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Maybe not Gordon's last trip
If you know anything about Buenos Aires you will know that the photo on the front of this card is from there, and not from MOntevideo, from where I am writing. Well, its not my fault that there are no great pictures to be had of Montevideo.
Can hardly remember when I last wrote as I have been on the move.....one way and another!.....for the past seven days. Have seen sunrises and sunsets to test the will and skills of JWM Turner, visited one of the most beautiful cities in South America and spent some time in its main hospital.
So.......while lying in my bedroom in Buenos Aires I had time to think about airports at 12.30 am, where I have been spending some day/hour trips over the past five months. Last early morning session was on leaving Peru where I wound up in a sterile room with another hundred or so people all, I guess, wishing to be somewhere else apart from any felons who might have been rushing to leave the country.
This session was lightened slightly by two guys who were trying to win the "silliest hat of the week contest", one with an Andean mountain dweller's hat, the other with the largest 'Pancho Villa'' sombrero you have ever seen. Of course, judging by the colour of their passports, they were both English back packers.
Bonus on this flight however was the sunrise 12,000 feet above BA. It looked as if someone had taken the red end of a paint box and thrown it across the sky, leaving streaks of pink, rose and even maroon to fill the windows of the plane.
On arrival in Argentina I made it to my hotel by 9am and was sitting drinking coffee in La Bocca - home of the tango and Bocca FC - by mid morning. Had a great time there but that was the end of it for me in BA.
Next morning the Inca Two Step returned with a vengance and I ended up going, the morning after that, to the hospital, as I feared I couldn't continue if it didn't clear up.
The very helpful Doc and interpreter concluded that I had a bug to kill and gave me anti biotics, rehydration pills etc and advised me to drink Gatorade, eat rice and grilled fish for two days. Stayed in my room for next 24 hours and recovered sufficiently to travel on to Uruguay at 8am the next day.
Stayed in (get your pens out and start booking this place) Colonia del Sacramento, which must be one of the prettiest, most photogenic of small towns in all of South America.
Cobbled streets, gas lamps, preserved pastel coloured buildings, pleasant people, great food (Paella, I was better already) and a sunset across the River Plate that was quite memorable with shafts of golden light mirroring on the water.......pure pleasure at no cost.
Now in Montevideo which is the most European of cities in its architecture (most of which seems to have been provided by Italians in the late 1800s).
Again, helpful people - bank guard escorted me to the nearest ATM as their own was not working.
Plates of meat to terrify a vegetarian as they seem to grill and eat everything from the whistle to the squeak and at prices that make a big mac seem expensive. As you might gather I am now fully recovered and eating everything in sight.
Off now to take in the town before leaving tomorrow for the first of four long (one is 14 hours) coach rides across to Iguazu Falls - which span the borders of Argentina, Brazil and touch on Paraguay.
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