Swollen Summer
Chris and I went to Uruguay for about a week and a half. It was a lot of fun! We took the boat over from Buenos Aires to Colonia, which takes about an hour. From there we bussed to Montevideo, where we stayed a couple of nights. It is a nice city, except it seemed to have an unusual amount of beggers. Also, Uruguay loves their Mate. Mate is a tea type thing, except instead of having it in a little bag, you put the actual leaves into a cup and add hot water and then you sip it through a straw which has a filter on it. There is also a ritual to drinking it. In a style which I assume to be similar to a peace pipe, you drink one whole cup and then fill the water back up and pass it to the next person.After Montevideo, we headed up the coast to Punta del Este. We were there for the Easter weekend, so it was kind of busy. This weekend is kind of like our Labor Day; it signifies the end of the summer for them. So everyone was at the beach, chilling and getting some last minute sun. It really doesnt get very cold, even in the winter, but it still is kind of the end of the summer for them.
Our next stop was La Paloma, which was a very small beach town. We camped at a nice site which was about a 5 minute walk to the beach. It was great, very relaxing and just what we needed after being in the city for the last couple of weeks. We spent some time at the beach and some time just hanging out and playing cards and reading... However, it was here that a crisis was averted.
We went to the beach one day and everything was fine. The next day we got up and were
preparing to leave when I started to itch. I had peed in the dark in a bush the night before and thought maybe I had squatted in some poison oak or something, but soon a rash had spread all over my body. Next the rash kind of dissapated and in its place was just swollen redness. We went to the doctor who gave me cortizone and told me to stay out of the sun. Apparently I had used a lotion or soap which in addition to the sun had given me some sort of allergic reaction. Who knew! To the right is a photo of my misfortune. 
So, after that we went to a great little town called Punta del Diablo. However, I couldnt go out in the sun, and it was a beach town, so we ended up just hanging out in our little cabina playing cards with a small boy named Santiago. Which of course was fun! He taught us the name for all the shapes, but we found out later that he actually may have given us the wrong names...Now we are back in Buenos Aires. But I will have more to say about that later....
