Punta del Diablo

I have countless tidbits about which I could share. So I’ll make a list (check it twice) and then follow up with a short summary of the past few days.

1. The dogs that live on the streets of Montevideo know to only cross the street when the red lights say to cross. They will literally stand beside you and wait to cross the street.
2. For the first time in my life my ear peeled from sunburn, but just the left ear.
3. I bought a pirated DVD of Bob Espoja (SpongeBob) in Brazil.
4. For the last two weeks I’ve been eating sweet potatoes and liking them a lot. This is new for me.
5. On Sunday, I came as close as I ever will to having a fro as a result of: humidity, intense ocean wind all day long and ocean water. (I laughed out loud at myself when I looked in a mirror halfway through the day.)
6. I love figs! On average I consume two figs a day and eat fig marmalade with toast and coffee each morning.
7. By Your Side- a song by Tenth Avenue North has really been a blessing to me during the past two weeks. Oh how God loves us and wants to do things for us. It’s not just about how much we can do for God, it’s what He has done and wants to do for us. Marvelous!!

Last Friday, Molly, Brittany and I left class a few hours early to catch a bus to Rocha and then to Punta del Diablo. The interesting thing about taking buses is when I get on the bus it is rare that I know where to get off. It is always a nice mix of question asking, nerves and hoping that we get it right. We, and some other international students, spent the weekend in a hostel named El diablo tranquilo; a pretty little hostel a few blocks from the beach complete with areas to sit and get to know the other travelers and hammocks to take siestas in. The hostel was run by a young couple from the States and was filled with Canadians and Europeans.

On Saturday, 5 of us took a bus to Chuy, a border town of Brazil and Uruguay. One of our language professors advised us to visit Chuy because it is an unpatrolled border town (you can enter Brazil without papers or visas... regularly/legally visas cost $100 for US citizens and this rule was created because of the lack of hospitality of the US) We ate lunch in Brazil and spent a few hours wandering the streets and looking through the shops. Uruguayans flock to Chuy to buy clothes and supplies because everything is cheaper than most areas of Uruguay.

The rest of the weekend included an amazing meal of fish, incredible live music steps away from the beach, a day of relaxation on the beach, sharing a meal of crackers with a mama dog, and a 5-hour bus ride back to Montevideo.

Tons of pictures: El Diablo Tranquilo, map of eastern Uruguayan bus routes, Punta del Diablo, Brazil, my canine friend