Weekend at the Beach

As some of you may know, this past weekend was a long one in Uruguay. Somehow this country missed the memo that Independence Day is every Fourth of July and decided that it should be the 24th of August-weird I know (Thanks Thomas). Now, industrious little exchange students that we are, we capitalized on this book keeping bungle.

The initial plan was Iguazu. If you don´t know what Iguazu Falls is, you probablly should...google it. That said, there were a few complications-primarily that George Dubya Bush and Lula(The President of Brazil, where apparently every name sounds like a soccer player) don´t get along too well. Because of this, American´s have the pleasure of paying about 200 dollars more than anyone else before entering the exotic homeland of Samba, Futebol, and legions of transvestites.

A lot of us didn´t want to pay, as we have a whole continent at our fingertips, Brazil can wait. Now, the ironic(ironical?) twist is that I may end up having to(getting to) go to Brazil to play soccer in October. That will, however, certainly be ´vale la pena´ or worth the hassle in my book. More info on this later.

I´m not entirely sure which of the mad Spanish genius´ came up with the plan, but it was decided that a trip would be made to Rocha. A beach. Now remember, it´s winter here. So we rented a beach house(for about 5 dollars per person per day) and set off.

When we got to Rocha my expectations were immediately exceeded. The beach was awesome and the water was beautiful with some really impressive waves. The house was huge. Think Tuscan villa.

So basically we passed the next few days walking up and down the beaches, climbing up a lighthouse, finding dead penguins on the beach, watching a few guys surfing and a baby walrus(apparently, it looked like a seal to me, but I´m told such things don´t live here, only Walrus´/Walri[if that's not the plural form it should be]) swimming. We played a bit of soccer on the beach, sampled the local nightlife-which was ´about as cool as taking a shower with your dad´, and played a good bit of card games and what not. Oh, and I did the whole Polar Bear thing or whatever and jumped in the water with another American. I may never do that again. All in all, a weekend well spent, and not a lot of money spent.

This really requires pictures, I´ll see what I can do when I get home.