Leaving Town and Looking Like a Madman

In the morning, I talked with the hostel owner. I told him what kind of beach town I was looking for and it wasn’t Punta. Not for this trip anyway.

He suggested La Pedrera and Cabo Polonia. Each were a few hours to the east and the buses would take me along the southern coast of Uruguay, which I had originally planned on seeing anyway.

The owner gave me some bus schedules for the afternoon, and as I wasn’t going to waste the afternoon on a bus, I would head into town, and to the beach on a Saturday in January! He called me a cab and I went to the bus station. I found the bus company he had found the schedule for, bought my ticket to La Pedrera later that day and I checked my rucksack at left luggage.

So it was me and my daypack off to explore, lay on the beach and dip my toes in the Atlantic!

I hadn’t even made it out of the bus terminal and the man behind the counter who had just given me my left luggage ticket was running after me.

He was speaking very quickly and gestured for me to come back to the counter with him. As I had just dropped my bag and not knowing exactly what he was saying, I followed. As we returned to the counter, I understood why.

But I didn’t know what I had packed that would be making such a noise. My mind racing, I was scrambling to figure it out.

Oh. The battery-operated doorstop with an alarm.

Yeppers. I had packed an electronic doorstop. With a battery.

I can tell you, it worked. Clearly his concern was why my bag was armed with an alarm. He granted me permission behind the counter to find out what was happening.

As it would, the doorstop was buried somewhere near the bottom of my bag. The noise seemed to be getting louder and louder the longer it took me to dig for it.

After what felt like an eternity, I found the culprit, simply removed the batteries, thanked the man behind the counter, and, finally, headed towards the beach.