Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Mmm...You can really taste the goat.

Well, country #2 is in the books, as I write this blog entry from Uruguay, from the town of Colonia del Sacramento, a small city across the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires, at a distance of about 35 miles or so. The town has a quaint barrio historico in the Portuguese colonial style, surrounded on three sides by water. The weather hasn´t cooperated like we would have hoped, but we´ve still had a great time exploring this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many of the streets are as they would have been 200 or more years ago, with uneven rocks (quite a trick in today´s weather) and houses lining both sides of the street, in many cases only 15 feet apart. There is an old lighthouse that stands some 30 m above the water, and afforded some great views of the surrounding countryside and the rest of the city, including 5 km of beaches that would have been nice on a better weather day.

The title of the blog entry, for those who aren´t Simpsons fans, is a quote from Homer, and was fitting today, as I tried a local specialty called "chivito," or baby goat. I´ve had to fend of PETA folks all day, but it was in fact quite good. Come to think of it, PETA probably wouldn´t be huge fans of this part of the world in general, as most people seem to be rather carniverous.

A couple of side notes:
1) Birds in Buenos Aires have good aim. I got hit twice yesterday, while Erin got hit once. I´ve now been pooped on by birds on three different continents.
2) Typing over here is a pain. The keyboards are similar enough to seem familiar, but different enough so that all the special characters are changed, and causing one to type all sorts of random characters if not careful. As an example, to type a "@", you have to hit one of the two alt keys, in addition to the 2 key. The other alt key doesn´t work. Go figure. sdñºç.

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