Travelling in a fried-out combie: Flash Floods

Well something had to give didn´t it!

After nearly 5 weeks of trouble-free travelling the first spanner has gone in the proverbial works. H and I had planned to leave La Paloma today and head for Montevideo. Last night I had successfuly asked the rather creepy guy (Aldo) who seems to run our hotel if he could order us a taxi for midday (in my finest Spanish) and we were all set to get the 1pm bus out of here.

At about 8am this morning it began to rain. And when I mean rain it absolutely pissed it down for about an hour. It was so loud it woke me up and whilst I was lying in bed the thought did enter my mind that we could well be stuck here if it didn´t stop. Luckily it did. So we packed our stuff up, checked out, got into the taxi and went to the bus station. We hadn´t pre-booked our 1pm bus tickets as we thought we wouldn´t need to, mainly because there is no-one here to go to Montevideo. Wrong. I was told there were no seats available. We had just hit our first problem as the next bus wasn´t due to go until 4.20pm. So we settled down into the crap plastic seats and set about playing shithead. Then the rain started again. And it went on and on and on. And then the ceiling began to leak. By this point H and I had taken over a table next to a cafe which had one of those umbrellas on it. When we first sat there H wondered why they would need an umbrella up indoors. Now we knew. So we played cards for the best part of three and a half hours (she now leads by 44 games to 32....grrrr!!) and the rain came down both in and outside the bus station. We noticed the cafe didn´t seem to sell beer but there was a guy over the road in some sort of hut that looked like he may sell some. I borrowed an umbrella and made a mad dash for it. It was the worlds smallest brolly and I got pretty wet but at least we had beer.

It didn´t stop raining all afternoon and I had never ever seen rain like it, for such a long period of time. It was like being in a movie. But whilst the rain came down it didn´t occur to me that we could actully be stuck here. Afterall buses seemed to have been coming and going for most of the afternoon. By 4.15pm we were glad to board our bus and finally get out of this place. I had also been bitten about five or six times by bastard mosquito´s, and we were both looking forward to getting to Monty. So off we went. We´d driven to the edge of town when it became pretty apparent that something quite serious was happening. Part of a road was blocked off by this river of flowing water and a lot of houses seemed to have water runing into them. It wasn´t like Boscastle or anything as serious as that, but it was pretty spooky seeing that sort of stuff happen to peoples houses. We managed to drive a little further and got to a roundabout with a signpost for Montevideo, but the driver turned around and began to head back toward the bus station. H and I looked at each other. I think we knew what was coming next but we tried to convince ourselves that he was going to go another way. Before we knew it we were back at the bus station and everyone was getting off the bus. Gutted. Now in this kind of situation you really wish you could talk fluent Spanish, but off I went to the ticket office undeterred and tried to find out what was going on. Well a lot of spansh was going on, that´s for sure. H and I are the only gringo´s here, but I did manage to get some info out of a woman who told me to stay in the bus station in case the bus goes. Looking round it was apparent that that is what everyone else was doing, but it was also apparent it was still pissing down, and being a Science teacher in a former life, I knew that there was no chance of a flood stopping if it was still raining. H and I changed our tickets for the bus that leaves at 9am tomorrow but we did hang on for an hour or so (just in case!). Afterall the bus station had become our new home (being homeless I guess you could say we did live there for an afternoon). We eventually decided to call it a day and waitied ages for a taxi to take us back to the haunted hotel. When we turned up ¨Aldo¨ wasn´t there to greet us (no doubt he will laugh when he sees us later) but we managed to check in again, this time to a different room. The place really gives H the creeps but it gave me a bloody electric shock. The wiring here is rubbish - they had electric showers in Punta and the wires weren´t too far away from the running water which made showering interesting. But while we were in Hotel Embeleco contemplating fate and wondering what we did to deserve being suck here, we noticed the lights flicker. I went to turn the main light off, which is attached to one of those precarious fans that hang from the ceiling and look like they could fall out of their mounting at any point, and got one of those tingles all the way up my arm. 220v. Nice! H laughed.

Anyway, we are here. Still. H is very pissed off. I am also pissed off but I have never been trapped anywhere by an Act of God so it´s one to tell the kids I suppose, one day. Mind you, if it doesn´t stop raining we could well be here for days.

......I have just looked out the window. IT HAS STOPPED. Eight and a half hours after it started. Bring it on.

So all being well we will finally leave La Paloma and get to Montivideo tomorrow. If nothing else La Paloma has been good for MSNing, emailing and blogging!!

Being a devout digital camera fan I managed to capture some key moments of todays events.

This is the view from my balcony at 8am this morning.