would also recommend certain food items to order for delivery and then once you ordered them ask you why you didn't get something else. Example: There was this restaurant called Rico y Famoso that he raved about because of their chivitos. So we each ordered a chivito to get delivered one day. He sees us eating them and goes, oh their chivitos aren't that good, you have to get the empanadas. Thanks dude. The other weird thing was that he printed these advertising fliers for the hostel in English so he asked Hana to go over them and see if there were any mistakes. She found that he had spelled bicycle, bycycle. When she tried to correct him on it, he flipped out on her like she was badmouthing the hostel or something. Very odd fellow who seemed to get weirder and weirder as the days went on. In any case, the facilities were great, the other people staying there were really cool too, and they made a great Christmas Eve dinner for everyone.

Funny story about the bikes too. They give you a lock to go with your bike of course. These locks they give you have a little string with a key. Well one day at the beach as we were preparing to leave, I realized that somehow the key fell off this little string. This was not good because I had locked my bike to Hana's, facing the opposite way, so there was no way one of us could just ride back to the shop and get a backup key or have them somehow break the lock to at least get it free. I ended up staying with the bikes as Hana went to this bar up the street to see if anyone had anything to cut the lock. No one did, but she found this guy who had pliers and a sledgehammer. Him and I carried the bikes, in their jumbled mess, to a place where he could try to break the lock. After placing the part of the bike where the lock was up on a trash can, he held the lock chain with the pliers and smashed them with the sledgehammer. To my amazement it actually worked.

So after 4 days and 3 nights in beautiful Punta, we headed back to Argentina for a night before she flew to Hawaii to go on vacation with the parents. It was an awesome trip. Now I'm back in Buenos Aires, working. Can you believe it? I got that job with the pubcrawl that I had tried for my first week here. It's been a blast.