Bernie's Travels: La Pedrera, Uruguay

Katie and I decided to move up the coast from La Paloma to get to a nicer beach. La Pedrera was a perfect choice, beautiful with enough services to live comfortably. Getting there we met a woman on the bus who showed us a hostel way outside of town with distant ocean views. We stayed there then walked down to the beach and later into town. It was a good day on the beach and the town was small but nice. I had some more photos of it but I lost them through a computer glitch.

After our day on the beach and a late lunch in town we made it back to the hostel without much of a plan for dinner. We weren't hungry for most of the night and we figured we could always make the long walk into town if we changed our minds. Two key things happened to make the rest of the evening miserable enough to be entertaining. One, it started pouring down buckets of rain which stunted our will to walk back into town. Two, the six remaining guests at the hostel began to make a meal to die for. One of the guests was a professional chef and spent hours preparing what appeared to be a delicious meal. I talked to them for a while and then Katie joined in. They were friendly and even invited us to take a picture with them. Then the cook gave Katie a taste of the soup - she said it was the best soup she ever had. We eventually retired from the kitchen so as not to appear like dogs waiting for scraps to fall. Besides that, illiciting an impromptu dinner invitation is an art that requires some walking away. In the living room we were watching movies, all the while getting hungrier and hungrier. Occationally we would pass by the kitchen for one thing or another just to torture ourselves. On one of my passes I saw homemade pasta being rolled and cut. Each time Katie or I caught a whiff or glimpse of the delicious food we would moan to each other and openly hope for a dinner invitation. Katie couldn't take it anymore and went to our room to get a few granola bars. We imagined crunching on our granola bars in front them with our sad faces on but we showed enough pride to kept our pathetic dinner a secret. Hours later they started setting the table in the living room where we were now starving and watching "The Departed", a good enough movie to forget hunger pains so long as the food is not directly in your face. We had to get out of there to avoid looking at the beautiful feast. So we went to our room and imagined what there dinner was like as we heard them klink there wine glasses and carry on with happy dinner chatter. I'm sure they were thankful not having to eat within view of our disappointed eyes on their plates while we fumbled with the wrappers of our extra crunchy granola bars.