22/1-09

Punta del Este!

Firstly, a quick word about our 2 days in Buenos Aires after Mendoza: This time we stayed in a MUCH BETTER hostel!!! Elisabeth got us a room at the hostel she was staying at (called Casa Esmeralda) and it was very low key and not at all like noisy stupid Tango Backpackers....hehe. So we enjoyed ourselves and I finally got to experience the famous Buenos Aires nightlife! Weeheee! Went to a vorspiel at some of Ingvild´s friends around 22.30 and then out around 02.00. Since it is holiday in Buenos Aires most of the clubs are closed, but we ended up at a pretty decent place with aircondition and danced the night away until we went home around 06;30. Needless to say we spent the next day sleeping a lot....

We were ready for some beach action after seeing a lot of cities, and decided to go to Uruguay to work on our tan:) Took the Buquebus ferry from BA to Colonia January 19., where we spent the night. Colonia is a charming old city with old houses and a nice atmosphere. Spent the day walking around and taking photos before getting ready to go to Punta del Este the next day. It took us 2 hours to get to Montevideo and then 2 hours more to Punta del Este. Maria had been in charge of finding a hostel for us in Punta del Este, and we were a little bit surprised when we got there....it was like we were living at home with 3 uruguayian guys who had suddenly decided to rent out some rooms in their house! Haha! Luckily we would only stay there 1 night before going to another hostel in nearby Manantiales which Elisabeth had recommended.... After putting down our bags we went straight to the beach for some hours before going to the shopping centre to buy dinner. We started to make dinner around 20.30 and all the argentinean and uruguayian people living there were wandering why on earth we were making dinner so early...where we going to bed already???? Haha! They were having a BBQ later, it was supposed to be at 23, but it was 02.00 before they started eating...that is way to late to eat dinner for the norwegians:)

After surviving a night at this special hostel (luckily we met some cool guys freom Canada and Ireland also staying at the hostel who also felt a little bit out of place) ,we took the 20 hours busride to Manantiales. The hostel there was sweeeeet, with a swimming pool and only a short way to the beach. Here we also met Joachim from Sweden- he was a real prototype swedish boy and we had some interesting conversations with him :) The first night in Manantiales the hostels organized a BBQ with live music, and we managed to sit on a table with Joachim and two other people- who turned out to be Danish! Wahah! You travel to the other side of the world, but the Scandinavians always seem to find each other! The Danish people were Morten and Rikke, and Morten was working very hard to get us to go out clubbing with neon lights in our teeth! It was however more tempting to sit and drink some good wine at the hostel, so we did this 2 nights in a row instead....and taught the s***head cardgame to our fellow Scandinavian friends! We really liked Punta, and we were very glad that we changed hostel to Manantiales...Punta centre itself was not so impressing, it was too many people on the beaches and in the city for our taste. Manantiales was much more relaxed:) The downside of our stay here was that we got insanely sunburned. Stupid us put on too low sunscreen protection and ended up red on most of our backsides....paaaaaaaaain!

OK, next stop Puerta Iguazu and the waterfalls! Weeeheee!