Unlucky room no. 13 in Colonia del Sacramento

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Colonia del Sacramento is a little gem of a town on the bankof the river de la Plata which runs in between Uruguay and Argentina. Stacked with history and charm, after our stay in the concrete jungle that was Montevideo we were looking forward to some cobbled streets and pretty views. We weren't disappointed.

We arrived in Colonia after a short 2 hour bus ride from the capital, and this time it really was a bus not one of the luxurious coaches we are starting to get used to. Luke and I could actually brush arms with one another by accident and the 'recline' was a mere 4 inches!

We new that our hostel was within walking distance from the bus station and as it was still the middle of the day when we arrived we decided to locate it ourselves. After about 10 minutes of walking we found it and realised that this was infact the first time we'd arrived somewhere new and not jumped straight into a taxi - we're starting to get the hang of things. Soon we'll be sleeping in dorms!

We checked in and were shown to our room. Room number 13. Now I'm sure that there is some kind of rule somewhere which disallows hotels/hostels/guest houses to have a room number 13 and I have noticed before that such establishments run straight from 12 to 14 missing out the infamously unlucky number. Not so here. It crossed my mind for a few seconds but I didn't dwell on it as Luke didn't seem to notice.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the town and getting our bearings. We noted a couple of museums, wandered around the main square and checked out the best places to eat. We also stumbled across a cafe that I recognised from the Lonely Planet, 'Drugstore'. With the guidebooks recommendation and the specials board outside advertising 'submarino' we went straight inside. This is one of the coolest cafés we've visited, each wall painted a different colour, polka-dot tablecloths, piano's on the ceiling, weird Dali style art on the walls, an electric piano and jazz versions of 80s pops songs playing in the background. Outside there was an old 1920s car that had been hollowed out to fit a table and two chairs with the table set ready to be used. We both had hot chocolate and an orange pancake with slices of oranges on top covered in grated chocolate - delicious.

That night we opted for the hostel BBQ with red wine for tea and spent the night chatting to a couple from South Africa and drinking the the local brew 'Pratricia'.

We spent the next day exploring museums and pottering around the shops and the lovely streets which were lined with small, beautiful old buildings. Much to Luke's delight we encountered a very friendly cat down one of the side streets, we called her Matilda. The towns are mostly full of dogs so it's always a nice treat to find a cat. I managed to persuade Luke to try a bit of gaucho style horse riding so we booked ourselves onto a trek for the next day.

After spending a big part of our budget on booking the horse riding we decided to cook for ourselves for the rest of our stay to try and save some money. That afternoon we bumbled around a tiny supermercado for about an hour trying to think of an alternative to pasta. The only other possibility we could see were some frozen burgers, the brand was called "Burgy's" which just sounded horrible so we decided to stick to pasta, but to mix in Philadelphia cheese to make it more interesting.

Back at the hostel we started to prepare dinner, noticing that the kitchen wasn't the cleanest we'd come across we washed everything twice before we used it. Half an hour later two steaming plates of creamy, cheesy, tomatoey, bits of raw peppery, pasta were ready to eat. After polishing off every bite we had a beer and played some cards for a few hours. At about 11pm I started to feel a little queer.

At 4am I was on the bathroom floor crying for my life, never in my twenty six years have I felt this bad. I was up most of the night being ill. Bad times. Anything to do with the room number? Perhaps. Anything to do with the dirty hostel kitchen? More likely. I managed to get a couple of hours sleep but it wasn't long before the alarm was ringing for us to get up and go on our horse trek. Luke suggested we cancel but I insisted I was OK and off we went leaving our key with reception so we didn't lose it on the trek.

We met our non-English speaking guides at a hostel up the road from ours and we were bundled into the back of an open truck with a German girl and an over excitable dog who we called Linford. After a cold and bumpy 20 minute drive we arrived at a lovely meadow and seconds after the truck pulled up horses started to appear from the trees. We got out and watched while the guides fed the horses and put their saddles on.

My horse was called Treasure because the white mark on her forehead was in the shape of a diamond. Luke wasn't introduced properly to his horse so he named him Colin. It was a gentle two and a half hour trek through meadows, countryside and even across one of the river beaches. We stopped briefly half way and our guide gave us cups of water, for a while the four of us stood around in silence so I thought I'd practice some of my Spanish on our guide who seemed very shy; '¿como te llama?' I asked him his name. 'Julio' he replied. Silence. And that was the end of that conversation. Luke found horseriding a pretty uncomfortable experience but he was glad he gave it a go and we got to see some of the surrounding areas before heading to another city the next day.

After the trek, a little sore from the saddles we went back to our hostel. We had a bit more bad luck when we went to pay for our boat to Buenos Aires for the following day and discovered 300 pessos (about 50 pounds worth) were missing from Luke's wallet which he'd left in our room while we'd been out all day. We racked our brains and couldn't explain it going missing any other way, someone must have taken our key from reception and had a little look around our room, maybe a member of staff, we will never know. Something to do with the room number 13? I'm convinced of it.

We were both tired from a pretty sleepless night the night before so decided to settle with some hot soup in front of a film. That evening we went out to see the the town at night. It was so pretty all lit up, the restaurants all had live music coming from them creating a lovely atmosphere in the main square.

The next day we had to catch our fast boat to Buenos Aires at 10.45am (an early rise for us!) so we got an early night.

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Comments

[Emma]

What a pavalova!
Sounds like you're having a ball Lil and Luke. All the horrible incidents like food poisononing, sore saddle balls and stolen money will all accumulate to make a pile of amazing memories. Still jealous of your fantastic travels! Stay safe. xxxxxxx