After bumming around Montevideo for a day and knowing we would still have half a day after visiting the Sunday market, we decided to head to Punta del Este for Sunday afternoon. We packed up our stuff and said goodbye at the B&B around noon. Then we headed to the bus station, found some lockers for our backpacks and bought yet another bus ticket to head to Punta del Este around 2pm.
On the bus, I asked the gal sitting next to me what she was reading, and I was treated with a nice conversation with Marcia (a fellow Christian) who happened to be reading a Beth Moore book in Spanish. After our conversation and a side comment I made about needing to read more in Spanish, I am now the proud owner of a very generous gift from an almost complete stranger. We are also friends on Facebook, so I have to read the book in order to let her know I did. Talk about a great way to improve Spanish reading!
When we got off the bus to the freezing ocean air, we made our way to the beach and immediately found the sculpture that everyone had told us about- a hand that appears to be reaching out of the sand. Even though it is the middle of winter and temperatures are hardly above zero, we were not the only tourists there taking pictures, so it was somewhat difficult to get a picture without someone else in it. However, we met a couple who asked if I was from Brazil and later had a group of people come up to us saying in Spanish: “Let’s take a picture with some locals- are you from Uruguay?” We were thrilled to be considered South American, but had to tell them that we are in fact from the United States. This got them just as excited because they are from Venezuela so we took pictures together and chatted for a while. Apparently two of them are Salsa instructors and I was very sad to find out that they dance salsa in Uruguay and we hadn’t known- otherwise we might have spent Saturday night dancing!
Our trip wasn’t long, but we enjoyed dinner and the view of the other beach at night (Punta del Este is on a peninsula) and then headed back to our bus to take us to our bus to take us to our bus (three buses in all from Punta del Este to Montevideo to Buenos Aires to Rosario). That is a story in and of itself that probably won’t be written here, but I will leave it at this- the bus ride from Montevideo to Buenos Aires (all 8 hours of it) fue un disastre and even though we gave ourselves almost 2 hours between trips, we almost missed our bus to Rosario. Happily (and thanks to God) we were able to make it safely back to Rosario by 2pm- just in time to grab some lunch and check in with our teacher before class was over.
This trip was definitely one I will always remember and one that I thoroughly enjoyed!! Thanks Courtney and Elysse for going with me! I never would have done it alone!
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