In Montevideo we decided to stay in hotel for a change as it was cheaper. We were promised lots of chintz but thankfully is wasn´t as bad as we expected. It also had the added bonus that when you flicked what you thought was the light switch ´hotel Calafornia´ came blurting out. As we arrived late we ate, watched TV and slept.

Our first day here was not as jam packed as we had planned as surprisingly it was another bank holiday with half day openings. More parades and school children dressed in cheerleading type outfits dancing to the rest of the kids in the marching bands. The armed forces were out in hoards too as it turns out it was Artiga´s day. He was responsible for Uruguays first independence. As this all occured outside the monuments and museums we were heading for we set off to find other interesting places. We settled on art museums which had some of the best art yet. Torres Garcia had three different styles of paintings some which were very abstract using the primary colours. Don´t think we can affford an original on our budget. The second was a local artist Gurvich he had some similarities to Torres but this difference is we could afford a couple of copies for our non existent house. For lunch we were planning on the market but this turned out to be expensive grill places not the cheap pizza we were looking for. At 3.00 the weather had a turn for the worse and remained like that all night and right through the next day. Terrential rain and freezing cold wind. It was amusing watching all the locals try to battle with the umbrellas. A lot gave in and left broken remains discarded on the street.

The next day was a day of hunting around for places to keep warm and dry. As we stayed in a hotel when we checked out at 10.00 that was the last of our shelter for the day. We began in a coffee shop, then to a food place and then a cafe/wine bar. I did though get a submarino which was exactly what it said ´hot milk with a chocolate bar submerged´ and then cheap wine. It sure beats a day at work. To break up the day we did leg it to a few sites such as Artigas mausoleo but it wasn´t a dead body as we expected but a huge urn under guarded. Our other place of interest was not the best place to go after a jug of wine. A historical museum which was fairly dull with pictures of Artiga eveywhere with his crooked nose. Aaron dared to compare mine to it so he was out of favour for the day.

Then our night bus back to Buenos Aires again which we stupidly walked to looked on by locals thinking we were crazy. We did walk by several bus stops on the 30 minute walk unbeknown to us which were heading straight there.

Back in BA we checked into the same cheap hostel but this time we had a bed big enough for the two of us where Aaron can strech his legs out. We headed straight for Boca the only area we missed. This was deffinately tourist town. As soon as you hit the street you are stopped by everyone saying photo, resturant, painting etc. I´m not the most tolerant of been pursued and shouted at by vendors. We also now know where all the tourist buses end up! The street Caminito which is houses of corrugated-metal brightly coloured needed to be seen though. On our way back we stopped in on the art museum of the guy who was responsible for the colours of Boca. His art was interesting but very specific pictures of ship building. Not as dull as it sounds! We also passed the boca stadium which I think Aaron is regretting not sorting out, what makes it worse is that last week wasn´t the last game of the season so if we had hung around he could have gone tonight. Spent too much time here though so another night bus to Posadas.