Date Written: Feb. 4, 2002 (2:21 p.m.)
Current Location: Bus to Montevideo
Subject: Arriving in Uraguay, Napoleon, and Moby Dick

Monday, Feb. 4, 2002
Well, we are now on the bus from Colonia to Montevideo. From there we will catch another bus to Punta del este. I guess we should be there by 6:00. Johanna is taking a nap, which I probably should be too. It's pretty bumpy and tough to write so maybe I won't write to long. Good lord, did I mention in the last 5 seconds how gorgeous Johanna is. Man, I am in love with this girl!!! Seriously though, I guess I kind of have mixed feelings about traveling on with her. Having a girl along can definitely complicate things but this girl is so cool I think it will work out just fine. We have spent the last few days together and she really impresses me quite a bit. She hasn't complained one single second and we have had a long couple of days that haven't been exactly free of adversity. Especially with the whole bus thing from La Boca yesterday. I think it will be cool to travel with her and I look forward to the next few days. It will be tough to not fall for her. We'll see how things go. I cannot BELIEVE how beautiful she is.

Date Written: Feb 5, 2002 (6:00 p.m.)
Current location: Punta del Este-hostel

Monday, Feb. 4, 2002 (con't)
Yo yo yo. Well the adventure continues on. We arrived here last night around 7. This is a great place but it is a bit empty now because it usually has a lot of tourists from Argentina, but because of the economy many people are not traveling. Anyway, after arriving, we found the hostel and went out to change our money. Well, here in Uraguay, the rate is 14 pesos to a dollar, but the damn confusing thing is that it's like in Spain where the peso is more like what we call cents...in other words, you have a bill that is a 10 but that's really only like 80 cents. Well, since we had just come from Argentina, we got kinda confused when we got cash. So when I went to the ATM, I got 500 pesos for all three days...to save you the math, that's only about 35 bucks. So I took about half of that with me when I left the hostel that night, thinking that I had MORE than enough for dinner and going out afterwards. Well, for Johanna it was even worse because she only brought 100 pesos for the night, which isn't even 10 bucks. So, right about the time we were finishing dinner, we realized that we had made a huge mistake and we only had about 27 bucks between us. Well, let me just tell you, a semi-expensive dinner plus a couple drinks times two people equals a lot more than 27 bucks. Anyway, we thought it was pretty funny, so I had to go all the way back to the hostel to get my freakin credit card.
Well, back at the hostel, after I got my credit card and was coming out of my room, there was this girl walking by so we started to talk a bit. Her name is Caroline and she's from Australia. Well, she was bored so I invited her to go out with us for the night, which ended up being really cool because she is a GREAT girl. So her and I headed back to the restaurant where Johanna was waiting. I'm sure Johanna was thinking, "what the hell!? This guy goes back to get his credit card and comes back with another girl!" Pretty funny.
So Johanna, Caroline and I walk around this place trying to find a good bar for like 20 minutes, but as I said, it's a bit dead because it is a vacation spot for Argentines, whose economy is in the crapper right now. Well, finally decide to just sit at this restaurant on the marina called Napoleon and have a drink because there was a bit of a crowd there.
A few minutes after we sat down, 2 American guys sat down at the table next to us. Eventually we started talking to them. They were these two guys from NYC that were a bit annoying at first because they were typical American tourist types but in the end they were pretty cool. Well, I ended up helping them out with talking to the waiter and ordering there food, which resulted in a bit of a repore with the waiter. Well, later on I ordered this drink called a Mafioso which was absolutely HORRIBLE so I pulled my waiter friend to the side to see what he could do about changing it for me (down here, you can't send stuff back...if you order it...you PAY) Since we had kinda joked around a bit before hand, he played it cool and he's like, "I'll get the bartender to make a special drink for you." Well, it was pretty good and we ended up ordering a bunch more "AC specials". By the end, we even had the waiter calling them that. It was hilarious.
We all ended up having a pretty good time at that restaurant and stayed there for a few hours drinking and talking. Around 2 or so we decided we would go try to find a club or something else to do. The NYC dudes had heard about this place that was about a 10 minute cab ride away but we didn't know if it would be any good on a Monday night. Well, we had become friends with a bunch of the waiters and stuff by then because we were the only ones in there in the end so we asked them about it. They said it might be cool so they called us a cab and we were ready to rock. When we got in the cab, we also asked the cabbie if the place was good that night, and he gave this half way kind of an "I don't know" answer, which was a bit suspect. So then I said maybe it would be better to go to this bar that was right next door to the restaurant b/c it looked like it was picking up. So the cabbie says, "No lets go check out the other place first." Hmmmmmm. So we drive in this taxi all the way to this other place and of course it's closed, which I'm sure the cabbie was aware of before hand. Then we had to ride all the way back to the other bar, which was RIGHT NEXT DOOR to where we were. Ten dollar cab ride to go 4 feet. Hilarious. It was particular funny for 4 of us because one of the NYC guys had made the mistake of saying he would cover the cab ride.
That bar that we ended up at was really cool. It was called Moby Dick. They played great music and it got pretty packed. I met this girl from Uraguay for awhile about how we see the US and the world sees us. It was pretty interesting but she was pretty anti-American so I guess I never really had a chance. That sucks. All in all, it was a great night once again and ironically a large piece of the puzzle was that I screwed up the money exchange and had to go back to the hostel where I met Caroline...which I am really glad for because she is a SUPER cool girl and also a great dancer. She is studying for a year in Chile and is just finishing so she is travelling around a bit before returning to Australia. Maybe someday I will go visit her there!

AC