Spending 15 Hours in A Peanut

Wanting to spend one final weekend together before we all went our separate ways, we decided to rent a car and drive to Salto, the second biggest city in Uruguay, 6 hours north of Montevideo.

Thursday night, we made puppy chow (well, the closest we could come to puppy chow) and I finally made the dough for my mom’s cookies using the ingredients she sent me for my Easter basket. Chex cereal doesn’t exist here so we had to use honey flakes. The puppy chow turned out good but unfortunately had a really strong honey flavor. Still good, just different. For the cookies, I started making the precious dough and went to add the eggs only to find out that we didn’t have any. It was 11 at night so we couldn’t go to the stores. We frantically called all of our friends who live close to see if they had two to lend us but no one did. Finally, we found two cracked eggs in a bowl in the fridge. They had been in there for a few days but they were our only option. I finished up the dough and gave everyone specific instructions that eating the dough wasn’t allowed because of the egg situation.

We got up early Friday morning and headed to the car rental. Not long after, we were all loaded up and ready to go. To say the car was small would be a bit of an understatement but luckily, everything and everyone fit pretty comfortably.

We popped in the tunes that Maya had burned onto a CD and hit the road. Our first turn was on a one way road and we were heading the opposite direction. What I mean to say is that we were starting out strong. Soon, without any other hiccups, we were out of Montevideo and on a straight stretch to Salto.

The first and most important order of business we had to take care of was giving our land beast a suiting name. A few were thrown around but when Jeremy mentioned Maní (Peanut in Spanish) we knew we had a winner.

Along the way we played some car games including a highly competitive game of who could roll down and back up their manual window the fastest. I made it to the finals but a fatal slip up cost me the championship.

We stopped at a gas station for about 30 minutes to play some soccer in the middle of the parking lot. IT was a great way to stretch our legs and show off for the first, but certainly not the last time this trip, just how terrible I am at soccer.

After another hour or so of driving, we past a basketball court and stopped there too. We only had a soccer ball but it worked great as a makeshift basketball. It was the first time I’ve shot hoops in a really long time and it was a great way to redeem myself from the soccer incident.

After about an hour of playing around, we loaded back up. Our next stop was a gorgeous lake and bridge we stumbled upon. We drove Maní down to the water so he/she (we decided he/she was gender neutral, which is a funnier joke in Spanish because everything you say corresponds to a gender) could appreciate the view too.

It was a great time until we realized we had to back Maní up the landing. I drove while Jeremy, Jonas, Melissa, and Maya pushed, insuring the car didn’t go into the water. Misinterpreting Jeremy’s hand signals, I almost ran over Melissa and Maya who could no longer keep up with the speed. Luckily, there were no causalities and we continued on.

We had passed various signs advertising potatoes so we decided to stop at the next one we saw to pick some up for dinner that night. We ended up in someone's house and learned that they were out.

We finally made it to Salto around 7 that night. We found our cabin on the second trip around the block. It was a cozy little house with an hour who liked to take advantage of the “-ita” and “-ito” in the Spanish language. As we were getting everything squared away, we asked to make sure everything worked alright. Standing next to the stove, Jonas asked, “and the oven works too” and the owner said, “Yeah, of course.”

Flash forward to dinner and the oven isn’t working. I sent a message to the owner asking her if there was something special we had to do to make the oven work (stoves/ovens are different here. The stoves are gas and the ovens are usually electric but they only have 2 settings, on or off, you can’t pick a temperature). I received a message back saying, “actually the oven doesn’t work but there is a microwave, do you know how to use a microwave?” The only major downside to not having an oven was not being able to make the cookie dough I had brought along. We tried making one on the stove and one in the microwave which weren’t our most successful endeavors.

We made chorizo, rice, and sautéed veggies for the dinner. It was amazing. 

After we ate, we headed outside to play some soccer in the street. We literally set up our goals in the middle of the road and I was given the opportunity to once again show off my soccer prowess.

The next morning, after what felt like hours of debating about what to do we split up. Jeremy and Melissa spent time in the center of Salto, walking around and exploring and Jonas, Maya, and I went to a water park. Although it was no Wisconsin Dells, it was really cool to be in a water park that used water from the natural hot springs. It was also really fun just to relax in the hot, non-chlorinated water.  We also had a few races down the water slides and Jonas taught us a secret trick to going faster.

We met back up with Jeremy and Melissa just in time to watch the Uruguayan World Cup game. 

Unfortunately they lost. After the game, we picked up a few essentials and headed back to our cabin. One the way back we spotted a fair. I was driving so I took the executive decision to stop.  We all went on the Ferris wheel where Maya and I spent most of the time trying to take a perfectly timed selfie that included our cart and the one behind us with Jonas and Meli. After the wheel, Jonas, Maya and I did some bumper cars.

After we had our fun, we went back to the cabin for real. Jonas and I went scouting for our Christmas tree. (It was recently the first day of winter here and to get into the winter spirit we decided to celebrate Christmas). Luckily we found a tree with evergreen like branches and broke one off. We then proceeded to decorate it with whatever we could find (AKA garbage) and then named it Charlie Marrón (Charlie Brown, I know, we’re really clever).  We even cut a star out of cardboard and put it on top.

After the tree was decorated, we had another great meal and then headed out for a campfire. 

We roasted marshmallows and Jonas showed us a dessert that he used to do over the fire when he was a kid. You cut open a banana, put in slices of chocolate and then roast it in the fire. It didn’t sound very appetizing to me but it turned out to be delicious.

We spend the rest of the night just chatting around the fire. It was really great, it felt so normal and sometimes I forget what normal feels like.

The next morning, we got up early and headed out with the intentions of spending the morning in Argentina. First, we stopped at a free tour of the dam and water energy plant. I forget what you call it in English.

It was pretty interesting and free!

From there, we drove to the Argentinean border. We had to decide if we wanted to cross the border in the car even though our insurance didn’t work over there of if we wanted to cross by foot and try and hitch hike to the nearest city. When we got to customs, the decision was made for us because we didn’t have the proper paperwork to cross the border with the rented car. We crossed on foot and then luckily, within two minutes we got picked up by a nice couple. We visited a really cute town 15 minutes into the Argentinean side. 

We only had a few hours and everything was closed because it was a Sunday. We found an open ice cream shop and stopped for some goodies. We also watched the second half of the Mexico World Cup Game. Following the ice cream, we walked around for another half an hour until we tried to find a ride back to the border.

We weren’t very successful this time around but we found a taxi that was willing to take all five of us together to the border.

 The car ride home was pretty uneventful. Jonas taught us some Danish phrases, we sang a few songs, played a few games and before we knew it, we were back in Montevideo.