The Kindness of Strangers in Uruguay

Even though I was only in Uruguay for less than two weeks, I was impressed time after time by the kindness of strangers there.  On my second day in the country I was taking a bus from my hostel to the main bus terminal, and I asked the lady sitting next to me which stop I should get off at, and how to get from there to the main terminal.  She explained what I should do, and then after a minute or two she turned back to me and said, “I’ll just get off there and show you.”  I insisted that she didn’t need to do that, so she explained what I needed to do again, and I found it on my own.  But I couldn’t believe that a perfect stranger was willing to get off at the wrong stop to help a confused foreigner!

Another time I had just arrived somewhere and was going from the bus station to my hostel.  Just to make sure I was on the right track, I asked a man who was walking by if this hostel was ahead.  He told me to go another block or two, and then turn right.  I had all my bags and stuff, so he walked on ahead of me, but when he got to the street that I should turn on, he looked back and called, “Take this road!”  I was really impressed that he even remembered which hostel I had asked about, let alone was thoughtful enough remind me about it.

Finally, the day I left Uruguay was a cold, miserable, rainy day.  I was going with another guy from my hostel to the main bus terminal to catch the airport bus.  When we were getting off the bus at the terminal, we asked another guy where the airport buses pass.  He offered to accompany us there (in the cold rain!) but I had to get my bags from the storage lockers first.  So he came into the terminal with us (which involved going out of his way and walking across a parking lot in the cold rain), asked someone who worked there to borrow a pen, and drew us a little map showing where to go.  It was amazing! In that weather I honestly would not have wanted to do that even for a friend, and he did it for strangers he would never see again.