A Night in Montevideo

By Lawrence Selby - Guest blogger traveling in Montevideo. In a previous blog entry, I talked a bit about the Ciudad Vieja. Some areas are completely renovated and gentrified. In other areas, the buildings are still completely blown out and abandoned. In between, there's a sort of ghetto "fringe" area. The police were located on the border of the "fringe" area and a blown out section of the old city. The police station occupied the ground floor of a very old and shabby looking row house. We spent the next several hours talking with the police and filling out paperwork about the incident. During the ordeal, a few girls arrived at the station. Ladrones (thieves) had apparently snatched the purse of a pretty girl while she was walking in the Plaza Independencia. Meanwhile, Enrique was pestering me to talk with the girls. "Don't let them go! Talk to them in English. Ask for their phone numbers!" he said. Meanwhile, I'm practically falling asleep on my feet. It was 4 am when we finished at the police station and walked to the public hospital. The public hospital was only a few blocks away from the police station, though not in the direction of the gentrified area. It seemed to be located in the middle of an abandoned part of the city. The public health care system here is, I'm told, free. Unfortunately, the hospital (or maybe clinic is a better word) that I saw was not a place where most people would want to spend much time unless they were in dire straits. The building was gloomy and depressing and smelled sharply of disinfectant. I saw a few wheelchairs that looked like they had been salvaged from a junk yard. The waiting room was packed with people sleeping on benches and some homeless people on the floor. Uruguay doesn't have a large black population though the majority of the patients here were black or mestizo (mixed black and European background). It was around 5:30 am by the time that we finished there and the doctors at the clinic had a chance to take a quick look at Adrian's head and Enrique's eye. They handed them a few papers and gave them a pat on the back. By this time I'm completely exhausted and understanding and speaking no Spanish at all. Enrique meanwhile, is ready to hit another club. "The clubs don't close until 7 am!" he says. I ask him what time he woke up and tells me around 4 pm the previous afternoon. In need of a serious caffeine infusion, we walk to the Plaza Independencia and go to a restaurant for pizza and coffee. While in the restaurant, Enrique asks if we should go to a club in Pocitos or back to the Ciudad Vieja the next day. I nod my head, yes. The evening mercifully ends after I catch a taxi and make it back home at around 7 am. Things could definitely have been worse.