Man (and Woman's) best friend

So here I lay beside Alec in the tent in Carmelo, Uruguay. The rain is falling pretty hard and our rain fly is doing really well. I am all bundled up, typing away on my iPod.
We arrived yesterday around 6:30pm on a boat ride, The Cacciola, that traveled from Buenos Aires to Carmelo.


Upon arrival, we easily went through customs, which i have found to be so much more pleasant outside of the U.S.
We walked a little over a mile from the port carrying our 40+ pound packs to a campsite.


Along the way we saw horses and carts, many stray dogs, lots of joggers (as if there were some olympics in training for the people of Uruguay), and many people on mopeds. We found a campground/yacht club along the river with not one inhabitant except for the camp guard and his dog.
We spoke what Spanish we knew and secured a place to sleep for the night with promise to pay in the morning. We headed down the river to pick a spot, escorted by the campgrounds keeper, the dog. He stayed with us as we set up camp, made some dinner, and drank mate...warming up for what we could tell was going to be a cold night. Before bed, we stood along the beach and enjoyed an incredible view.
I have always loved camping! The one thing that has always made me feel uneasy though, are the many foreign sounds around you while you sleep. Last night i heard several. Ducks quacking (with an Uruguaian accent:)...seriously), dogs barking at the ducks (universal dog
sounds:)), street lights buzzing, mopeds wizzing by (we are at the end
of the road, by the doc, which seems to be lovers lane), the flapping of the rain fly (sounded like our new dog scratching its flees), and a couple of boats running along the river...not the most quiet of
campsites.
The best part were the sounds we awoke to. Literally, 30 feet from our heads, construction workers began digging a trench at what must
have been 7am. I kept hearing them run back and forth past our tent to the river. Alec awoke before I and went outside and instantaneously befriended them.


I was impressed at how well he communicated and talked of our travels. We discovered that the workers were not only digging, but also fishing at the same time...running past our tent to the river whenever there was movement on their pole. Catfish was the special of the day; tiny ones at that. With much more grace...just across the river we saw 3 different birds swoop down and catch huge fish on the first try. It was incredible!!!
After breakfast, having been assured by the honest workers that our belongings would be safe in their care, we walked into town. Along the way, we unintentionally befriended two more dogs that walked with us all the way to the city center; barking at pedestrians and other
dogs, running alongside cars and mopeds, paciently waiting for us as
we stopped for any reason...we both had some anxiety over the situation feeling a responsibility to stop them from following us and bothering people on the street; as if they were our own. It wasn't until we came out of the bus terminal where we inquired about our next trip to Colonia de Sacremento (tomorrows trip), where we found our new guardians had found another couple to take care of:)
Which brings us back to now, in the tent (which was still here when we
got back), with the rain harder than ever. The forth strike of lightning has just informed us that the storm has moved from 14 miles to 3 miles overhead. Wow...that was insane. For us both, we just experienced the craziest wind that blew our tent inwards. Its size was
reduced from its already 2 person tininess in half. We survived...well
at least if this blog is posted, we made it through the night:)





-Amani & Alec