Uruguay Part Two

Before I get to Uruguay……..I SAW A WHALE TODAY! (keep in mind that we were in Uruguay eight days ago and are currently sailing up the coast of Brazil, my blog hasn't quite caught up yet) I haven’t seen one all voyage and I was super bummed out about it but we were playing ninja on the back deck when Harrison (one of the dependent children) spotted a whale.  It was smaking it’s tail against the surface of the water and I was so excited that I finally saw one!!!  Ok now back to your regularly scheduled bloging…

 

The second day in Montevideo was a beach day!!!  Unfortunately, the closest nice beach was located about two hours away and the bus station was so far from the port that we had to take a taxi to the station and then a two hour bus to the beach but it was worth it in the end!  We had a bit of a miscommunication at the station so Danielle and I ended up on a bus about an hour after Sarah, Amy and Jared.   It was ok though because we found baby bottle pops while wandering around :)

Once we arrived at the beach we texted the others (we had borrowed Amy’s phone for this purpose as the beach was about 10 miles or so long!) and the response was, “go to the pointer and you will find us.”  Danielle and I looked at the text, then at each other, then at the text again just to double check that we hadn’t read it wrong, then at each other again in that cliché cartoonish manner.  Our basic train of thought was:  Okay…..what?!?!?  Go to the pointer…..yeah sure whatever you say guys.

Figuring we might as well look around outside and seeing if we could find this so called “pointer” before asking people for help we ambled out the door and gave a half-hearted look around.  And there it was, the pointer.  Turns out this beach is weird or something and there is a gigantic statue of a hand half buried in the sand on the edge of the beach.  No joke, a giant hand just sticking out of the sand looking awkward and random.  We made our way across the street frogger style and up the dunes to the pointer finger dodging the bulldozer that seemed to be moving sand around for no apparent reason whatsoever except to make it that much harder for people to walk.  We scanned the beach in front of the pointer finger and didn’t see anyone.  We proceeded to walk from finger to finger looking for the rest of the group and finally sighted them……on the beach just out of line with the PINKY finger.  Apparently Jared thought that it was a left hand sticking up and got his fingers all in a jumble lol but oh well, we deciphered the crazyness and all was well.

We spent the day lounging on the beach, looking for shells, swimming, reading and writing messages in the sand and taking pictures to taunt people back home.  My favorite picture was of us sitting in our bikini’s and sunglasses above the message “Hey, it’s November” hahaha.  Sorry to all of you stuck in the land of the snow and ice right now…..but yeah I’m chilling in the tropics as we speak :P  We stayed there for about four hours or so and then decided to head back to the ship for dinner so after another two hour bus ride and a dumb taxi we were back.  That night Sarah and Amy went out to get wifi and due to the potentially unsafe nature of the streets decided that it would be a good safety measure to carry around pointy rocks and bricks in case anything happened.  The way they tell the story is absolutely hilarious but I will spare you.  They got back safe and gave security a good laugh on their way in and Sarah still has a brick sitting by the end of her bed should she ever feel the need to use it. 

More later

~Colleen