Back to the more modern and expensive city - Montevideo

After 19 hour of comfortable bus trip, we reached Montevideo in the morning. It took us some time to find a free internet line in the bus station to get the skype and contact our new CS host Pedro. Not sure about the arrival time I said we would be there at 4pm, we turned out having 4 hours to wait for him back from work. It was kind of the security person who let us put down the backpacks covered and we went out for a walk. His place was near to the bus station and there was a co-operative supermarket, which ran in a special way with cheaper mechandizing so that they can sell product in cheaper price. People in pension and subsidy could join membership for discounted shopping. Certainly it could not compare to farmer’s market, as we later found out, but it was an acceptable choice in this expensive-to-live city (a litre of beer cost U$50 ~USD2.5, compared to Paraguay costing around USD2).

Finally we met Pedro, he just moved to the new place for a few months. As an IT professional, his home had what we mostly want : wifi. We could have stayed at his home for a whole morning updating our blog, contacting friends and family in Hong Kong, finding the next couch-surfing, the cheapest cross-atlantic flight ticket if possible etc. He also had two bikes that we had a good afternoon riding a bike along the coast. But before the coast we had to ride along busy road that was not easy for bike-newbie like Maria. She also gave me a hard time putting the chain back to her bike after doing something which a biker doesn’t do : changing gear and pedal backward while standing. My hands were all black after this, one good thing about the consequence was that I needed to cook that night. It was steak in Pedro’s kitchen which only had a microwave oven with grill function. We did improvise on that the first night to make a dinner for five by making fried rice and chicken (I was still proud of that).

We stayed at Pedro’s place for two more nights, which was a little unexpectedly short in our and his views, but we had another host offering a place in Libertad and we would like to see more people, so we went. Our stay with Pedro was comfortable and happy, with his friendliness and considerateness. Another day when we came out to the downtown and got late after tango, he was willing to let us stay for a night so that we could save some transportation back to the suburb. We wish him a good living in the new place and the home improvement projects (such as the projector, kitchen stove and others) go well.