Uruguay - Montevideo

According to the Lonely Planet, Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay, is a pretty mellow city by South American standards. It is just our luck that we arrived there on Constitution Day, a national holiday. The city, at least the downtown portion where we were, was eerily dead - everything was closed and there weren´t many people around.

We expertly navigated ourselves right into the slum area. We probably should have turned around when a crazy and/or high lady asked us for a cigarette, but we stubbornly kept on going and ended up being followed by some sketchy guy for a block.

We decided it was probably a good night to have an early dinner and watch TV in our hotel room. When Bill went out to the balcony of our room to smoke, he saw a guy break a shop window and run off with something. The police came later and the store alarm went off all night. We are feeling very much like hardcore backpackers.

This is the view from our balcony. It´s the store next to the parked car on the left that was broken into (it was a fur coat shop):

To its credit, Montevideo looked very nice the next morning when there were actually people in it, but our hearts were not in it anymore.

Chivito - steak burger with boiled eggs, ham, cheese, olives, lettuce and tomato:

Horse buggy waiting for the green light - I said ¨how cute!¨ and took a picture, but later felt bad when I realized that they were going through trash containers around the city, looking for food and other stuff:
Finally! We had heard so much about this mate (tea) drinking craze in South America (where everyone goes around with their own mate cup, straw and thermos), but did not see any in Buenos Aires. We had about twenty sightings in Uruguay. Here is one: