Hola Buquebus

As great as Montevideo is, I am ready to leave. Jason has hit his cabeza at least twice on the roof of our tiny attic room and split his foot open from the flip flops he has been wearing. I have at least 15 bug bites on my body with a sweet sunburn on top. It is time for us to leave Montevideo.

We have an 11:45am Buquebus to catch and leave our hostel at 10am. We board the Ciudad Vieja bus and head to port Montevideo. The Buquebus terminal is at the back of a large active port and of course we did not know that. So we wandered around until about 11am and almost got hit by a Buquebus transfer bus. We finally find the terminal and buy our tickets rather easily. The ticket guy asks if we have bought our reciprocity tax and we confirm we had. Of course my bag does not fit in the carry on box (UGH I need to get new carry on luggage) and we wait in line to check it. Again, the baggage guy asks if we have paid the reciprocity fee and we again confirm we had. Jason is freaking out a bit about the time because it is now about 11:30. I assure him that the ferry does not leave on time (SA runs on a very approximate schedule). We are waiting in line for customs when I realize I left the damn reciprocity tax papers in the bag that I just checked. Ugh I hate checking baggage. I run back to the baggage dude and he runs to find our bags. He locates Jason's bag but not mine. This is just great. We have no other option but to get back in the customs line and see how it goes. The Uruguay and Argentina customs people are right next to each other and we check out of Uruguay no problem and the Argentina woman asks for the tax. I explain that it is in our other bag and I am so sorry. “Not a problem, please show it next time.” Por que? It was that easy. No you have to buy it twice, sucks to be you. And we cleared Argentina customs. Classic example of you win some and you lose some, and this was a win.

We are about to board the Francisco when everyone starts putting on these shoe covers. It is the strangest thing. Surely this is just some sort of custom thing. Wrong. The boat has light blue carpeting and they make you wear these shoe condoms to protect it. How ridiculous! They look so silly and I wonder if this would fly in the States. Surely Americans would give the big FU and walk all over the carpet with their dirty American shoes.