"It's like they took Paris and fucked it up."

This is my paraphrase of Alex's summation of Montevideo. I disagree. This is actually a beautiful city, if a little rough around the edges. OK, a lot rough around the edges. But still, the people couldn't be nicer here, and we've again had several top shelf meals. Granted, the National History Museum was possibly the most boring, stupid museum I've ever been in, but that's the difference between free museums in the United States and free museums in Uruguay.

One of the most difficult things in this country is the pace at which they speak Spanish. It is one of the fastest in the world, and it has made keeping up something of a challenge (even more than usual, that is). We took a tour of Teatro Solis, which is a beautiful mixed-use theater in the Old City. The English tour was UR$40, or about $1.80 (I'll let Peter fact-check that). The Spanish tour was free. We obviously took the Spanish tour. Partly due to complete indifference as to what he was saying and partly due to his unbelievably rapid speech, I don't really know anything about Teatro Solis that I didn't know before the tour. I just nodded and walked, nodded and walked.

Dylan and I have agreed that we need to bring down the pace of spending a little bit. Sr. Gallo is, understandably, much more willing to spend the extra buck in any given situation since he's only in SA for a total of ten days. Dylan and I are significantly over our daily expenditure target, though we think we can bring it back down easily once we get out of BA and start cooking a few meals at hostels every once in a while.

Dylan and Alex are getting ready, then we're taking a 3-hour hydrofoil across the river back to BA. We'll be in BA through Monday morning (Alex says goodbye Sunday afternoon), and then we head west toward Cordoba.