Weronika On Aventura

It sounded cool. An eco village without electric connection and running water, dependent on solar energy. You get there on special vehicles that drive you along the beach. A local colony of sea lions and a lovely lighthouse, no internet access, very romantic. IT WAS HELL ON EARTH, THANK GOD I ONLY BOOKED ONE NIGHT. The hostel I stayed at had the smallest rooms I've ever seen - my bag barely fit in. The guy at the reception was Polish and there served vegetarian Pad Thai. The sheets were ripped. The sand was everywhere. The shower facilities were... Very limited. So far not too bad, apart from the tiniest, hottest rooms with ripped sheets, but whatever, I have my own pillow case. The evening was relatively pleasant. In places like this you hope to meet some nice strangers to share some fun times with, but unfortunately in this location I didn't seem to click with anyone, so I wandered around looking at what was happening in the different hostels. I watched a nice puppet perfor...

Uruguay is not a country that was originally on my trip radar, but I found out that you could get here by a quick ferry ride from Buenos Aires so I thought why not! And I'm very glad I did. Even though outside of Montevideo the country mostly seems to have one type of tourist attraction - beaches - and I'm currently not in beach mood, I'm glad I came here because I found out many interesting things about a country I previously knew nothing about. Did you know, for example, that Uruguay has one of the strongest economies of South America (and it's also very expensive) and probably the most progressive society? Weed, gay marriage and abortion are legal. There's about 3.5 million people and 14 million cows. Uruguayans get born with a mate thermos under their armpit - you see them sipping their precious drink everywhere: walking around, driving, on the bus, at work, at home... It came as a surprise to me that they're also the biggest drinkers of whiskey in the wo...