A few days ago I left Canela with a heavy heart, after thoroughly enjoying myself, making new friends and partying in the clubs I said goodbye to Vagner and the amazing 5.50 cent buffet libre in which he worked. After extensive planning, making phone calls to Porto Allegre in portugese is not the easiest thing to do in the world, I hopped on a bus for Porto Allegre and an 8:30 overnighter to Montevideo, Uruguay. I didnt realize that Gremio, one of Porto Allegre's futball teams was in the semifinals of the Copa Libertadores and was playing in Porto Allegre that night! Of course we drove right by the stadium along with 60,000 screaming honking fans, (I think they won), and I hopped on the bus mere seconds before it left for Uruguay.
A little about Porto Allegre Futball. Inter, the other PA team last year won the Copa Libertadores, championship of South America, and then finished by beating Barcelona, the champion of europe. They are therefore known as the campeons del mundo. This year it looks like Gremio is going to win, didnt I say that PA is the futball capital of the world?
Anyway, back to bus reality. When I first got on I met all the other travellers, one of whom was a catholic priest from Ecuador, and two others were travellers from Austria. I could never tell if they were boyfriend girlfriend, or father and Daughter, but I ended up seeing them several more times, finishing with lunch in BA. The bus was nice, big seats lots of room, but the road made up for that, nice and bumpy. We made it through customs at about 3 in the morn, thank you german passport! And got to Montevideo at 8 in the morning. I beelined it for a hostel and slept for a few hours before breakfast.
A little about hostels. Each hostel has its own personality and therefore its own charms and problems. The charms include breakfast, free internet, the problems horrible beds, loud roomates and absolutely horrible bathrooms. At first it seemed this one suffered the problems with no redeeming factors, my room was occupied by a smoking man, possibly from Saudi Arabia (I was told), the bathrooms were wet all over, with no hot water and no toilet paper, and the bed, wow, the mattress stunk and was about as effective as a single sheet over a wooden plank. Despite these problems it soon became my favorite hostel!
I moved rooms, put two mattress on top of each other and learned to use the bathroom before the guys from Bangledesh did, (they were the source of the water apparently). I met a nice girl from Switzerland who only spoke spanish with me, and 3 great Brazillians who were studying Architecture in Montevideo, and they had a fireplace in the hostel which kept things nice and toasty.
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