Staying warm and dry in Montevideo

Weather-wise, Uruguay has been downright miserable. On Friday, I planned to explore Montevideo. It was cold, gray, and sometimes rainy. The kind of day that makes you want to sit inside with a good book on a cozy sofa, but when you´re living in hostels, this isn´t really an option. Besides, how often is one in Uruguay?

On my venture around the city, I stopped in more shops than usual, just to get out of the cold. Or the rain, if that´s what it was doing at the time. Montevideo is a beatiful city, even with a gray background. The architecture makes it look like a stand-in for Gotham City. I wandered in and out of museums and shops and beautiful buildings that seemed to come straight from Europe, including the Theatro Solis, the city´s main theater, and poked around until someone told me to get lost (which no one ever did), so I opened a door and found myself in the theater equivalent of a luxury box. Very fancy theater, could be straight out of Vienna. I found a cafe with some tasty hot chocolate to warm myself up, then spent the evening at the hostel, chatting with the other guests on the rooftop bar, where I learned they were even forecasting SNOW for the next day. This is a very, very unusual cold snap for this region of the world. That´s like predicting snow in Georgia in late March.

It did not, however, snow on Saturday, it just rained a very cold rain all day. I went with a new German friend to Punte del Este, which is THE beach resort in Uruguay in the summer. No, it´s not summer, but we wanted to go anyway. Somehow, she managed to get us a 20% discount on our bus tickets, even though she only asked for 10%. Too bad I can´t keep her around a bit longer. As soon as we got off the bus, we saw the Los Dedos sculpture in the sand. (My picture didn´t turn out that well. No blue sky.) I realized that just two weeks ago, I was dipping my toes in the Pacific, and now here I was, looking out at the Atlantic. My multiple layers of clothing told me that dipping my toes in at this juncture might actually cause them to fall off.

This morning, the sun was actually kinda-sorta out, and it wasn´t as cold as the previous two days, so I went for a walk to take pictures of some things I hadn´t bothered to take pictures of before. When I arrived at the Plaza Independencia, there was a section of the street blocked off. First, I noticed a group of people wrapped in blankets. Then lights. Then cameras. Then a street sign indicating 42nd St. Then a... NYC taxi? In Montevideo? The people in blankets were actors, (dressed for warmer NY weather, I suppose) and they had attempted to make this corner of Montevideo a stand in for New York City. For a movie, for tv, for a Uruguayan telenovella, I have no idea. I stood around and watched for a bit, but not much was happening. I got excited when the actors started shedding their blankets, and a woman pulled out a bullhorn, but then something held them up, and the blankets went on again, and I got bored. The women all wore high heels, the men business suits and overcoats, and they found a few people to make it racially diverse. I kept thinking maybe they would point to me and say "You! American! We need you in this shot!," but I was apparently not meant for Uruguayan stardom. Maybe next time.