I did and came over to that tall building in Plaza de la Independencia. I asked the security guard and didn't understand his first reply, but I got him to clarify and he said you can't go up, it's family apartments or something like that. Oh well, at least I asked.
Vague plan now is to go and see the two beaches in the city proper. They (especially the larger) look miles away but as I have nothing else to do and it will take me through bits of the city I haven't see before I will try to walk over and maybe get a taxi back.
14:00. Found a clueful internet cafe which - gasp - can not only burn me a DVD, but sell me some hard cases for the disc (and a couple of spares). The guy even had the wit to just drag everything from the root of my USB key without faffing around. It's on the corner of 18 de Julio and Jackson, I think. Yes, it is, it's called "Cyber Jackson".
21:20. Just booked a hostel in Colonia del Sacramento for Saturday-Tuesday nights. Bitched about the sheer incompetence already.
Am at another 'Irish' pub opposite The Shannon. Being hassled by the shoeshine guy who was here on Monday. Keeps insisting I have my shoes cleaned or give him some money so he can eat. Maybe I'm just a bastard but I am dubious. I mean, maybe if you offered to clean people's shoes during the day in the business parts of the city?
It's a bit busier here in this street than Monday but not much.
Anyway, no hostel had a private room available for all four nights including Friday. The one I booked was the best as I could get a double bed (if I have to pay for 'two people' I'd rather have a double bed than two singles, and either rather than the bunk beds I have now) for Sat-Tue. I may book for a dormitory there on Fri night, although now a) they've hacked me of with their stupid 'repeat your booking' process I am dubious about giving them more money, and hostelworld yet another booking fee and b) I've complained, so they may not be very helpful (though my main complaint was to hostelworld, all I did to the hostel was sarcastically include my inside leg measurement in the email giving my credit card security code and passport number). But it's probably the best bet, I am going to drink and maybe sleep on it.
Expedia had no vacancies for all four nights either, it was worse than hostelworld, and as far as I can tell laterooms, Octopus Travel and Hotel Travel all either don't know of the existence of Colonia del Sacramento or have no free spaces.
This bar is a bit deader (just me) than the Shannon (I saw a couple of people in when I passed) but I thought I'd try it. Seem to be called "Viejo Mitre" or mayble "Dublin", the latter seems to be it, maybe the 'Viejo Mitre' in the centre of the sign is a bit like having a Stella logo and I just don't know the brand. It is slightly cheaper at UYU65 instead of UYU70 for a probable 500ml of Pilsen chopp.
El Pony Pisador is the liveliest of the three or four bars I see open, but it's a bit slightly clubby and I'm not really in the mood right now.
If the blackboard outside is to be believed The Shannon has live music in the form of 'Folkover' (for a UYU35 cover), although the name conjures up terrible visions of folk singing. I am just playing it by ear really. I don't have any particular goals tonight.
Surprisingly hacked off about what is after all a trivial thing with that hostel booking. But I guess at root what fucks me off is THEY TAKE MY 10% DEPOSIT, impose conditions saying 'IF YOU DON'T SHOW UP OR CANCEL TOO NEAR WE WILL CHARGE ONE NIGHT', *THEN* have the audacity to make me 'RECONFIRM' my reservation or have it automatically cancelled. Not even just "if I am arriving late", no, absolutely required. (I've overdone the caps there, but the crappy e-mail editor on my phone has no 'change case' feature and I'm not retyping it all just to change the case. No one is reading this anyway. And at least the blog isn't 90% caps like the one the hostel sent me.)
Oh, and they may expect me to have a printout of my 'voucher' to check in. The e-mail asked me to e-mail it to them but elsewhere it mentions a printout. They can fuck right off if they think I'm going to print the voucher out, it's not particularly convenient when I'm travelling. And they're a business, why can't they print it out themselves? I know they could never have got the details from hostelworld, but I just e-mailed them the voucher, so let them print it themselves if they're that fussed.
Anyway, I did walk to the two beaches. Walked 'inland' to Playa Ramirez, then round the coast to Playa Pocitos. I stopped off for one beer en route but was otherwise walking most of the time. At the north end of Playa Pocitos I turned my GPS on to help me navigate 'straight line' inland back to the hostel and I was 5.2km away. So I walked an absolute minimum of 10.4km and probably quite a lot more given the fact I walked round the coast between the two beaches.
It was a bit of a slog for the last 45 minutes. My feet were killing me and I wanted food. I got a pizza somewhere in town not long after I got back to the hostel (I didn't go in) about 18:20. Went back to the hostel after to surf and be messed around with bookings and came out about 9, the laptop battery was going although I'd kind of always planned to leave about then anyway.
Oh, I got my hair cut yesterday at some barbers-cum-net-cafe near the hostel. I don't think he was capable of anything fancy, though I may wrong him, but he shaved my head OK and it only cost UYU50 or about two quid. He did keep breaking off to deal with the net cafe customers though. A bit odd.
21:50 Come over to 'Cafe' (or as the sign has it, '@afé') just opposite previous bar and between The Shannon and El Pony Pisador. UYU100 for a litre of Patricia. I got confused when ordering the beer as he said the equivalent of 'Fosters or Stella?', and if you're not a confident speaker of the language and don't know the brands in question, the sentence becomes meaningless. I think this may be a special offer but I don't know. No other customers here.
I am sat outside and I must say the 'mingling' of the music from the three or fours bars is quite discordant.
Oh, I saw an Austin-Rover (or whatever the company was called) Maestro earlier, driving along the road. That was a bit odd. It had Uruguay plates too, it wasn't some eccentric British tourist's car. :-)
They are playing 'Si No Te Hubieras Ido' inside the bar here now. El Pony Pisador was playing 'Daría' when I got here and did a quick circuit to see what was open.
I must admit to feeling a bit jittery. I'm not really nervous and I'm not really that angry any more, but there you go, I am a bit jittery. I always say this and end up staying out but I may have one or two more and try to go to bed earlyish, though even if I go back early I doubt I'll go to bed early, and even if I do I doubt I'll be up early.
I don't have any definite plans for tomorrow beyond wandering around a bit, although I do want to try to change my wodge of Chilean notes. I figure I ought to chance them while I'm in South America as I will perhaps get a better rate, and if I don't change them tomorrow I will probably end up having to withdraw more Urugayan cash and then won't "want" to change the Chilean notes any more. (I assume I will get a worse effective rate if I change them into Panamanian currency here, even assuming anyone *has* any Panamanian currency.) There are a few big exchange bureau places on 18 de Julio near the hostel so I can at least compare rates between them fairly easily.
Oh, the poster outside Dublin shows the same cartoon 50s American bloke (and possibly the same woman) as were used to illustrate the doors at that bar on Easter Island, although sans any humorous tequila-related captions.
22:55. Lacking any clear plan I engaging in a mini-pub crawl, now having a beer at The Shannon. I see they have a poster in the window saying tomorrow is their birthday and implying some sort of music. It may be worth checking out although I suspect it will either suck, be too late, or be heaving. But in the absence of any other stuff cropping up I will be in this street or just having a quiet night at the hostel anywhere.
There is another small bar next to The Shannon which I only just noticed (maybe it wasn't even open earlier, and probably not on Monday). The music sucks (ooh, "words to describe this girl" song playing from there) but as I'm in the street like most people (slightly cool but I have my fleece on over a T-shirt and it's fine) I am hearing it even when I'm not drinking there, and if I want to keep up this 'pub crawl' theme it's probably there or El Pony Pisador (I nearly wrote "The Prancing Pony" there, sigh).
I'm sorry. "I'm trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful" followed immediately by "The way that booty move I can't take any more" seems a bit of a contradiction. If you want to regard the hypothetical woman who inspires the song as a sex object, fair play to you mate, but you can't have your cake and eat it. You either get to play the 'respect' card or the 'booty' card, not both.
As a random observation, I remember when dumped off the bus the other night and speaking to the cop, I not only struggled to remember the name of the nearby town (which had always confused me) but I struggled to remember where I had come from. The same when I was being quizzed at the border post. I don't know why, maybe because I'd just passed through Posadas very briefly. But in a strange way there is something cool about travelling 'so much' you struggle to remember where you were immediately before when asked.
23:40. Hearing the music start was tempted inside The Shannon. It's a couple of guys with acoustic guitars doing fairly decent covers of English-language pop songs. "Luka", "Everybody wants to rule the world", "Champagne Supernova". I think they are locals, they sing well in English but they pronounce champagne as 'shampan'. For all I know that's correct French pronunciation and they speak French too well to mispronounce it, but I am sure no native English speaker would say that (even if it's correct French, you'd have to be very pretentious indeed not to use the standard English pronunciation, especially when covering an Oasis song). Pretty good and I will probably stay for the duration.
(Oh, they also speak fluent Spanish between songs - I don't understand a word of it, or maybe one word in ten - but that in itself doesn't rule them out as native English speakers I guess.)
It's obvious to me now being here, but for my future benefit, I might as well say the bar is apparently staffed and customered by locals. Even more so than the Britannia in Asuncion, where I did hear the odd group speaking in native English-speaking accents. Which makes the cover band a bit odder, but clearly English-language music is popular here. I remember Gloria knowing many songs from her non-English-speaking youth in Venezuela without knowing what the words were or having a clue what the song was about. A bit like I used to (and still do to some extent) enjoy some Spanish-language music devoid of any understanding of the words, but on a continent-wide scale instead of just one person.
On a random linguistic note, I have been address as 'tu' here but have heard (e.g. the barber the other day) address people as 'vos'. And at least some people here have the 'Argentinian' 'sh' prononciation of 'll'. I don't know if it's just that there are some Argentians here or if the local Spanish, as in Paraguay, shares some features with Argentina. The fact that some people at least have referred to me as 'tu' vaguely suggests the former, but maybe the few people I've spoken to where it came up who called me 'tu' were from other parts of Latin America. I seem to think I've seen adverts using 'vos' here, but I can't be sure right now.
It's quite busy in here now, though it is a fairly small place. Far busier than Monday. I lost my table near the band but have managed to acquire one at the back of the room (i.e. maybe 5-10m from the band). Oh, it's 00:05 now for what it's worth. I suspect the next time I leave my table I will not get another one but sod it, I've paid the cover charge and I'll squeeze in somewhere even if I have to stand.
Just to bitch randomly, in front of me are two two-seater tables close together. It looks like the couple at one of those tables has appropriated the adjacent one as a private cloakroom, which seems a bit off.
While I stand by my earlier comments about the fact most people here are locals, there is a group of four women at the bar just in front of me who are probably Irish and therefore presumably fellow tourists. As a solo traveller and hence not obviously non-local, I wonder if I will catch them out in some confidence as they assume no one else speaks English here. :-) I doubt it though plus it's a bit hard to hear their conversation and what I can hear is mostly dull as fuck.
Four women my arse. Seems to be an enormous mixed group of about 10 now. But what I can overhear of the conversation (I'm bored, the band is on a major recess) is still dull as fuck.
I must admit I am a bit jealous of people travelling with friend(s) or with a supernatural ability to just hook up with people. But leaving the latter smug gits aside, compared to the former I do feel I have a certain freedom to do whatever I want without worrying about anyone else, even if it can be a bit solitary at times. (For example, cool as it was to be with those guys just after the Salar de Uyuni trip, at the same time I felt a bit constrained.) And I do also feel that a lot of my chats with locals wouldn't have come about so easily if I hadn't been alone, although maybe there would have been other situations which would have been the other way round. Still, it is what it is, "play them as they lay", "take the rough with the smooth", etc...
01:10. Band just finished. Not overly pissed but enough to think pseudo-deep thoughts. I shall make a call on what to do after I finish this beer, of which I have plenty. They made a minor fuss of changing my UYU1000 note but FFS, if cash machines give them out, you have to expect to take them. The ratio of beer/note value is worse but it would be like a UK pub refusing a 20. Or if the UK machines started handing out 50s routinely - it might suck, but I think businesses would have to either deal with it or apply pressure to the banks to hand out smaller notes. Plus it's pretty damn busy here and no way could they be short of change.
02:15. Outside The Shannon, some woman has produced a fiddle and is playng and a couple are dancing. All the more credit to them as there is musical interference from other nearby bars.
Incidentally, that leaflet I picked up here the other day which mentioned Piazzolla also mentions a night of Irish dance at some theatre. I cannot imagine anything fouler. No offence to the nation but after having to hear about Riverdance and catch the odd glimpse on TV, I shy away from anything which smacks of the same.
02:30. Come down El Pony Pisador for probably a last one. The atmosphere is rank club, but by club standards the atmosphere is not too bad. I shouldn't be here but as I have no demanding plans tomorrow, what the hell. And it's my last night here without having to worry about checkout at 11am (relatively civilised, but still).
Am perched at the bar. The barstool is incredibly annoying, it has a sort of footstool ring but it feels like it's designed for someone about an inch taller. I may be a shortarse but I could swear I haven't had this problem in the UK.
The 'clubness' of the place is a bit like that place whose name escapes me at the top of end of the arcade near Liv St. Oh yes, the (Sir Paul) Pindar. The atmosphere is slightly better, but it's that kind of bar-cum-club place
02:40. Wow, the band is coming (back) on.
03:40. Dying a bit down here but far from deserted. I made a conversational sally and ended up having a chat (a bit sadly in English) with a local who is working as a sort of tour operator, he just left to pick up a party of Brazilians to take them to the airport. Some remix which includes the 'words to describe this girl' song playing. Sod it. I am at that 'not blatantly drunk but I am drunk' stage. I just got another beer and am sure it will be my last even if they don't shut first. I do plan to walk home. It's cool, as per earlier I had no major plans for tomorrow so I might as well indulge in the nightlife while I can do it with no stress.
Bloke I met (we swapped cards but I won't dig his name out just now) said the economic recession has bypassed South America. Also that Brazilians find the whole continent, except Chile, cheap.
Some people are just coming in. I feel they are even more desperate than me :-) but it's cool and justifies my presence.
If it makes any sense I am a bit pissed but in a sort of 'cotton wool' sense. I know I am percieving things a bit incorrectly (tho am still sober enough to type this out with minimal hassle), but when I look out at the world it is a bit soft-edged. I doubt this will make sense even to Future Steve so fk knows what my hypothetical other readers will make of it. But what the hell. I take a certain pride in my keyboard skills remaining intact at this stage.
Looking at the TV, I am seeing double. I have had this before. It's cool I can be drunk without being amazingly obnoxious (yes, I can do that too, mates, fuck off) but it's also freakily disturbing. As I look at the screen on my phone to write this my vision is perfect but the TV is a different matter. At the same time, I don't automatically get double vision from the TV. Ah, the wierdness of legal drugs...
04:15. Just got back. There seemed to be a lot of keys behind the desk so I may have been out-partied by some people :-) but I suspect there is another explanation. Anyway, I intend to eschew surfing, go to bed now and be up in time for the 12-3 buffet I planned to visit after my major walk today/yesterday (they don't reopen til 8 and at 6:20 I was not in the mood to wait.) To bed...
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