File under: "And how many people can say that?"

We saw a pretty decent sunset and an almost-full moon in Minas, Uruguay this evening. Neat.

Minas is a smallish town about two hours north of Montevideo.

Kim was interested in visiting because they have a brewery; the brewery is right next to Parque Salus and the "rolling Minas hills" were supposedly a nice change from Montevideo so it sounded good to me too.

I was grumpy this morning. This hostel is ridiculous (I've dealt with no hot water and long waits for showers and mediocre-at-best breakfasts but NO water? in a major metropolitan city no less? come ON!! and that pesky mosquito all night!) and I just wanted to get the hell out of here and be on our way. No coffee to be found until Porky's in Minas, but we found a nice pastry shop on the way to a taxi.

this is actually a coffee shop

Pastry shop guy was pleasant and offered to speak English (have I mentioned that Uruguayan - and Buenos Aires - Spanish is very difficult for me to understand?). Win #1.

Minas Tourist Information lady was SUPER nice, spoke slowly and I understood her perfectly - win #2.

We got everywhere we intended to go, Minas had a surprisingly good town map, and we even got an enthusiasic thumbs up from a bus attendant when we confirmed our final destination. Win #3.

thumbs down to smoking and spitting though

The bus from Minas to Montevideo was very late - unusual here - but it came and dropped us at the Montevideo terminal instead of by the side of the highway. Win #4.

The brewery was just a brewery, though - no tours, no samples, just a large beer-making factory that seems to employ a quarter of the population of Minas and keep the rest imbibed, if all the town bars are any indication.

And the green space was just a tiny green space at the end of a long walk. But there were wild parakeets, a beautiful fall tree and the aforementioned sunset...

... and communication and transportation wins and later, an almost-full moon, so...

... all in all, a good day.