For lunch today in Montevideo, Joel – unknowingly – ate a pigeon.

Ordering off the meat (carne) menu, he ordered a dish in Spanish that included the word ‘paloma’. It came with onions, mushrooms & fries – and he thought it might be a type of beef. When it came out – little cuts of stringy, oily white meat – we suspected duck, or even a type of pork. I tried a bit, and it wasn’t that nice, but hunger made him gobble it down.

After we paid the bill, Joel was looking through our translation book in Spanish, and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Alli. You won’t guess what I just ate,” Joel hissed at me, his eyes darting towards the grey birds pecking all over the footpath in front in front of us.

“Not…pigeon?!”

He nods slowly. The pigeons on the footpath look up at him, glaring. My tummy rumbles and Joel looks a little white, like he’s going to spit. Today we’ve learnt a valuable lesson – in future we’re going to stick to ‘pollo’ – chicken – or ‘carne roja’ – red meat. This is just one of many lost in translation moments that have happened when we wish we had learnt more Spanish before we arrived in Uruguay.

In the last few days we’ve walked the streets of Rio’s bohemian neighbourhood, Santa Teresa, as well as explored the islands off Paraty and caught a cheap flight from Sao Paulo to Montevideo. We’ve met people from Spain, France & Aussie; we’ve swam in the Atlantic; we’ve slept in a 300-year-old Portuguese mansion and we’ve stumbled through cobblestone streets after a few too many caipirinhas.

Rio’s Santa Teresa

The decision was made to leave Brazil because it was pretty hard to stick to our budget there – everything was triple what we had planned; and it was making us anxious. Catching a cheap flight to Uruguay from Sao Paulo was a snap decision; Uruguay also speaks Spanish, instead of Portuguese, so we’re able to practice what we have learnt in our language classes.

The pirate ship from our island trip

Our time in the old colonial town of Paraty on the south-east Brazilian coast was magical. By chance, we stumbled across a reasonable double room in a crumbling Portuguese mansion. Mornings were spent eating breakfast in the dining room-come-courtyard, looked down upon by old portraits of people who used to live there and watching wild hummingbirds suck sugar water out of bird feeders. At nights we strolled the cobblestone streets of the old town, admiring architecture and being entertained by street performers.  Joel turned into Tarzan when we took a day-long boat cruise around Paraty’s islands – swimming to the beach, shimmying up palm trees and throwing coconuts down to the sand. He would then crack them open & slurp the juice; much to the interest of everybody else on our boat.

Joel shimmying up coconut trees

An old desk in our room that looked out over Paraty’s outdoor plaza inspired me to crack into some of the work I’m freelancing on; the whitewashed, flower-strewn walls and hose & cart trotting down the street stirring my writer’s imagination.

The view from our balcony in Paraty

When we came across a cheap airfare online for Sao Paulo to Montevideo, Uruguay, we jumped at it. We caught a 6-hour bus through the night to check in at the airport in Sao Paulo nice and early the next day. An airline mix up with the boarding gates meant we missed our morning flight; luckily, we were given and airport hotel for the afternoon and we were booked on the 10pm flight free of charge.

Boarding our Uruguay flight after a 12-hour delay

We spent a few days in Montevideo – possibly one of the coolest names for a capital in the world – before heading to the beach. Punta del Diablo is on the Atlantic Coast, a relaxed hippy beach town that’s home to wild stretches of white sand beach. We think we’ll be staying here a few days; we’ve found a local butcher who specialises in Uruguayan beef so we can cook for ourselves in the hostel kitchen – a great way to avoid eating any more of those bloody pigeons.