Hello everyone,

The last time we wrote we were in Montevideo which was beautiful with gorgeous food and really friendly people. We then left the city and drove to a colonial city called Colonia, they like to keep the names simple here! Colonia is beside the river that separates Uruguay and Argentina. It is a small town with cobbled streets and lots of pavement cafes. We were staying in the beautiful Posada del Flor where all of the rooms were named after flowers and there was a gorgeous central courtyard and also a roof terrace that looked across the river. We´re really being spoilt on this trip, we thought it was going to be hostels and dorms but so far we´ve been very lucky. Let´s see what happens in Bolivia!

It was one of the girl in the groups birthdays so we went to the town´s most famous restaurant, ´El Drugstore´ which despite its name did serve food!

The next day we weren´t getting the ferry to Buenos Aires until 8pm so we had the whole day to do what we wanted. We could have gone horse riding but after my (Kat) bad experience on a pony in France aged 7 she didn´t want to go so we decided to rent scooters instead as it seemed to be the best way of seeing some of the town. Matt rented a scooter but me and another girl decided to rent a dune buggy instead as we weren´t sure we´d be able to ride scooters. Matt took to the bike very easily and looked very fetching in his baby blue Playmobile style helmet! I found the buggy amazing to drive, although it´s top speed was only 45km/hr it was great for weaving in and out of the traffic in! The only issue was how low it was to the ground and the fumes we got in our faces! I did try driving the scooter but forgot which was the brake and which was the accelerator and had a close call with me losing my flipflops and nearly ending up in a stagnant pond!

We were only going to hire them for a couple of hours but found ourselves enjoying it so much and seeing loads of the Uruguayan countryside that we ended up with them for 5 hours. The best bit was when we drove through a poorer area and some kids were really curious about us and the buggy and were running along beside us trying to keep up, which wasn´t hard considering the speed of the thing! It was a fantastic day and a great experience.

That night we got the ferry to BA which took an hour and then had dinner and an early night ready for sightseeing the next day. When we woke up the next day there was thunder and lightning which wasn´t a good sign. We concluded that it was a perfect day for shopping as Matt was desperate for a leather jacket. The main shopping street is called Florida street and is full of shopping malls and leather souvenir shops, perfect but very very dangerous! We ended up shopping for about 5 hours in rain that did not let up all day so eventually we had to admit defeat and give up as we were drenched. Matt did manage to get a great deal on a brown leather jacket though so the day was a success.

In the evening we went to a traditional tangoeira where we had a tango lesson and then dinner and a tango show. The lesson wasn´t easy at all, no matter what the teacher told us. We ended up arguing and crashing into the other couples and Matt got annoyed with me because i was leading instead of him, oops! Also, very randomly, Sian who i did geography with at Nottingham was in the same class and is travelling around SA too, what a small world. After about an hour´s lesson we went for dinner and our first Argentinian steak and all of the red wine we could drink which was fantastic. Then the show started. We thought it would just be a couple of dances and that was it, instead it was an hour long with singing, acting and sooo much dancing. We were spellbound, it was amazing and nothing like what we´d been taught in our lesson!

eeek internet cafe closing, will continue when we can! xx