Eating and Sleeping in Uruguay

Got back at around 8:30 this morning from a spring break trip to Uruguay. (Never mind that I’ve only been in school for two days.)

On Wednesday night, Reva, Rona, Melinda, Daniel, Ashley and I got to the bus station at 10:30 for an 11:30 bus. It was chaos — hot, confusing, and so crowded it was hard to walk from one end of the terminal to the other. Since yesterday was Easter, most Argentines get Thursday, Friday and today off work, and everyone travels.

But by about 12:30, it became clear that part of the reason for the chaos was that all the buses were late. Not only was there no sign of our bus, there was also no indication of when it would get there. The woman at the ticket counter couldn’t tell us which gate the bus would leave from or guess whether it would arrive at the station in half an hour or two hours.

When the bus finally came at around 2:30, I had half-convinced myself we would play cards on the floor of the bus station until the morning and then go home. The ride itself was uneventful, and I slept the whole way.

Thursday five of us stayed in Montevideo, while Ashley went to her father’s summer house in the town of Jauriguiberry. Ashley’s family is Uruguyan, and while she lives in Connecticut with her mom, her dad lives in Uruguay. On Friday we joined her.

Jauriguiberry is a tiny town on the Uruguayan coast with a beautiful white-sand beach, two almacenes, the “Yacht Club” (a dive-y bar with two pool tables and lots of whiskey), and not much else. Ashley’s father, his girlfriend and her daughter live in a one-story, six-bedroom house two minutes off the main road (dirt, like all of the roads there). Next to the house is an open-air kitchen and dining area.

Including us, there were 16 people — and three dogs — at lunch on the day we got there. Some of Ashley’s aunts and uncles had stopped by to visit, and her family also had guests spending the weekend. Ashley’s dad’s girlfriend cooked canelones, a traditional dish in Uruguay and Argentina made of some sort of stuffing (in this case, choclo and ham in a white sauce) rolled in a flour-and-egg wrapper. They’re something like a cross between Italian cannelloni and enchiladas. They were delicious.

Saturday we left Jauriguiberry and went to Punta del Este, where Ashley’s mom has a beach house. The city of Punta is the Uruguayan equivalent of a Florida resort town, with dozens of high-rises lining the beach and a main street crammed with casinos and shops selling bathing suits that cost more than our entire trip. Ashley’s house is about 20 minutes outside of the center of town, on a quiet street off the main highway.

That night we had an asado, or barbecue, with ribs, steak, chorizo, eggplant, onions, zucchini and red peppers stuffed with eggs, all grilled slowly over the coals of an outside asado. Ashley manned the grill for two solid hours. She might have looked funny (she’s a five-foot, hundred-pound girl with three tattoos, a nose ring and a brand-new lip piercing), but she did an amazing job.

All six of us ate, as Ashley said, until we felt sick, and then we ate some more. It was easily one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Partway through dinner, Ashley’s cousin came over with some of her friends. Even though we were so busy stuffing our faces we completely ignored all the guests, more people came, until there were probably about 20 or 30 people. The plan was to have drinks at Ashley’s house and then go out dancing, but somehow we never moved past the having drinks part. Other than one guy who tried to start a rigged game of strip poker and then gave up and stuck a banana down his pants (which someone subsequently ate for breakfast), everyone was really friendly, interesting and easy to talk to.

I went to bed at 6 and slept until noon. Yesterday, I ate ice cream for breakfast, went to the beach and fell asleep again on the sand. It was basically the perfect weekend.