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We arrived in Montevideo bus station at around 1pm after an early start having left Salto at 6am. We jumped into taxi's and headed off to the Hotel Lancaster in the city centre. Having left our bags with Val in the modern looking hotel lobby, myself, Tom and Cat managed to get ourselves onto a coach tour which gave us a pretty good overview of the city. Being the only English speakers on the bus we got the impression either it's a very efficient way of communicating or we weren't getting the full translation and the rest of the bus were getting the juicy little tit bits. On our return to the Hotel Lancaster it soon became apparent it's 3 star billing was a touch generous and a certain amount of faecal buffing had been undertaken. Although the reception looked fairly modern and clean the room had a distinct wet dog smell about it, a rather depressing lack of daylight, a light switch over the bath tub (for anyone wishing to off themselves which prob happens more often than not in this gaff), mattresses that induced a strange itch just looking at them and a broad spread of mould on the walls. Apparently our room wasn't too bad compared to some of the other guys in the group who took to trip advisor to vent spleen. Not wanting to spend too much time in our rooms we found somewhere for a few beers, a bite to eat, a good old b**** about the hotel, and to plan the next days activities. And so it was bright and early (and a little itchy) the following morning I had the pleasure of accompanying Cat and Alice on the 2hr coach journey to a rather delightful place called Punta del este (the playground of the rich and famous of Uruguay). After a cloudy start the sun burnt through the clouds and we had a rather memorable day wandering the peninsula's sights before finding a lovely sea front restaurant for lunch. Feeling suitably full and radiant (turns out non of us had applied nearly enough sun cream in the morning) we hoped back on the bus to MV. That evening Val booked a table for us all at a traditional Uruguayan restaurant where a staggering amount of meat was eaten and we were introduced to the local speciality drink called medio y medio which is a mix of sparkling and white wine which turned out to be rather quaffable.
*As a topical side note it turns out the heads of the Sourth American coalition countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) had a little get together in Montevideo that very afternoon to discuss their joint stance on the Falklands which is making the international headlines at the mo!
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