After several days of canceled flights due to the volcanic eruption in Chile, I found a new route to Montevideo through Buenos Ares, Argentina. I arrived in the Buenos Ares Airport at midnight and wasn’t excited about my 8 hour overnight layover in the airport. After I exited the plane, I was corralled to the immigration checkpoint and found out that the in-transit area was closed to passengers because the airport shuts down at night. They wanted me to go through customs and enter the country and come back for my flight in the morning. This was a HUGE problem because Argentina has a $160 reciprocity fee for Americans.

Long story short, Argentina can’t FORCE someone to pay $160 and enter a country against their will. After some arguing, they reopened the security checkpoint for in-transit passengers and assigned me my very own security guard to sit with me in the empty airport all night. My guard’s name was Francisco and he was great to hang out with, even though we had to communicate through google translate. We spend the whole night attempting to talk to each other and his friend also joined us for a bit. It was a very unusual travel night and I won’t soon be forgetting the night I spend in a closed airport alone with my own personal security guard.

It was time to reunite with the ole travel buddy, MARGE! We chose to meet up in the city of Montevideo, Uruguay. Montevideo is a large city, but not as vibrant and lively as some that we have visited. This gave us the perfect opportunity catch up on some to-dos that we have been meaning to tackle. A lot of people don’t realize how much planning and work goes into this trip. Yes, we are having the time of our lives, but we still have to put a lot of time into our trip planning so our trip runs smoothly. The relaxed atmosphere of our hostel in the slow town of Montevideo provided the perfect atmosphere to get our Brazil Visas, book flights, plan Machu Picchu, general travel routes, and some budgeting.

The main thing we needed to start planning around was our friends that are coming to visit, all TEN of them. I cannot express how excited I am for the group of friends we are about to pick up throughout South America. The remainder of our trip will be Marge and I as mother ducks with our wings spread out as far as possible sprinting through South and Central America. Along our journey, we will be swopping up our friends under our wings and dropping them off at their final destination. Below are the friends that already have their tickets booked and the cities we are picking them up.

Rio- Susanne

La Paz, Bolivia- Buddy

Cusco, Peru- Katie, Katie, and Grace

Quito, Ecuador- Ben and Roze

Bogota, Colombia- Jack and Luke

Panama City, Panama- Garrett

After some planning and relaxing, it was time to have some fun. Our hostel had an incredible atmosphere and it was very easy to meet people. Before we knew it, we had friends from all over the world ready to hit the small bar street and learn salsa dances at our hostel. It was a great couple nights of meeting other travelers and swapping stories over a few beers.

After dropping our passports off at the Brazilian Consulate to obtain our visas we had several days to kill before they were ready. We packed our bags and headed to the small town of Colonia. There isn’t much to do in Colonia but to walk around and relax, so that’s what we did. Colonia is a historical town full of charm and character sitting on the end of a peninsula on the Rio de la Plata River. We spend our time eating burgers and ice cream and then rounding out our days wandering the streets or relaxing by the water’s edge. Eating burgers and ice cream sounds like the most American thing we could do, but they are SO good in South America. Rather than focusing on the largest hunk of meat like in America, these unique bovine delicacies focused on the toppings. There were around 10ish toppings to choose from at each burger stand. Every time they would ask which toppings I wanted, I would just gesture to every colorful bowl and say “todo” or “all” in Spanish. I would then be handed a perfectly hand-crafted burger mounded with everything from pickled peppers to a basil mayo sauce.

After our side trip to Colonia, it was time to head back to Montevideo to pick up our Passports with our new Brazilian Visas! We had one more night in our homey hostel that we had previously stayed at and then jumped on a 12 hour bus ride to Brazil.