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Published: April 12th 2008
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A typical street scene....
in the quiet streets of Colonia Colonia Del Sacramento is as the name suggests an old colonial style town, in the West of Uruguay. Once used as a smuggling port thanks to its proximaty to Buenos Aires, it is now a beautiful quaint little town, full of fancy fish restaurants, spanish style villas and cobbled streets.
The hostel we settle in is very picturesque, the views from the windows are attractive and the people very friendly. In fact we kind of figured before arriving that this would be the quietest of all the places we'd visit in Uruguay, how wrong we were! On the first night we pretty much just chill in the hostel with some wine and meet our fellow hostel mates, nothing to get too excited about, but then we know thats because tomorrow is gonna be a right laugh.
So with daybreak, as you would imagine in a town like this, the peace remains. The birds are cheeping, there's the occasional noise of a dog barking and maybe the distant sound of a fog horn from one of the passing boats, that is until Brad and I hire an assortment of vehicles and tear this quiant little town apart! Ok so the
Quiet cobbled streets....
with quaint looking villas first vehicle probably doesn't tear much apart, after all it is only a golf kart. Hear the mighty roar from its awesome engine!!!!! Phhht. So we shoot around the old town in the kart, carving up the cobbled streets and reversing here there and everywhere! We even let a couple of the americans in our hostel jump on the back and take them for a ride. Its at this point we come across some school kids shouting "amigo, amigo" obviously that want a lift and as im designated driver the more the merrier! Though 8 of the little buggers might be too much, particularly as we are heading towards what looks like the poorside of town. At this point we tell them enough is enough, though we say this in Spanish they clearly aren't too interested. I start to reverse down a small hill, not that I can see out of the back, all the while with Brad nagging in my ear about how we might run one of them down! Chill out grandad, we are only going 5 miles an hour and I cant see bugger all! Still when one of the kids slipped off the back, you cant
Our hostel common area
even that was picturesque! say we didnt warn them!
Next up we hired a mini dune buggy...now this was a bit faster and so we headed out onto a dirt track leading to a beach to really tear it up! Brad went first, after all he was the only one that actually had his license on him! First stop is this deserted beach, with a bizzare brown sea. Rising out of the sea is what appears to be a tree, it all looks a wee bit like a Salvador Dali painting, pretty cool though! We've heard there is a peaceful lagoon round here and after driving around looking for it for 1/2 hour we decide to enlist the help of a local, who kindly leads the way on his scooter. En-route there are some puddles on the track and unfortunately the buggy offers no protection against mud and water so I tell Brad to chill out on the speed, dont really wanna get soaking wet!! The lagoon was indeed peaceful, except for the numerous mosquitos that were biting the living crap out of us! We didnt stick about too long and it was my turn to drive us back along the same dirt
Flowers in the window
not the worst place to chill, could anything break the harmoy..... track. Im sure that thoses of you that know me well are already aware of what happened next....thats right, I put peddle to the metal and purposely drove as fast as the kart would go through all of the muddy puddles. Its was brilliant we couldn't stop grinning. That is until we saw the stats of both us and the Kart....it was covered in mud!
So with time running out we drove along the sea front towards an abandoned bull ring that is now crumbling and checked out a disused pier before taking the buggy back, great fun.
We also got a bit adventurous that night and made our own pizza in the hostel, unfortunately it stuck to the grill pan as we out it in, then as we tried to get it back out it tore in two sending the toppings to the oven floor, much to the amusement of the aussie dude next to us. So thats why travellers live on supernoodles eh?!
Next stop the ferry across to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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