Having left Buenos Aires at 10.45pm at night, we arrived in Montevido at around 3.30am. The plan was to get a taxi straight away to the hostel, but Marso had other ideas. She lost her one and only bank in her bag and did a very good impression of imitating a meerkat digging a hole trying to find. Low morale and 30 minutes later we jumped into a taxi to Willy Fogg hostel. On arrival we had another search of the bag, a little bit slower this time and fortunately the card was in the plastic (unclosable) wallet, exactly where it should be. So at 4.15am we opened a celebratory bottle of beer before hitting the sack.

We got up at midday and strolled through town to the coast. The city itself is surrounded by a small sea wall, but there a couple of beaches as well that everyone flocks to between Christmas and New Year. The city is in a lovely setting and is very clean. Uruguay has the highest standard of living in South America, and you can tell, its clean, expensive and modern a contrast to many other places we have been so far. We took in the sights in the city centre and headed to a market that sprawl into the port. We decided after our long 30 minute walk that a beer was required and found a little pub called The Smoking Dog. It was a quaint pub, with an ancient bar made our of wood. The barman was a happy chap that looked like he knew a thing or two about booze and before long he had popped open a bottle of free champagne to share between the dozen customers. The beer flowed and two blokes in the morning played some live music. Before we knew it a small crowd had gathered (6 o´clock on a Friday i guess is the same the world over) and we had prime location. An old man was getting everyone dancing, including us with all the locals so having pulled some suspicous shapes we retreated to the safety of the outside drinking area. Here we met the typical drunken sailors, who were smashed at 7pm and gave us another beer to share. We tottered home and stopped at the supermarket on the way. That evening we cooked for the first time on our travels, as eating out for lunch and dinner everyday for a month was starting to make a considerable dent in the budget!! Marso and Harriet cooked pasta in sauce with vegetables whilst Marc and myself were in charge of ensuring drinks were always topped up. Thankfully, we all completed our roles succesfully. That evening we were stalked by strange David from Sweden, who would not leave us alone desite some subtle, and not so subtle hints from Harriet! We marched into town at 1am and partied the night away. We stopped at 3 different bars before finding the most crampt and crowded club in Montevido, but we had great fun and stayed out until 8am!

Next day we woke at 1pm and at 3pm walked down to the McDonalds in town for breakfast. In case you hadnt gathered already travelling is not a particularly healthy lifestyle. At this point i have had one day in a month without at least 1 beer, and the most exorcise i have completed involves dancing in a club! After Mc Donalds and feeling suitably fat we got a cab to the beach. Marc and I spent the day chucking my rugby ball around. After a month of some very unenthusiastic throws from Harriet it was good to finally have some man time playing catch! Harriet and Marso decided to sleep and sunbathe instead which suited me fine! We left when the sun got down, coincidently about the same time my arm was saying that throwing a ball for 4 hours was starting to get repetitive and so started to ache. That night having decided swimming was sufficent exorcise for a month we thought we would be even healthier and cook in again. Marso offered to make a quiche, which none of us were going to argue about, but Harriet, Marc and I thought it would go better as a side to a 500g steak than as a main course on its own. 500g of meat heavier and 3pd poorer i thought was quite a good exchange! That evening we had a steady one and ended up watching Harry Potter at our hostel (called Willy Fogg and chosen purely because of the name).

Our sleep was interupted at 6am by 6 Argentinian boys who thought it was funny to make weird "beep beep" noises to wake everyone up. We kept our mouths shut waiting for them to get bored, but a German girl in the room did at least try to say something. Unfortunately, the words "f*** the shut up" were met by more giggling than apologetic faces.

We got up at 10am and ensured we made as much noise and turned on as many lights as possible to get our revenge. We had a morning in the hostel before getting the bus and boat back to Buenos Aires. We arrived in BA at 7pm and headed to Che Legarto where we would spend New Year!

Uruguay was certainly not what we expected, but was a pleasant surpise. Underrated in my book!