Tea Time Doubly So

We had to get up quite early for our bus but, since there was wifi in our room, I thought I'd stay up a little bit online. Then, at 12:30am, I noticed that my phone was now reading 1:30am. Quickly checking online revealed that the 4th October was the day that summertime started in Uruguay and daylight saving meant that the clocks go forward one hour. We had an hour less sleep than we expected and Joanne's alarm was going to go off too late for us to get to the bus. The time had not changed on the laptop because it was still set to Argentine time and their daylight saving isn't until later in the month. What a daft old-fashioned and pointless habit! If people want to get up at a different time in different seasons then surely it makes more sense to change the time they get up rather than change the time! It's as if the time is something real that means anything: primitive! Time is an illusion.

Anyway, I set my alarm and woke Joanne up, both of us totally unready for the day ahead, me especially. We made it to the bus station on time, then, when buying our tickets in Spanish I used up so much of what little concentration I had, that I lost my phone. I looked up the necessary words then asked at the desk if they had found the phone I had just lost. No, of course they hadn't, someone had clearly picked it up the moment I stupidly and sleepily left it lying on the counter. Then I found it in my bag; it was going to be a day like that.

Amusing sign on the bus. They are addicts.

The bus to Salto was even more luxurious than the others we had taken in South America: this one was like an aeroplane business class, with only three seats per row. We arrived at the hostel in Salto after walking miles with our bags, first because we missed our stop, and then further because the directions to the hostel were so awful. The receptionist didn't know any English, so we had to rely on my poor Spanish, but on top of that she was new, apparently, so when we were chased out of the 6-bed dorm she first took us to, by an old lady who was in bed, she didn't know what to do. She fell back on a phone call to the manager and instead took us to an 8-bed dorm. We had booked a 6-bed dorm and certainly would have complained if the dorm filled up, leaving the psycho old lady a dorm to herself, but the whole hostel was really empty, and there was so far nobody else in our room, and since it was quite late, we reckoned we had the dorm to ourselves.

Sunset over Salto

We had been hoping to get to the hot springs, but they are further out from town than I realised and we arrived a bit late. The only other tourist attraction near Salto is the waterfall, after which the town is named, but why would we bother going to see some puny waterfall when we were going to Iguazu Falls the next day? Salto seemed quite when we went out in search of food, particularly because it's not really on the gringo trail, so it wasn't very touristy, just very laid back. We found a restaurant someone online had claimed served the best steaks in South America; quite a bold claim, and totally untrue it turned out: my steak was quite good, but the best in South America? Come on!

Best steak in South America?

"Salmon in pepper sauce"

In a couple of places around Salto, we saw railway lines that weren't overgrown, so it seems in Uruguay, in contrast to Chile and Argentina, they do actually still use the railways that they poured money into in the past. Mind you, we never actually saw a train.

written by

The Happy Couple on October 4, 2009 from Salto, Uruguay

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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