URUGUAY

SAS gave us the option to travel overland to Uruguay from Argentina. There were probably 60 SAS kids who did. We left pretty early in the morning to go to the ferry. It was a high speed one that only took 2 hours to get to Uruguay. Three of our friends didn't make it on the ferry because it was sold out. They took a plane which was only 20 dollars more for a 1 hour trip, and they got to the house three hours before we did. They definitely got the better end of the deal. 
The MV Explorer was literally 20 feet away from where the ferry dropped us off. We ran onto the ship and got clean clothes and bathing suits and went to the bus station. The town that we booked a house in was called Punta Del Este which was about 2 hours away from Montevideo. The bus had free wifi!...but I didn't know about until we were almost about to get off....ugh!
The house we booked was literally called "The Castle". It was the most beautiful house I've ever seen. 6 bedrooms, infinity pool, and was right on the beach. IT WAS AMAZING. There are personalized POSTCARDS for this house....if you're lucky, maybe you will get one of them. The house could fit over 16 people and was actually pretty reasonably priced and at least in this house I had my own bed! We hung out at the pool for a few hours, it was really hot in Uruguay. It was really fun just to hang out for hours with good company. 

We went to eat at Moby Dicks (Mom & Dad..isn't there a restaurant in Cape Cod called that?) and later we went to a local bar where all of the other SASers were. There really wasn't anything open in Uruguay this time of year because it was the off season. There were radio stations who actually announced that there were over 100 SAS kids in town. We ended up going home pretty early to watch the rest of the elections. It was weird not being in the states for it. There were definitely a lot of different points of view in the house and the arguments only got more and more heated towards the end of the night when we found out who won. I wish that people would just respect other peoples values and views. 
The next day we walked around the town. There was literally nothing open. The big thing was a statue of a hand coming out of the sand. It was pretty cool but really weird!   We went back to the house for a little bit to hang out and make an MTV spoof of Cribs. It was the only logical thing that we could do to show off the house. It turned out to be hilarious. Afterwards went on a two hour horseback ride! It was so much fun! I haven't been on a horseback ride probably since Girl Scouts in middle school.

That night we invited 3 friends over for a BBQ and bonfire. While a few of my friends were napping, my friends and I were eating cheese and crackers and watching TV when over 30 SASers walked into our house. Apparently our 3 friends told a few other people to come over to our house for dinner....some of the people who came over literally thought that "The Castle" was a bar. Everyone had a lot of fun which is great, but we just wish we knew about it before everyone showed up!

The next day we went back to Montevideo because the ship was leaving for Rio at 6. A few of us from our big group left early to walk around Montevideo and shop at the local market. Compared to Buenos Aires, Montevideo was really not built up at all. It reminded me of Sevilla, Spain. There were a lot of old buildings and cobble stone streets. We were off the ship for 7 days so when I got back I was SO TIRED. I slept from 7pm until 11am and I'm still exhausted.  

I'm glad that we didn't spend our nights in Montevideo because one of the kids on the ship actually got a glass bottle broken on his head and was mugged. It was really scary to hear about and makes me a little afraid for Rio. We keep on getting more emails about safety precautions to take when traveling in Rio and our pre-port tonight didn't help at all. I'm definitely going to money belt it up!! Nonetheless I'm so excited for Brazil and had an amazing 7 day adventure with my friends in Argentina and Uruguay!