It was a short 3 hour bus ride from Colonia to Uruguay's capital, Montevideo. When we arrived it was pouring with rain and quite chilly so it felt pretty much like home. We had a quick rest at out hotel before our new tour guide, Duda, took us in the shortest city tour we've had so far. It basically involved walking down the main high street before she stopped dead and told us not to walk past this point because it was too dangerous. I have to say that the rain didn't do Uruguay's capital city any favours and in comparison to Santiago and Buenos Aires it was really rather dull. But it did have a few nice looking buildings and some statues of vague interest. We stopped for lunch at a place called California Burrito. Given that burritos are Mexican, I thought it an odd name to call the place. Duda told us it was really the only reasonably priced food in the city so we ate it and to be fair it was pretty good tex-mex and big portions. We had the rest of the day to kill and nothing in the guide books looked appealing so we decided to track down a cinema to watch Taken 2. This has been a long running ambition since our tour in South America began. It started on a night bus when they showed the first Taken, brilliant film, and someone mentioned the second one was due to be released soon. We saw adverts for it everytime we went to the cinema and have been counting down the days for its release ever since. My guidebook mentions two cinemas but both were closed down when we got there. The waitress at the restaurant had marked out another but when we got there it turns out they were only showing it at midnight on Fridays. Disheartened, I went back to relax at the hotel and Bryan and the boys found somewhere to play pool. Duda's attempt to save money was to order in a pizza to the hotel but at £15 a pizza I failed to see how this was cheap. Bryan and I had a wander around town to find something better but all we managed to come up with was McDonalds. Although from the look of the pizzas they were almost as bad as the all you can eat pizzas from Bariloche. We all went to the Aussie girls' room to eat and chat with a few drinks and get to know each other better. The next day we got up bright and early for Duda to lead us on a bike ride to the parts of town that were too dangerous to walk around. Fortunately the rain had stopped and the sun made an appearance for the day. As seems to be standard with G Adventures, we paid over the odds to hire the bikes which turned out to be pieces of crap. Most didn't have working breaks and John and Bryan's bikes were in competition with each other to see how often the chains could fall off (John won). With Kenneth and I aptly wearing our Death Road t-shirts, Duda first of all led us all against one way traffic (intentionally!) to get to the seafront. We took a few photos here and there but I wouldn't say it was particularly picturesque. It was pleasant when we stopped in a park to have our picnics we bought from the supermarket. After the Duda-led route was over, some went back while others carried on to take a look at the football stadium. This was slightly more challenging than the initial ride, being that it was now uphill and on main roads with a lot of angry bus drivers. Eventually we got there and since we would have had to pay to get in, we just walked around and cycled back. That evening the group went to dinner but having managed to find out it was fairly pricey, a few of us decided to get some grub from the supermarket, along with their cheapest whiskey and have our own little party in the hotel before meeting them out at a bar. Being a rather large city we had to get taxis to the bar which also turned out to be pricey so we waited for them in a much cheaper bar. Unfortunately it was a karaoke bar but we discovered that one of the newbies (Ben) in the group is actually a professional singer so he didn't take much persuasion to go up and do a song or two! We eventually met up with the rest of the group who were a little worse for wear having been doing shots already! The plan was to go to a club but that involved getting in another taxi and paying quite a lot to get in so a few of us declined and just took a taxi home. It turns out we missed quite a lot including a few budding couples in the group. However, looking at the state of them the next day when we had to get up early for the bus, I wasn't sorry I went home early (although whether you can class 3am as being early I'm not sure). One girl was so bad she was throwing up the entire bus journey to Salto.