Arrival in Montevideo

At 9:15 AM, we were on the bus heading to Montevideo—a short 2.5-hour ride. Now we've arrived and are staying at Red Hostel, right in the heart of the city. It didn’t take us long to start exploring. You can easily rack up the kilometers just by wandering around. There’s always something new just around the corner! :o) We also took a quick trip to the beach, which is nice, but it doesn’t quite compare to Copacabana in Brazil... Tonight, there’s a tango festival starting at a little local market. It’s basically a huge hall filled with restaurants everywhere and tango dancing at the back. It feels like dining outdoors since all the restaurants are in open spaces with massive grills where they’re constantly throwing on more meat to get those giant steaks cooked. You can definitely feel that Uruguay is more expensive than Argentina, and the portion sizes aren’t quite the same. In Argentina, you always get so much meat and sides that there’s usually leftovers. We’re also missing that perfect salty flavor that’s so characteristic of Argentine meat! :o) Montevideo is the capital, and even though people say it’s a “laid-back city,” it still has its bar street. We ended up chatting with the owner of a small bar who works as a programmer during the day. Here, a programmer makes about 600 USD a month, which is quite something when you consider that an apartment costs around 200 USD a month. But it’s still incredibly cheap to be here, so we enjoyed sangria, drinks, and wine—everything we save a bit on back home when we go out! :o)