Montevideo Takes 2
Ok so we get to the bus station around 11pm and decide to take a bus to meet the girls. WE don't need to pay high prices for a taxi…like $5. Something told me we should have. Anyway Felipe finds a bus stop and we wait a while. Buses going near are ignored, he believes our bus going closer, is close. And getting closer. After a while he sakes someone, they say it's the wrong stop. We don't believe her, and she changes her answer a while later…and another person says what we want to hear. Then they get on a bus and go and we wait. I'm tired as hell and I know the girls are waiting for us, so we ask again, the person says they know one is coming. The they get on another bus and go. Felipe gets the idea to go wait somewhere else, and leads a circular route to another main street at his usual speed not allowing at all for the fact it takes me just a few seconds longer to get my pack on, and my bad knee makes me walk just a little slower. Off he goes.
Sometimes I get the impression that people consider it to be, that to be considerate is just not to completely ignore you. Anything above that is practically martyrdom. Anyway we make our way to a bus stop and I sit to rest. After sinking into thoughts of whether we should just get a taxi, all of a sudden an plastic coke bottle full of water hits the ground right next to me with a BLAST and rebounds with some force directly into my not-so-funny bone. I am more than a little pissed off already, now I want to turn the street into a slaughterhouse. I look everywhere for a culprit, and I think its some punk in the high-rise above us. He will die, that's given, now it's just a matter of when and how.
I watch as passers by get sprayed with water on queue at exactly the same spot and try to figure out where it's coming from. I have a plan to throw that coke bottle with some violence at the perpetrator and beckon him to waterloo. Oh how quickly I loose my ideals when pushed….hmmmm Anyway some guys starts playing guitar from a balcony and some girls join him laughing, and I just start convincing myself he is the mark, I see some shirtless, fat, bald old man with a cup of water looking at them from a window…and then he throws it. And, he gets another! As I consider how to disembowel him from such a distance it occurs to me that this geriatric malcontent is probably completely out of his head on brain altering heart medication, and for all I know, believes he's defending the Montevideo embattlements from marauding british colonists. It's pleasing to know a good 10-20 years at the end of our lives will be set aside for drug abuse. Rather like the rest of it, but these will be more powerful, more mind altering and, more deadly. F$*k Yeah!
As he goes to do it some more I yell out, "HEY WHAT'S UP, MOTHERFUCKER!" and laugh to let him know I'm not murderous (anymore), and make the internationally recognised hand signal for "I see you (Asshole)" and he shrinks into the dark of his turret….or apartment window, depending on the level of hallucinogens running through his plaqued up arteries.
We give up and take a taxi. Its just $5. but it took us 1 & 1/2 hours to bite that bullet. It's worthwhile being cheap sometimes, but others, you gotta know when to fold'em and stop being a mean dumbass.
Pizza and pickpockets
At the hostel we are greeting to a quite shaken Nicole (though she hides it amazingly well). She and Katie, on their way back from the hospital, got off 2 stops too far, and were immediately surrounded by about 15 young kids, who mugged them. They'd ripped at their bags and despite an attempt to fight them off, inevitably, the kids were stronger, more numerous and, well, wanted it more, so they came away with the result. They took Katies sound recorder, like mine, but better (she was going to use for a film - podcast) their 2 ipods, an i-touch, diaries etc.
For me it would be the sense of loss of liberty that would disturb me the most. And for them the loss of irreplaceable recordings….huh don't I know how THAT feels. Although they'd tried to get their stuff back, they'ed realised they were out of their depth when they found the stronghold of the robbers (with the help of their land-lord - a child as it turns out) and within it some burly badass guys, who basically told them to go forth and multiply (thanks dad), and one of whom followed them in their retreat making himself more than clear. Don't come back. These girls…I dunno, I wouldn't have had the balls to do that.
The apartment was not in a good area, and the girls were too scared to sleep there. Katie had decided to sleep in the hospital with Jess, but there was only one bed, and Nicole needed a break so she was back at the packers. I just gave her a hug and got onto ordering some beer and Pizza. I invited a nice Aussie girl who was there and we had a gathering. It was nice to be back amongst them. Turns out the night of our mini concert, Nicole had also had her camera stolen. It was very expensive, but more than that, all her travel photos and films…..that sux royally. Nicole was really having a hard slog, she's the one who can speak spanish, so she interprets the doctors (imagine how easy THAT is), and talks, organizes…I'm quite amazed at her ability to cope.
Police and pirates
In the following days they tried to get their stuff back but were treated to the Uruguayan Police system. Basically the police were able to get her diary, though completely unwilling to actually go into the house that hold the thieves, (eh??) they did manage to spin a yarn about how they'd had to pay, just to get the diary (EHHH??). I dont think I need to explain what a pile of burro-kaka that is. Corruption in the police is quite open here, though the locals seem to think that that's the way it is all over the world, I reassure them that in my country, the pretense of being non corrupt is much better upheld. But yeah, one way or another, I guess it is the same. Except NZ police wouldn't have got her diary.
Julia (jules) is the name of the Aussie chick, and I hang 'round with her the next couple of evenings. We go to meet one of her fiends who's uruguayan and like many argentinians (yes, I said it, but it's not what you think) is constantly on 300%. We eat something like a deep-fried doughnut strip filled with Dulce De Leche (this is in EVERYTHING here) and another revolutionary variety, filled with cheese. We eat an bland meal (all meals are bland here when you eat out and veggie options are soooo difficult) and I work out it takes from Vicky's (the uruguayan friend of jules) info, about 3 hours work to earn enough for one (One litre bottle of) beer.
But something makes me sus on all the descriptions of wages here and the cost of living, because people spend a lot, and seem at least as free with their cash as in NZ. She spends easier than I do. It may be that rent is like $200/month here. Maybe rent is low, but other prices are high, so it balances, I don't know.
Jules and I go out another night, we don't find the cheap restaurant we are looking for, but are treated to a good band and another Vege mix up. After spending a good 10 minutes trying to get a vege pasta option (as there is nothing on the menu), the meal comes full of bacon. Luckily Jules's meal does not and she's kind enough to switch. She's actually really great to hang out with. After all my years of saying NZers were more like the british etc and Aussies like people from the U.S., I can tell you, I was a f^&*n delight to be around an Aussie. It was just so relaxing to be understood. I hadn't realised how contained I'd had to act around people, even the canadians, who were just not going to interpret what I say they way it was intended. With Jules it was like a comfortable old bed or your favorite chair in comparison. I guess we 2 neighbors really are very similar. ewwwww.
Sick Girl Grandma
At some point I go with Nicole to meet Katie and Jess and when I set eyes on her it's quite a site. Last time I saw her she was a bit ill and in bed. his time she is stiff, barely walking, talking at about 3 words/minute (time it yourself, that's SLOW) and basically acting exactly like a 90year old grandma. It was quite striking, and funny too, as she told the same jokes, just slower, voice creaking, eyes unable to move or focus properly, and, as she was going home the next day, spending money like she'd won lotto. It was interesting to see, that with her impairments, she was exactly like a funny old granny, EXACTLY. Makes me think of the aged quite differently I have to admit. I know they say they feel young, but I always went, (in my head), "yeah I bet you do, but you don't act like a young person would". Now I see, it was me who was missing it. mmmmmm
Music and Paranoia
I cant remember what this was about…hmmm…I will…I hope
Nontoxication
Poor old Jules has got some nasty bites and a day later so do Nicole and Katie (who's back after Jess hopped on the plane and headed back to canada). So the fumigation guy arrives and commences spraying, so we rush out of the room to the sound of that old lie "IT'S NON TOXIC". riiiiight, that's what kills the bugs - the non-toxins. I'm sure the company that makes it would love to secure future profits by informing the users of all potential risks, and tell the truth. We can trust.
Anytime someone says their bug spray is non toxic, my suggestion is you ask them to drink it. How the hell can it kill a bug dead in 2 mins and be completely non toxic. That isn't a question.
offloading (too much stuff, scanning etc)
Anyway Nicole says her friends friend has a car and may be able to drive the 4 of us (Felipe had to go back to chile….how I miss that little tramp) to Cabo Polonia with his mate, so I crack into getting rid of the study guides I've bought from NZ. Hulking reams of paper rheeming my backpack. I set to with the scanner and my Laptop and one-by-one, scan hundreds of pages. It takes me pretty much a whole day, but by the end of it I'm lighter, and have all the work on my PC. Gehhhhiiiiiinious!
That night it's drinks and music all round, we laugh and play, for tomorrow we head out again. A good send-off. My friend the Sax player from La Pedrerra is there too and we laugh and jostle. Nice life this at times I have to admit. The next morning I awake and pack. My job is to wake Nicole, and as I get up I see her do the same. But a few moments later, she lies down again. I finish packing and Enrique (our lift) arrives. I throw my stuff in his car, but the girls aren't ready. Turns out the waking message didn't get through, somehow. Anyway I return briefly to the Backpackers to make a call, I can't remember why. We load up the small white car, with a huge van-like protuberance on the rear and with 3 in the back, head off down the road. Its not to bad to be traveling with 3 lovely girls all happy and in a new place.
I watch montevideo, once again, turn into suburbia as we leave. Onto The coast!
