The Giant´s Cupboard

Arriving in Montevideo, Uraguay, was something of a reverse culture shock with a feel of Europe about it, but not quite. In fact it was all a little odd really!
The country has just over 3 million people, and is somewhat smaller than New Zealand. It has a great soccer team who won the Copa America once again only yesterday. The population is predominantly white, they speak Spanish and have a layed back attitude amply demonstarted by the way they sip a ´mate´tea mash through a silver straw from a hollowed out gourd which young and old alike typically carry around the streets with them. They build roads like the Romans - dead straight.
Montevideo is a large cosmopolitan city with a great bus network, little traffic and amazing architecture - there are plenty of amazing eclectic and pre neo-classical monsters mixed up with aweful 1960s concrete and glass - a bit like Gotham City meets Croydon! Occaionally a horse and cart clip-clops down the main street.
While in a cafe having chicken curry (a hunk of roast chicken with 2 pots of spices on the side) Sarah learnt that there was a choir and concert in the amazing recently renovated Teatro Solis that night and the tickets were nearly sold out. Being starved of classical culture for so long, she dashed across to the box office and came back with 2 tickets for a private box! The theatre was grand with 5 high rows of boxes and plush red velvet everywhere. Our little box was simply amazing. We were treated to a great concert from the Montevideo Philharmionic and a 70 strong choir from the USA. Sarah then told me how much the tickets were - 7 dollars each!
We stayed in an ancient hotel with our tiny bedroom having an enormously tall doorway and incredibly high ceiling with a distant fan in the middle. It was just like sleeping in a giants cupoard, as Sarah put it, and felt most odd.
One afternoon, starving, we opted for the famed Parrilla (a super juicy BBQ cooking method) in a huge warehouse full of dozens of smoking grills near the port. We had The Works and slogged through endless meat, then through the black puddings but gave the ´guts´and ´artery´ a miss. They certainly like to use every bit of the beast. The hide is used for handbags, purses, footballs and shoes but is chiefly used to hold the cow together. (as they say!)
Feeling a little exhausted we bused west and rested up in Colonia for a few days - a lovely old Portuguse fortified settlement where we enjoyed the company of a fair share of nutters in the hostel. There was an American guy, Osiris, who was gathering seed and exploring the coast by kayak to find land to establish the New Jerusalem colony, and there was an older couple who´d quit good jobs for 6 months to travel the world. After a few days rest the older couple were ready to board the ferry to cross the River Plate and face big, brash Buenos Aires. Eeek!