Adventures in Uruguay! :)

• Feeling like a backpacker again - and loving it!!!
• First of all - South American Spanish is the most delicious language I know. I love how it rolls over my tongue, slides across my lips, and fills my mouth with gorgeous sounds. What a sensual language.
  
• I've just spent a little over a week in Uruguay - 2 days in the capital city, Montevideo, and then a week on the beach in Punta del Diablo.
• Montevideo is a small capital city. It has a some interesting and eclectic architecture, and is almost surrounded by the sea - everywhere you look you see waves in the distance. Very welcoming, not overwhelming at all (unlike BsAs!)
  
• In all of my experience in Uruguay - and this is actually something that all my Argentinian friends told me before I left - Uruguayanos are simply wonderful: really warm and kind and open, and so friendly!
• Punta del Diablo, the seaside village that I stayed in, was AMAZING! It's really small and underdeveloped - which I loved. There are no proper roads, only dirt roads, with one main (dirt) road housing some restaurants, two supermarkets and a pharmacy. All the houses are scattered about randomly: little one-room domains painted in bright sunshiney colours, simple and modest.
  
• At this time of year, it's mainly students who travel to places like this, after spending Xmas and New Year with their families, and before the new semester begins.
• I found myself in a hostel filled with Spanish-speaking students - Argentinians, Uruguayanos, Chileans, and some Brazilians (all of whom can speak Spanish too!)
• And so... I just spent a week speaking ONLY Spanish!!! (Which was no small feat! All I know is the one week of lessons that I took in Colombia. And given the different accents - that's like learning English in Texas and then trying to speak to people in the Australian outback!)
  
• It was brilliant! Of course - my Spanish is pretty poor, but at least I make myself understood! And I seem to be able to follow conversations fairly easily. The trick is (as with all languages) to get the accent down. If you SOUND like you know what you're doing, your grammatical errors are much less obvious!
  
• I loved it. Everyone was just SO nice. People would wander around the common area, strike up conversations, everyone would talk to everyone else... making friends was so easy, so effortless...
• I've also become a fan of matè (pronounced "mah-tay"). It's a traditional hot drink in this region of South America, made of herbs, and I think it contains caffeine too. EVERYONE drinks it! Basically, you pour the herbs into a matè cup, top it up with boiling hot water, then dip a special silver straw into the cup and sip away! The herbs are reused, and the cup is refilled until you run out of hot water. It's definitely an acquired taste, but I seem to have acquired it!
• I love the social aspect of matè. You see people going to the beach - everyone carrying their little matè cups and hot water flasks! In the hostel, in the mornings and evenings after the beach, everyone sits around sipping on their matè, sharing it with others, communicating, relaxing... It`s a lovely tradition.
  
• I feel so good after my week at the beach. I needed to get out of the city, and I am fully renewed and refreshed and ready for more adventures.
• I made a ton of new friends, am that much closer to speaking a new language uninhibited, had my soul nurtured by warm and easy interactions, and had my heart soothed by seawaves once again.
  
• Counting my blessings over and over and over again...

Love you all. xoxox