17:15 - It felt way too early to get up this morning! The alarm went at 7am and as Toby had inflicted anxiety over the traffic situation, I took a taxi to the domestic airport at 7.30 for my 9.50 flight. As it turned out, there was no traffic and I spent about two hours at the airport reading and having breakfast. The flight over to Punta del Este in Uruguay only took 40 minutes. When I landed I picked up my rental car and drove towards the centre of Punta del Este. What strikes you straight away is the small, modern, clean airport. The roads and the houses make you think you are back in Europe...maybe really St Tropez like they say...they do call it the St Tropez of latin america! The difference is that the beaches here are amazing...and they go on for 10's of kilometres... I made a stop at the harbour in town and at the lighthouse before aiming for Josè Ignacio, about 35 km further down the endless beach. I wanted to have lunch in a place I had read about: Huella. All I knew is that it was on the Brava side of the beaches, at Josè Ignacio. I did start to wonder after a while if I would actually find it... But I did find it, at the bottom of a little street leading to the beach. I had lunch there overlooking the beach. Food was great...I spent some time on the beach even though initially I had thought of driving back so I could be closer to the airport. It was a lovely sunny day and it was really nice to get time to just lie around not doing much. But alas I had changed my flight to an earlier one for the dinner so it eventually was time to drive back to the airport. I have really enjoyed my time in Uruguay and I think it is a place I would like to see again maybe with a little more time to spare.
01:00 - My flight got in about half an hour late and as my taxi driver had decided to take the long way around, I got back to the hotel just about in time to change into jeans from my shorts and meet the rest of the group so that we could walk to the restaurant for dinner. Sunitta decided at the last minute not to come (bad form)! Still she has managed to talk herself into my transfer tomorrow morning and I guess she cares about noone but herself... Dinner was at a place I had already been too on my first trip here with Sally and my other group. Food was great although service was not as smoothless this time around. We gave Toby a card we had all signed together with his tip. I could open up a chapter about the tip and the card situation, but as a friend of mine will say, I will park it and move on! After dinner, me and the terrible threesome wanted to have a drink just by ourselves and opted for the hotel, so when we got back we said our goodbyes to the rest of the group and went up to the horrid bar of the hotel. Toby joined us and we proceeded in undoing some of the myths he had about what had actually gone on in the tour :-). I have to say we had quite a laugh. We eventually said our goodnights and we all went back to our rooms. I get picked up at 8.15 tomorrow for the airport. Destination Iguazu falls! No time to stand still!!!