Andre in Montevideo

The bus to Montevideo from Colonia took two and a half hours, not the one hour that Andre had promised. Luckily the hostel in Colonia had given us the facts, so we had shifted to an earlier bus. I hadn't seen Andre since about ten years ago in Cape Town, so it was a bit weird to be meeting up with him in Uruguay. As a bonus, though, Andre had offered to pay for us to stay in a real hotel rather than a hostel. It wasn't anywhere grand, but it was a big step up in luxury compared to what we had become accustomed to. After a bit of a struggle I managed to explain to the concierge with no English, that my friend, who is still at work, had reserved a room for us. I had to guess a bit with the past tense; why don't dictionaries and phrase books have verb tables at the back? Shortly after going up to our room a parcel was delivered for me: my new bank card, on time! At last we could return to business as usual.

We were just settling in when I heard a familiar voice in the lobby. I went out and heard what was unmistakably Andre's voice, talking in quite proficient, but a bit self-conscious-sounding Spanish. I didn't know he could speak Spanish, although it sounded like he hadn't really embraced the accent at all. Then he appeared from the lift, on the landing, not at all changed in ten years I thought. Quite remarkable since in that time he has married and now has two children. I thought kids were meant to age you! He put out a hand to shake mine, but I insisted on us hugging, after all it was a decade since we last even spoke, and only the magic of Facebook had put us back in touch a couple of months previously, and an incredible timing coincidence put us in Montevideo at the same time. I thought nearly ten years in the USA might have encouraged Andre to become a bit more tactile, but he seemed as uncomfortable with a hug as I would have expected the pre-US Andre to be; oh well, you can take the boy out of Pretoria...

Andre's brother was in the same hotel, having also agreed to meet up with him while he was there on business, but he had been ill and was not yet well enough to come out for food and a drink. Andre took us to a nearby restaurant where the manager greeted him like a son and teased him about smoking all of this cigarettes; definitely the same Andre: ten years later, still smoking without really admitting to it, so always having to nick them off other people. I don't really come here that often – he just has a really good memory, Andre protested when the manager backed off to let us choose. Wanting something a bit more grown up than medio y medio, we ordered a bottle of tannat, an exclusively Uruguayan cultivar, not really expecting much after the Chile and Argentina, but it was actually very nice. Until the previous day I hadn't even known that Uruguay made any wine.

Reunion!

It was great to see Andre again, although he seemed a little distracted as he was working again the next day, so he wasn't going to go all out and get really drunk with us. He did make a brave effort, though, taking us to a live music place afterwards where there was a jazzy band on. I was surprised by how white everyone was. The ethnic make up of South America really isn't what I expected: in Chile they looked kind of northern Spanish when I was expecting them to look like a mix of Spanish and indigenous, then in Argentina they did have that kind of look, when I was expecting them to be much more European; this I blame on the Che Guevara biography I'm reading, which describes Argentina as the most European country in South America, where the indigenous people are not at all in evidence. Of course the mistake I made was assuming that nothing had changed since the 30s when he was a child in Argentina, when the truth is that Argentina has been through several big changes since then.

Anyway, now we were in Uruguay, which I admit I had no real pre-conceived ideas about, but had assumed, as a former Spanish colony, people would look vaguely Spanish, probably with some indigenous mixing. In fact, away from Colonia, where there are so many Argentinians on holiday, Uruguayans on the whole look like northern Europeans, perhaps German or Dutch. Apparently they also pride themselves in not being hot-headed and macho like some of their Latino neighbours, and this really seemed to be the case in this club: compared to other countries in South America, where you might expect Salsa, Tango, or Rumba, but certainly something up-tempo and exciting, with the crowd dancing or bouncing or getting really involved somehow; in this club, everyone was sitting around barely smiling or even moving, listening to cool jazz, and politely clapping between songs. Nobody danced, nobody whooped, trilled, or whistled. Maybe it was just that club or just that band, but Andre reckoned it was very typically Uruguayan; they are very stoic, he explained. How could that happen? I suppose there was just far more post-colonial immigration to South America from non-Spanish Europe than I had realised. I knew that there were a couple of German enclaves in Brazil and Argentina, but Uruguay seems to be an entire country of German descendents, although there must have been lots of Italians too for the accent to end up like it has.

It's weird to hear people this white speaking fluent Spanish

The next morning we went for coffee and the combined German and Italian influence was very much in evidence in the pastry shop where we bought our breakfast: there was an incredible variety of delicious-looking fancy cakes. I bought a rather over-ambitious thing, like a cross between an éclair and a mille-feuille, and filled with a thick layer of dulce de leche, which is an incredibly sweet substance, usually for spreading on bread. Afterwards I felt sure I was going to go hypoglycaemic when my body over-compensated and was flooded too much insulin to deal with the huge sugar spike.

An oompah band in the main square

Huge paella(!) some being made at a fruit promotion

Later that day we attempted to go shopping again, still desperate to replace some of our ailing clothing, but it was more expensive than we had hoped, and it's just not very easy to go shopping for bargains in a European-style city you don't know. Asia is far easier to shop in, and much more in tune with the way I shop: everything is cheap and it's all from stalls in the one location; no expensive shops and cheap shops you need to determine which is which and, if you don't like the price, you can argue about it. Here, just as I am when shopping at home, I was at a total loss and we returned to the hotel empty-handed. At least while we were shopping we had a chance to see some of Montevideo; it seems similar to the nicer towns in Argentina, but without all of the horrible graffiti everywhere.

What does it mean?

This sign is just plain wrong

It has quite nice buildings

Montevideo

I've forgotten who this gaucho hero is

That night we went out with Andre again. His work was over this time and he was much more relaxed, but unfortunately the night had to be cut short so that he could leave and go for his 3am flight back to New York via Guatemala. We agreed to pay him and Nicola a visit in New York if it was before they moved to Berlin, otherwise we would see them there; in turn Andre told us that he had several hundred other places he would rather visit before he ever found himself in Glasgow. Pah, I'm sure Glasgow can outclass New York any day of the week!

Joanne's spinach canelone

My second heart-attack, I mean chivito

Out benefactor gone, we had to start slumming it in dorms again the next day. We wandered around, following Andre's advice about where to go, but we couldn't really be bothered; we were getting a bit sick of being in towns again: it was time for some more nature! The town is quite nice, nicely decaying in parts, but it was just starting to look like more of the same. We passed a couple of nice market, hovered around a redeveloped enclave in the new town, and I had another chivito; they're not that unhealthy. We also popped down to the Rambla, which is apparently the longest promenade in the world.

An antique market

Good condition old Ford

The Rambla goes in that direction for 22km

70s car

Beer

In the end we just returned to the hostel and planned our route to Puerto Iguazu where we would find plenty of nature. Our plan was to take a bus to Salto in Uruguay the next day, then cross over to Concordia in Argentina where we would hopefully be able to get an overnight bus all the way to Puerto Iguazu. The information online was a bit sketchy though, and quite a lot of people advised specifically against the route we were taking, although it all seemed to be based on what they had seen elsewhere, rather than people who had done it. The alternative was to get the bus and boat in the wrong direction, back to Buenos Aires and get a bus the whole way. Where would the fun be in that: spending more money and going through a place we've already been?