14:10. OMFG. Just had a look at the menu at Parilla del Barrio, as recommended by my *Shoestring* (hahahaha) guide. A *quarter* chicken is UYU380 and there's a cover charge of UYU70. That's over fifteen quid without a drink of any description. I don't even know if you get a side dish of any kind with your quarter chicken.
14:15. I wasn't going to have lunch but as there are only two museums left on my ticket (plus one up by the bull ring which is miles away and which I will probably skip) I figured I might as well. I am sat outside Real Catering restaurant & grill on Flores which seems short on waiters but low on price.
I got up stupidly late again, leaving the hostel about 1pm or maybe a bit earlier. I walked over to the port to buy a boat ticket to Buenos Aires tomorrow.
There appear to be three companies, Buquebus, Seacat and another one (Colonia?). The latter's ticket window said 'go to the bus terminal for tickets' so I ignored them as it wasn't convenient to comparison shop. Steve's top tip of the day: Put up a price list and a timetable. If you were cheapest I'd have popped over to the bus terminal to buy a ticket.
Anyway, I asked at both the other two windows. Both have fast services taking an hour, Buquebus do slow services early and late in the day which are cheaper. I might almost prefer slow as the boat trip is kind of part of the fun, but on the other hand it's probably more novel on a fast boat.
Seacat charge UYU482 for their fast boats. Buquebus charge UYU970. I have these written down, it's not my Spanish at fault. So Buquebus charge approximately double for the same speed journey and at similar times. Astounding.
(I just tried to order a bife de chorizo. Apparently it's not ready and would take 40 or 50 minutes. Just how long does it take to grill a steak? Maybe if it's very thick or they cook it slowly, I suppose I know nothing about cooking. It just surprised me.)
As I tried to go to both windows to get prices and then back to Seacat to book, there was some chap chatting with the ticket office women. When I moved over to Buquebus's window the first time, after a couple of minutes he excused himself and went to talk to the Seacat woman. When I realised Buquebus were a rip off and went to queue up behind him at the Seacat window to buy, it took a few minutes and then he moved back to chat with the Buquebus woman. WTF?
Anyway, I have a ticket for the 15:45 boat tomorrow, which works nicely. I can leave my bags at the hostel and that will give me a clear 3+ hours post checkout to mill around and have lunch and probably far too much coffee.
Went to the 'indigenous' museum and some museum with three small rooms of French 19th century tiles (that's where I saw the security notice). I am not bothering to dig out the leaflet and give the proper names of these museums.
17:00. Back at Real Catering having a beer. It being clear I may pass sunset on the shore, after which the vague plans is to go back to the hostel, pack a bit and try to book somewhere to stay in Panama. I may then pop back out for another beer but I don't know.
I went to the two remaining convenient museums, the 'archive museum' (which was really just one room in practice) and the 'museo del periodo historico portugues', which was actually quite interesting. There was one room with lots of old maps which I found oddly fascinating. I couldn't take any photos for reasons of security, of course.
For the record, 'museo del periodo historico espanol' (I am omitting all accents here) is closed for renovation according to the woman I bought my ticket off at the first museum. So the only one I could go to but haven't been to is 'museo paleontologico armando calcaterral'. That sounds moderately interesting but it is up by the bull ring which I would guess is at least half an hour's walk. I just may go tomorrow but I am not going to make any definite plans.
Oh, I only discovered the other while bored at lunch with my phone battery dead that my camera has a manual exposure mode which (this is what I didn't know) allows up to 60s exposures. (The simpler automatic modes never seem to go over 4s.) I wish I'd known that when I was trying to photograph the stars on Isla del Sol. I took a few photos last night from the deserted roof terrace on the hostel and I think they have worked tolerably well, though the screen on my phone is dirty enough that I can't be sure (and I can't zoom into the pictures as the zoom control is taped up). So if there are some inexplicably all-black photos on flickr, they will be those. :-)
20:50. Left the laptop uploading photos of Montevideo and come put. Was torn between Mercosur and Colonia Rock but the former was very dead and I figured the second was more bar-like, so I'm here. It is very quiet (2/3 other customers) but it is Monday and I'm not that bothered.
I have booked a hostel in Panama City. Expedia seems to have a problem, it would show me hotels in New York when I tried, but after it asking whether I want Panama City, Panama or Panama City, Florida, it says 'the page you are looking for could not be found' and shows me a site map. I assume this is a glitch and it would say if they had no hotels.
I was a bit unsure about the areas and safety and hostel quality, plus I may well not spend the full two weeks in Panama City, so I have booked for four nights in the old part of town (genuine single room for GBP14/night) and will make a call after a day or two.
I was vaguely hoping for a serviced apartment as in Santiago and Buenos Aires. But with Expedia down I didn't want to hunt around other sites for any possibility in that line. I can maybe go for something like that after the first four nights. As I say, just need to see how it goes.
The guide book no longer seems to me to imply major difficulties getting a taxi to the airport, just expense. The flight is reconfirmed OK, it's a bit early (12:10, so I probably need to be at the airport by 10 and ideally earlier) but I suspect it will be OK. I hope it isn't dark in Panama City when I get there.
22:10 I am a bit nervous about Panama City but the guide certainly doesn't lay it on thick as for Sao Paulo and Rio. Just have to see how it goes I guess.
I am the only customer here now and they just brought the tables in from the street. I think I will go after this and either have one at Mercosur or at the hostel and then call it a night.
Bit worried about getting up in time to check out given I still haven't managed to buy a replacement travel alarm clock. But I guess it will be OK.
21:40. Down at Mercosur. Hardly busy but at least I don't feel as conspicuous or as if I am keeping them open as I did at Colonia Rock.
Not eating tonight. I had that 'asado' (as the entrecot/bife de chorizo - apparently the same thing - would take 50 mins) earlier. It was three largish but fatty and with a few bits of bone pieces of steak. That was only about 3pm and as a general rule I don't eat more than once a day in London.
A dog (admittedly not terribly skinny) came and sat next to me and stared at me while I was eating. I was more than happy to give it something as I was discarding huge chunks of fatty meat (it seemed a shame for it to go in the bin when the dog wanted it, plus I guess I am the ideal dog-scrap-giver as I doubt dogs go much for sauces on their meat either :-) ) but I didn't think the restaurant would like it. In the end I did manage to chuck it one of the larger lumps in a semi-discrete manner. It was a shame I couldn't give it the lot but such is life. I think that's only the second time I've had a dog stare at me like that all the time I've been eating, the first being in Puerto Iguazu where I also managed (and felt less conspicuous) to chuck it a lump or two of fatty but doubtless nourishing meat.
It was a fairly nice looking dog, a little bit on the short side though nowhere near as small as say a Yorkshire terrier. It also had incredibly large ears in proportion to the size of its head. (Not spaniel sort of droopy ears, I mean regular 'dog-or-cat-type' ears, just huge.)
Oh, I am reminded by some fucking twats (who seem sadly moderately common) riding up and down the street on extremely noisy motorbikes (maybe I forfeit whatever masculine credentials I might have left, but I hate that sound, I do wonder if they deliberately hack the exhaust up to generate the noise, as not all motorbikes, even biggish looking ones, seem to be so obnoxious) that the local 'car' rental place(s) seem, to judge from tourists I see riding around, to like renting out those electric vehicles most commonly seen in airports shuttling elderly people around and weird internal combustion engined variants. On Easter Island it was quite common to see tourists (and maybe locals actually) on quad bikes, but I've never seen anything quite like the pseudo-cars rented out here. Some of them at least are branded with well known Japanese names, so they may well be common in other places rather than being local homebrews, but it's a novelty to me.
22:15. There is a dog curled up on the mat right in front of the doorway to the bar, where there is a step. I can honestly imagine someone inadvertently treading on it, especially coming out of the inside (the step is higher than the dog). I take some comfort from the fact it isn't busy and as the dog is curled up it might be hurt but probably not seriously. (Our, well, my parents', cat likes to sleep 'upright' on the steps at home. We know she does it, but it sometimes worries me a bit that just casually forgetting could lead to half the weight of a human being on her spine. At least this dog is both larger, and I assume therefore better equipped to distribute and survive the forces involved, and curled up, so the pressure maybe wouldn't come on such a critical area.)
22:40. In an odd way I am a bit strapped for cash. Being suddenly consumed with a desire to both end up with loads of 'useless' cash after I leave a country and also to avoid cash machine charges caused by small frequent withdrawals, I just used my last UYU500 note to order another beer. I have about UYU50 in change (I used another 50 towards the last beer) so I now have about UYU450 to last me til I get the ferry tomorrow. That should be ample for lunch (probably here at Mercosur, to be honest) and a beer or coffee, but it's odd and annoying to be worrying about having enough money. If I was here longer I would just withdraw freely. No big deal, unless some random law kicks in at the port and they want cash off me for leaving the country. I have some Argentinian cash on me so I can get a cab on the other side, though I will probably have to withdraw some prior to the airport taxi and that raises similar "don't want to be caught short but don't want to overdo it" issues.
The two plus quid fee for foreign currency cash withdrawals seems exhorbitant, but I still suspect cash machines give better rather than exchange bureaux (given the major shortfall on my Chilean to Uruguayan peso change in Montevideo, compared to the spot rate I got from Google - yeah, there is some overhead to handling physical currency, but that just validates my point about ATM withdrawals being the way to go and also argues that two plus quid for a withdrawal is unreasonable, as the conversion is purely electronic and I know how cheap those transactions are). I suspect the previous sentence ties English grammar up and coshes it, but I am writing this on my phone and am not going to revise it.
As a random observation - and maybe it's just here at Mercosur though I strongly suspect not - I seem to be seeing the Johnnie Walker logo of some gent in old-fashioned dress walking quite frequently, probably mainly here and in Montevideo. And I find it oddly annoying.
23:05. Damn, am the only customer here now. Still, I did ask if it was too late when I got this last beer.
As a random observation, loads of places here (and probably in other places too) have 'toilets only for customers' signs. So that mixture of commercial sense and social fuck-youness is by no means a British or London thing. ;-)
Oh no, there is one couple here, so I am not the only customer.
23:20, OK, the 'couple' (two blokes, I make no judgements, I used the word in its purest sense and I couldn't see them well anyway) just left. But it's cool. I won't be here that much longer anyway. Oh no, there is another pair of guys at a table a bit off anyway.
I find myself reflecting arbitrarily on the possibility of new music. Apart from the classic "here comes the last wave" story, I have just repeated some calculations I did on some previous drunken occasion and I am re-convinced that no way have all the good tunes been written. My calculations suggest that listening to all possible 20 note combinations of eight notes played for half a second each would take 18,000 million years. And I have an idea the Sun is due to go red giant in about 5,000 million years. Sure, not all of those combinations are worth listening to, but who knows what fraction? And of course most tunes are longer than 20 notes and have such things as chords and notes of varying length to add variety. And even similarity doesn't kill a tune, Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale" is famously similar to the classical piece commonly known, though from a pedantic perspective I believe incorrectly, as "Air on the G string" and nevertheless it's possible to enjoy both in the
ir own right. (If my slightly drunken memory is to be believed, the proper title is "Suite no 3 in D major, second movement, air", and the popular title is due to an arrangement made by someone other than the composer, whose name sadly and pathetically escapes me, although I will hazard a guess it was Mozart, so I can have a laugh at myself later. I don't think that's right but the true name won't come to me, so... I seem to have 'Handel' floating around in my mind but it annoys me I just don't know right now. I shall resist the temptation to spew out all the famous classical composers in "or was it X?" statements so has to hedge my bets. :-) )
00:30. Just Wikipedia'd it. Of course it was Bach. So obvious in hindsight. Oh well. A shower and then to bed and fingers crossed I am up in time tomorrow.
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