colonia de sacramento, uruguay is a small little town on the coast and just an hour ferry ride awauy from buenos aires.
we spent our time just wandering around the “old town” and fending off the crazy mosquito population.
the streets are tree lined with the best trees a tree lined street could have. they were tall and pretty and provided total shade while still letting in light through the leaves.
although the town was pretty, the day was not.
it was quite gloomy and rained on and off.
to keep out of the rain, and rest for a bit, we hung out in the oldest chruch in uruguay for a little awhile.
it was just us and a stray dog who was napping against a pew.
after leaving uruguay we headed to mar del plata, argentina where we are now.
it´s a beach town (the largest in argentina) and aparently within a month´s time it will be truely high season and the beaches will be ´comically´ (two tour books i read used this word) packed!
but for now, it is bustling, but not overwhealmingly full.
we planned to spend our three days here on the beach, but today is overcast and the wind makes it cool, so today is not a beach day.
however, yesterday was and oh boy do we regret it!
the sun was HOT and i was bugging and bugging (nagging, he would say) michael to put on sunscreen. he promissed me he would use sunscreen the following day, but he just didn´t feel like at that moment in time. in fact, his exact words were, “could you just not bug me about sunscreen for one day of my life?”
humph!
so i didn´t say another word, and what do you know, this is what happened:
my hand is there for reference to a normal skin tone color.
eeeeeeek!
i´d love to say i emerged unburnt, but i didn´t put on my sun sunscreen until we got to the beach, and apparently the 1/2 hour walk we took before settling in took its toll.
i was wearing a strapless swimsuit on the beach, so you can clearly see this burn was achieved before i ever even took off my dress! not nearly as bad as michaels, but not good at all.
we are both hurting some today. our skin is very hot to the touch… even through our shirts you can feel the heat. neither of us burn easily (i´ve really only burned this badly once in my life and it was in 1994!) so this was not expected. 🙁 more sunscreen next time. lots, lots more.
today, in the interest of staying out of the sun (the sun that isn´t even out anyways) we went to the museo del mar and saw a collection of over 30,000 sea shells! i thought it was pretty cool.
michael was interested for about 1 minue (that´s about 500 shells per second).
every shell was labeled with it´s proper name and origen
these were all from california:
and we even found one from tampa, florida!
so what if it was the ugliest one of the 30,000?
…
tonight we are going to go to the movies. they are playing the christmas carol in english and in 3d ín a theatre down the street so that´s where we´ll be.
it will be the first hint we´ve had that christmas is approaching since we´ve been here.
yes, every once in a while we´ll spot a fake cristmas tree, or a wreath, but it´s not anything like the fuss going on in america.
there is not an explosion of christmas. no songs in every store, no chirstmas lights in the streets, no family christmas specials on tv.
it will be the first hint we´ve had that christmas is approaching since we´ve been here.
yes, every once in a while we´ll spot a fake cristmas tree, or a wreath, but it´s not anything like the fuss going on in america.
there is not an explosion of christmas. no songs in every store, no chirstmas lights in the streets, no family christmas specials on tv.
argentina seems more focused on the start of summer than the coming of christmas.
a strange thing in a country that is 90% roman catholic, right?
tomorrow night we travel, by bus, to puerto madryn.
it´s about a 20 hour journey.
this is michael´s performace, for your pleasure, of how he feels at the begining of such a bus ride…
…and at the end.
