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There wasn't any buses that ran directly from Punta del Este to Punta del Diablo so the driver said that he would drop us at the top of the road so we could walk the 5km down to the town. He spent a while telling us that we should hitch hike because it was a really long walk, but I had trouble understanding what he was saying, because I didn't know the Spanish words for hitchhike (he was saying something like "autostop, ir a dedo"). When we got to the top of the road, he flagged down a bus and got them to take us into the town. The hostel we had booked was pretty nice, run by a couple of Americans, and seemingly full of Americans. The beach was windswept and vast with sand dunes on either side. The whole place had a kind of rugged edge, much better than Punta del Este. All the houses were made of wood on stilts to avoid the sand building up. The fishing boats that lined the beach jostled with surfers in the rough sea and groups of lads played football on the beach. There were quite a few bars and shacks selling food and it seemed that before the backpackers took it over there wouldn't have been much there.
We didn't do much in the daytimes apart from hang around the beach and walk along the dunes. The wind was incredible so we had to find sheltered spots to sunbathe and eat ourlunch.
There was an amazingly annoying group of American teenagers staying in the hostel who apparently knew the owner (the grumpy git) who were far too enthusiastic about everything and with whom the word 'awesome' was scattered liberally through their conversations. They informed us quite early on that they were all 19 or 20, two of them were married (one of these was ginger, spotty, weeny looking guy, who told us he was a 'professional gambler' and lived in Buenos Aires). I didn't believe them for a second.
The hostel owned a bar as well and we ate there most nights, and Nick watched football with some other people. We met loads of other travellers at El Diablo Tranquilo mostly on one night where we sat in the outside kitchen drinking wine and being told off for being too loud. Got chatting to an English guy called Steve, a Texan called Wade, and a German girl Karen. Spent a lot of the night exchanging Eddie Izzard quotes with Maddy, a lass from Seattle.There were a few others, including some Irish, South African and Argentineans that we ended up spending every night with in the bar and at the hostel.
Nick, Steve, Wade, Karen and me decided to get out of Diablo after 4 nights and decided to head back down the coast to Cabo Polonio, a tiny fishing village with lots of sea lions and whales. The night before me and Nick couldn't get a room and the only one that they had available was a honeymoon suite, complete with fireplace, en-suite, balcony and hammocks. We all sat in our room chatting to the Kiwi couple next-door late into the night and argued about when we should get the bus in the morning.
Karen eventually made us get up at about 7am after 3 hours sleep; the hostlel had one of their more- than- frequent power cuts, so we couldn't pay our bills (everything was done on PayPal as the town has no bank). Anyway, we managed to catch our bus on time in the end.
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