My visa for Argentina expired on Friday. So I did the same as every traveller who wants to extend their visa - I left for Uruguay.
With my friend, Debo, I took the boat from the Tigre delta across to Uruguay at 8.30. It was particularly difficult getting up in time for the 6.35am bus to get to Tigre as we went to see Manu Chao the night before, who continued playing till 12.30am. It wasn't until 2.30 that we got home.
We arrived in Carmelo around lunchtime, had lunch and started hitch-hiking to Montevideo - the capital. Within a minute a truck stopped to pick us up. What luck! Though he only took us 35km - a short ride, and short luck... we were trying for 3 hours under the searing hot sun to get another ride, but to no avail. So we flagged down a bus and took it the rest of the way.
We stayed in Montevideo for 2 days with 2 wonderful hosts and then tried to hitch-hike on to Cabo Polonio - a small, fishing village with no water or electricity. Once again, no one stopped! As we had missed the last bus of the day to Cabo Polonio, we took a bus further - to the west coast of Uruguay - in a place called Punto del Diablo. We were dropped off directly in front of the campsite, where we camped the night, only to discover that the reason the campsite was completely empty was because they were closed for the season.
So we packed up and walked about 10km along the beach to Santa Teresa - a national park. We set up camp and had an early night - sleeping for 11 hours. When we woke we ate the rest of our food, drank the rest of our water, packed up and started looking for a place we could rejuvenate our supplies. We found a little supermarket and a bus stop. So we bought food and a ticket to Castillos - where we are now, waiting for a connecting bus to Cabo Polonio.
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I'll be in Uruguay until Sunday, so please excuse any lack for personal communication until then.
