Bon came to visit us in Buenos Aires and to join us on our fast 5-day trek through Uruguay for his 27th birthday. By the time his week with us was up, he said to me that he had a lot of fun, but that he was exhausted and ready to go home. Looking back on it, it was a busy week. I guess we should have taken it easier on Bon… he is an old man now, afterall.

Bon’s first day was all about food: After a short nap, we took him to get the now infamous pumpkin ravioli. Later that day, Lauren and I returned to the steak place in Palermo for Bon to get his first taste of Argentinian beef. (It really is better down here.)

We also went to the port to buy our boat tickets to Uruguay. We had tried to go before, with Tiff and Randi, but the boats were booked that week because it was Easter. This time, however, the office was completely empty. We got our tickets without any problems and headed out for a walk down the port.

Just outside, a road was being moved to make way for a boat. It was a bridge actually, sort of like a draw bridge, but instead of lifting, it turned. We watched as it slowly turned out of the way and turned back.

As we strolled down the river, we saw the infamous Buenos Aires Puente de la Mujer Bridge. We stood there speculating how it got out of the way of boats: did it turn or were the cables there to lift it? We calculated that another boat might be coming by soon, but it was raining, so we looked around for someplace to sit. Right there, with the best view of the bridge, was Hooters. We couldn’t resist.

The menu was full of the U.S. goodies, chicken wings, nachos, and cheese fries. Bon and Lauren only wanted a bottle of wine, but I convinced them to go in our cheese fries with me. They were good, but with all the good cheese in Argentina, it was a little disappointing.

After waiting over an hour, we realized that maybe the boats didn’t leave past the bridge. We gave up and went home to change before our steak night.

The next day was Sunday, and every Sunday San Telmo has an “antique” fair. Or, at least it started out as an antique fair. Now it spills down streets for as far as we could see, at least 15 blocks or more, and includes every kind of craft, tango shows, knick knack, etc you can think of. We strolled around for a couple of hours.  Bon has up some YouTube videos of an amazing drunk puppet performance and some tango on his blog (where you can also get an assortment of news on the Democrats, LOST and wrestling…).

Monday morning, we were up bright and early for the boat. It was delayed a few hours because of fog. As Bon and I were going through customs, the Uruguayan officer commented (or mimed really, since he didn’t speak English and we couldn’t understand his Spanish) that neither Bon nor I looked like our passport photos (I am a chubby 17 year old in my photo; Bon looks like a teenage terrorist), but in the end, he let us pass.

When we were finally boarding, Lauren and I gasped at the accomodations. Large seats, an atrium, cafe, dining areas… You could even walk on the roof (near the helicopter landing pad) if you wanted to. We had spent the same amount of money to take the ferry to Zanzibar on a cargo boat.

We napped on the way over, and when we arrived in Colonia, Uruguay, we ended up jumping on a 2.5 hour busride straight to Montevideo. We checked into our $25/night hotel ($8 each) that was the nicest hotel Lauren and I had stayed in outside of Italy and Qatar. After all that traveling, we decided to chill out for a couple of hours and Lauren and I marveled at the cable TV (and watched Mars Attacks).

That night we strolled around town, uncertain if we were out too early or too late (too early it turned out) for dinner. We finally settled on an outdoor cafe and ate pasta and split an accidentally-more-expensive-than-we-meant-to-have bottle of wine (my Spanish still needs work).

The next day was Bon’s B-day. After breakfast with wine (hey, it’s his brithday), we strolled along the water for a bit before jumping on another bus to Punta del Este, the “Miami Beach” of Urugay.

When we got off the bus, we walked to the nearest hotel listed in Lonely Planet. It was supposed to be $15 total per night for a triple. We kept thinking we must be misunderstanding something because when we asked the cost of the room, the staff told us it was $40/night. How had the price gone up that high in the three years since Lonely Planet was written? We wandered around for a while looking for another place, finding that the low season did bring some deals (including a suite with a jacuzzi for $60 — still out of our price range, though). We were starting to get desperate when we finally walked into the tourist office. The woman there was incredibly nice and directed us to an $8/night hostel 6 blocks south of the bus station where we ended up getting a room to ourselves.

We watched the amazing sunset over the water by the boats before each getting showers to head out to dinner.  This photo barely does justice to the amazing colors.

That night, we started walking down the street to the restaurant we wanted to go to. As we walked, we noticed that there were no stores open and no one walking aside from us. In many of the hotels, only one room had a light on. Other hotels had simply shut down for the season.

A dog that was laying in the sidewalk was the only soul around. He got up and started following us. Or so we thought. After a few blocks, even though we had passed other people, we started getting the sense that he was leading us. We were all going in the same direction, so we just let him keep us company. Bon started insisting that he was there for a reason, so I jokingly named him “Ka,” a reference to Lauren’s Stephen King Dark Tower obsession, which means something like “destiny” or “fate.”

When we finally arrived at the restaurant, we discovered it was closed. Ka, in the meantime, wandered to a restaurant/bar just down the block, so we started following him. We stopped and looked at the restuarant but discovered it was too expensive. We looked at Ka and he ran to the next restuarant down the street, sitting down on its doorstep.  We followed him and discovered it was the “Mad Dog,” the bar we were planning on heading to later. Lauren and I were beginning to believe Bon’s assessment, the dog was Ka.

Dinner was a seafood plate, including baby squids with heads intact (I tried it but started freaking out when I realized I was chewing something’s head), mussels, calamari, and octopus. Bon and I ended up getting a pizza too, and the Uruguayan wine was amazing, perhaps rivaling Argentinian.

After dinner, we decided to head to the Casino. Our waitress told us that “everyone goes to the casino” at night, but as we arrived, we found it to be mostely slot machines and filled with a geriatric crowd. The wait staff couldn’t figure out why we were there. We sat down and ordered tequila shots and beer (and also asked that the TV Channel to be changed from the gorey Discovery Health surgeries that was broadcasting - sorry you missed it Mrs. B., I know how you love Discovery Health!). We spent the night ranking bad music videos. Within a couple of hours, we were shocked when we were told the casino was closing (closing!!) and we headed home down the deserted streets.

The next day, we went to the beach, which was also mostly deserted, despite the perfect weather and white sand. (We spotted Ka on the beach, which was, well, Ka.) We ended up spending the day there, before watching the sunset back at our favorite dock. Bon treated us to dinner that night (thanks, Bon!!) at an outdoor restaurant where we spotted another casino down the beach. We debated whether or not was the one we went to last night, since we thought there was only one. We asked our waiter, who told us there were three casinos. When we asked him which one was the best, he said he couldn’t say, “if you win money, it is a good casino, if you loose it, it is a bad casino…” We wandered towards the flashing lights and discovered what we had been expecting the previous night — a huge, Los Vegas style hotel with a new and very active floor. What we didn’t expect was U.S. …  NYC prices. The cocktail menu was in dollars — sodas were $2, martinis were $10. You even had to gamble in dollars, which was enough to deter the three of us from trying our luck.

The next morning we headed on the long journey back to Uruguay, consting of two 2+ hour bus rides to Colonia before jumping on the boat to Buenos Aires. We had a couple of hours to spend in Colonia, so we got a cheese plate and toured the cobble stone streets. It was cute, but true to Shosha and Taylor’s word, the afternoon we spent there was more than enough to see all there was to see.

The boat got us back to Buenos Aires at 10pm. We sucessfully avoided the taxi drivers’ scams. (They all were corraborating to refuse to use their meters and charging ridiculous prices. We simply crossed the street and hailed a passing taxi.)

That night Shosha and Taylor joined us and we went back to our favorite British Pub, Gilbraltor, getting beers and pizzas. We felt like true portenos, starting our night around 11pm and staying out to the wee hours.

The next day was Bon’s last, so he and I drug ourselves out of bed and hit a few tourist highlights: the Recolleta graveyard, the obliesque Teatre Colon, Florida street and Plaza de Mayo. Bon got us a going away present: a new 1 Gig memory card for our camera so we could get more photos. Thanks, Bon! We’re using it right now!

We said goodbye to Bon that night and made our plans to rest and catch up on blogs and other chores for the next couple of days before we’d head off to Iguazu Falls.