Antarctica via Buenos Aires-Montevideo-Buenos Aires

On Monday morning, Mike and I boarded an Aerolineas Argentinas flight to the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo. We were both enchanted with the idea of visiting Uruguay and seeing how it compared to BA. We both thought it was a charming city. Built along the ocean with miles of beaches and a cute little old/modern town with lots of shops and cafes.

One of the interesting highlights was Mike and I sitting at an outdoor café just having a café overlooking one of the main plazas there. Near our table was a decidedly crazy guy who kept murmuring to us and calling out to us, though we kept ignoring him. Finally, Mike went to the American Airlines office across the plaza to see if he could change his ticket, thus leaving me alone with “Loco Paco”, the name I give him now. As soon as Mike left he increased his barrage of taunts and calls to me, though the waiter tried to shoo him away. I figured he could be dangerous and did not want to end up in a fight just days before the race, so I figured I could maybe try to somewhat befriend him so that he would not start anything. Therefore I decided to buy him a beer through the waiter. (Of course later Mike said this was only fueling the fire, as he was already well plastered with booze to go with his normal craziness). As soon as I did this, he kept moving his seat closer to me, until he was sitting next to me at the table. He spoke no English and my Spanish was at a beginner touristic level. So, he would try to talk to me in some kind of murmuring Spanish and I tried to keep him at bay and make sure he did not try to get violent with a gringo (me).

When Mike came back a while later, he was kind of surprised to see Paco sitting at my table next to me. We then each kind of disappeared into the crowd for some shopping and to find a good restaurant. We were recommended from the concierge at the Radisson hotel near the square to a certain Parilla (La Brassa) just a short walking distance from hotel. We were tight on time, as we had to catch our flight back that night or risk missing the plane early the next day to Ushuaia and the ship. But the lunch took forever … it was at least 20 minutes before they even took our order and it was another 30 minutes (it felt like it anyway) before the brought our grilled sirloins and side dishes. As usual, the meat dishes in Argentina and Uruguay is of the best beef, and they serve it in huge slabs on the plate, which we mostly finished. We were able to make the flight, and back in the hotel by 800 pm for an evening snack and drink/coffee at the local bar/café. We also had to pack and repack everything that night to be ready to drop off the luggage at 300 a.m. the next day.

We had a great time, and we left Loco Paco behind us where he still might be sitting at the same cafe!