Uruguay

This post will start a series of posts on our trip to Argentina.  Our good friend Alex decided to join us for part of his trip, before heading to Iguazu Falls and ending up in Rio de Janerio, Brazil.  I’m sure he’ll blog more about it and he’s a helluva good photographer, so you should check out his blog—aroperu (the link is posted on the right side of this page). I am starting with Uruguay, because it was just a one day affair, and it seems the easiest one to do first.

One of the days during our trip to Argentina was spent traveling to Uruguay.  Unfortunately, Jason took the day to work (boo!), so Alex and I went.  We had to book our tickets through a travel agency, Buquebus for about $50 (or A$R 300 pesos) downtown, and then head to the ferry at around 8:45 am.  The ferry was huge; it was like a cross between a train and an airplane:

The trip itself was 3 hours (and Uruguay is an hour ahead of Buenos Aires, who knew?)…the Rio de la Plata is 300 km wide, so it’s a pretty damn big river.  Once we got there, we walked outside the terminal and a golden opportunity presented itself: Rent Golf Carts here!  Well since I’m a sucker for all things go-kart like, we thought we would check it out.  We saw the prices, and thought although it would be fun, do we really want to spend our hard earned money on a golf cart? And then Alex saw it, parked in the bicycle rack, shiny and green, calling our names: the tandem bicycle. Neither one of us had ridden one, so we thought, “why the hell not.”  And our adventure began.

Colonia, Uruguay is a beautiful sleepy river side town, with typical small cafes and lots of stores to purchase trinkets and souvenirs.  Some of the streets were paved with cobblestone, lined with beautiful old trees that created a lovely canopy from the sun.

There were lots of little museums that housed things from old artifacts to animal bones, but we only visited two of the museums…several of them were closed for the summer or only open really early in the morning (oddly enough).  We did get a chance to climb up the lighthouse, and we took some lovely photos from the top.

There was a lovely dock with some of the most amazing yachts, with lots of hippies gathered to eat and lounge lazily while others were cleaning and polishing their fancy boats.

There was a old theatre, Teatro Bastion del Carmen there that really wasn’t a “theatre” per se, but it does put on some sort of plays throughout the year.  What types of plays, I’m not sure, but regardless, the building had a old chimney a diorama of the town built out of cardboard and some random spiral structure out in the back.

The day went by pretty quickly, because we had to be back at the ferry station about an hour before we had to board.  We actually arrived a little bit earlier, and we are so glad we did.  No one told us that we had to have a copy of our reciprocity fee (Argentinian visa) payment.  So we had to struggle with this frustrating touch screen computer, go through our emails, download a copy and wait in line again. But it was done, we got on the boat and headed on a 3-hour ferry ride back to Argentina.

Here are a couple more photos of Colonia, and if you find yourself in Buenos Aires, day trip was worth it, even if to just say that you’ve been to Uruguay.