06/01/2019 – Punta del Diablo to Colonia, Uruguay

I woke up early needing the toilet, it was already daylight and warm at 0600. As I returned to our cabin I was stopped in my tracks by a huge spider between the foot of our bed and Joshs hand luggage bag. Josh responded pretty quickly to my ‘OMG!’ wandering what had taken me by surprise. He quickly took his eyemask off and hopped out of bed! It was HUGE! It was moving slowly and seemed quite chilled. I grabbed a glass bowl which Josh put over it and we examined it a bit closer. Josh thinks it was a baby huntsman spider! All I know is it was huge and I would not want that crawling over me/near me! We got into bed but there was no way either of us was going to be able to get back to sleep after that shock, and with it still in the bowl in our room! As the daylight got brighter I felt sorry for mr spider so put a pillowcase over the bowl to keep him shaded and dark. We had coffee and cereal and finished packing our things, got our bags out of the cabin and set him free. He didn’t seem in a rush to go anywhere so we just left him chilling in there, with the cabin door open. I am glad we have been sleeping inside a mosquito net now!

We walked the 10 minutes down the dirt track to the small bus station and waited with quite a few others for our bus. We boarded and started the 4 hour drive to Montevideo. The bus was full and the journey consisted of podcasts and naps as always! When we disembarqued at Montevideo we quickly found a bus kiosk and bought our onwards travel tickets. We had 10 minutes to quickly use the toilets and grab a sandwich before we boarded the next bus to Colonia. The onwards journey was 3 hours, and Josh and I sat apart as the bus was completely full. It is holidays here, and you can really tell!

We walked from the bus station to our next air bnb, and waited for our host to arrive. He showed us in and we dumped our bags, joined the wifi and called mum who is babysitting Finn at the moment. We had a couple of hours of daylight left to explore Colonia so we set off, pretty hungry! Colonia is a UNESCO centre, and is a beautiful little colonial town with cobbled streets. We wandered for a bit until we came across a busy restaurant on the main plaza called el Drugstore. It had outdoor tables and seemed popular, so we sat down and I had a fresh fish dish, and Josh some chicken potatoes and carrots. We wandered around the historical centre and went to the sea to see the beautiful sunset. We had crepes on the way home ($12 for 2 crepes! Uruguay has been absolutely beautiful and has pleasantly surprised us, but man we are excited to get back to Argentine prices!!) We went home, showered and continued watching Breaking Bad!