26/12/2019 – Buenos Aires, Argentina to Montevideo, Uruguay

We woke up to our alarms, had a coffee in bed, showered and finished packing our things. We are pretty slick at packing and unpacking these days, it takes a grand total of about 10minutes, and most of that time is spent throwing out or packing food from the fridge and cupboards! Josh ran two buildings along the road to drop the key into the concierge, which is where our air bnb host lives. We flagged down a taxi and got taken through Buenos Aires, which was absolutely heaving with traffic, to the ferry terminal. Because they celebrate Christmas on 24th and 25th here things seemed to be up and running as normal today. We checked in for our ferry and then went to the café in the terminal for coffee and a croissant. Neither of us had slept well at all for some reason, although this tends to happen the night before a travel day! In the queue for the coffee I hear my name being called a couple of times – it was Alex, one of the doctors we had met in the nightclub a few days ago! Turns out she and her boyfriend and another guy from their hostel were getting the same ferry as us! The five of us went through immigration together, we got checked out of Argentina and into Uruguay in a small little room with a couple of desks manned with officials. It felt very relaxed and informal! The terminal and ferry were pretty busy. I had read that this is peak time to come to Uruguay, apparently Argentines, Brasilians, Uruguayans, Americans and fellow backpackers tend to head to the beaches of Uruguay at this time of year. We all boarded the ferry together and the five of us found a bench outside at the back of the boat to park up. The crossing was about an hour. It was an overcast day and the water was a brown/green colour, like home! We got off the ferry and said goodbye to our new friends, as they were going to go and explore Colonia, the town we disembarked at. Josh and I hopped onto our connecting bus to Montevideo. I fell asleep for the full 3 hour drive, and woke up about 15 minutes before we pulled into the main bus terminal. We got off the stuff and grabbed our bags, and got one of the official metered taxis to our air bnb. We had booked to stay in the old part of the city as we had read this is where most of the attractions to see were. However I think we were actually bordering the port a bit too closely, and it turns out our air bnb was opposite a hospital that helps many people with drug and alcohol problems. Definitely an area to avoid at dark! The buildings were big and beautiful, old, and run down. There was music blaring and some people were having a birthday party. It immediately reminded Josh and I of Havanna! We walked into the building we thought we were staying in and got welcomed up into a bedroom in a very friendly ladies house. I kept whispering to Josh that I didn’t think we were in the right place, as I could see it wasn’t the same as the pictures had been on air bnb. The lady spoke no English, but when I showed her a picture of our reservation she asked if we were from Brasil. When we said no we all laughed so much! She kindly showed us down and around the other side of the building to our front door. We got greeted by one of our hosts, Skyler, who is from USA. He showed us into the beautiful building. The ceilings were about 16 feet high, there were beautiful tiles, many green plants, a greenhouse type glass roof that can be winched across the ceiling to open up to sky. There is a huge roof terrace and all the furniture was gorgeous and antique. Skyler lives there with his boyfriend Frederico, and another guy who comes and goes between Montevideo and a farm in the countryside. They explained to us that the area is one of the cheapest in Montevideo (makes sense!) which is why they can afford to rent such a beautiful building. Josh and I unpacked and got settled in before wandering around the area to try and find food. Eventually we settled on buying some groceries in a little minimarket and heading back to the house. We made ourselves a quick pasta dinner and chilled for the evening.