We've just got back from Uruguay. Montevideo is alot slower, and friendlier, than BsAs. Near the port, there's almost literally a policeman on every corner, and you only have to stand there looking mildly bemused for them to come over and offer help.

It's also on a peninsula, so there's water on three sides. It was nice to see the sea again, which you never really can in Buenos Aires (well, strictly speaking it's the river, but it's basically the Atlantic Ocean). The place is full of dilapidated Art Deco architecture, which is pretty cool. And some really reallyugly buildings too. We were staying near the Palais de something or other, which was, according to hour host, built on the site of the confiteria where Firpo adapted Rodriguez's La Cumparsita from a march to a tango.

Interestingly, we also came near to having an opportunity to see the 'Carnival Callings' in Montevideo - this is a parade of carnival teams down a main street, all extremely flamboyant, dressed in team colours, and accompanied by booming Candombe. It turns out that the word for one of these teams is cumparsa, and so a small one would be una cumparsita. (the reason we only came close to seeing this instead of actually seeing it is that unbeknownst to us, and it seems, our host, you had to buy a ticket to be allowed in to the streets they'd closed off).

Our hotel room cost $1040 Uruguayan Pesos for two nights, which I was quite alarmed about. Until I discovered that this was about $50NZ. It took a little while to get used to seeing 3-digit prices on menus! The hotel we stayed stayed in was originally built by some president or other who built it for his mistress.

There's less tango in Montevideo, but we still managed to dance the night away for both the nights we were there. One of the milongas we went to (Lo de Margot) is just somebody's house. But almost every night, she has tango music playing until dawn and people just come over and dance. It was a nice intimate atmosphere, and dancing was generally very elegant, although a very open embrace - looking very Chichoish at times. Alot of music I'd never heard before, which was nice too.

We went to an outdoor milonga, where they just basically dance in the plaza. Pretty cool.

We also went to a terrible 'pick up' joint where they play tango in between sets of cumbia ('pick up' is the same in spanish - levantarse - strange what idioms are cross-linguistic). It was a live band, who were far too loud, but what made the whole experience seem far worse was that we'd gotten up at 6:30 that morning to catch the ferry (some 4 hours earlier than normal!), and had only one meal the entire day. I had low blood sugar before we even left the hotel, so I was losing it by the time we got to this dodgy pickup joint at midnight. I was desperately hungry, couldn't hear anything because of the noise, and couldn't understand what I could hear, so I looked completely dazed and confused, to the great and constant amusement of D who was showing us around.

With more space on daancefloors, and without the 'attitude' of being the world's 'heart' of tango that ou can encounter in BsAs, it was actually quite a pleasant place to dance.