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Carmen - please note another country requiring a pin on the map please :)

We took the fast boat (one of two options) of 1 hour to cross from Buenos Aires to Colonia Del Sacramento, Uruguay. Main reason for my enthusiasm was it was another country and also featured in Mr Brimelow¨s 1001 places to visit guide!

The customs process of, out of Arentina and into Uruguay took place on the Argentine side. It was not too bad but did involve further stamps on various pages of my passport - getting a bit concerned I am going to run out of pages for them to stamp! Anyway, boat journey uneventuful with not much to see but dirty water we arrived in Colonia. The tourist information at the harbour closed we wandered into town in the general direction of everyone else and found a tourist centre that was open. A map obtained we wandered to the historical part of the town that looked out across the water. The historical part of Colonia was very pretty with cobbled streets, and colonia style houses adorned with pink and purple foliage. The weather was glorious and it was very pleasant wandering about and looking at the historical buildings. We decided to check out the local craft fair which was a bit of a disappointment. However many of the local stores in Colonia had artwork and trinkets that were very pretty. Anyway, having texted siblings because we couldn¨t get our heads around the pricing in Uruguain dollars, we purchased some lunch and watched the world roll by including an old man on a scooter with speaker system playing the same tune over and over again - we think he only travelled up and down the same road too :) Lunch was at one of the many restaurant/cafes along the main street and then more wandering. Next task was to locate postcards and post office. After a bit of wandering we established the quality of postcards was not brilliant but we made do and posted our cards - the post office providing us with just one stamp per card rather than the 3 required in Brasil!!

Having decided to go up the lighthouse for a better view (at just 50 pence)- we found there was not much a view but were quite dizzy from the winding staircase!! One thing we noticed about Colonia compared to Buenos Aires was the cars actually stopped to let pedestrians cross the road! Quite strange not to have keep running as cars tried to turn into the road you were in the middle of crossing. I kep panicking as Brim started to cross but soon caught up.

Late afternoon and we chilled out in the old part of town as the sunset and the lamps were lit. On a side note, whilst taking the sunset pictures I realised the true potential of Brimelow¨s sunset setting on her camera - having both stared at the same sky her actual photo appeared 4 times as red then in real life!! I am sure her night shots have also received digital enhancements I just wish she would do the same with the pictures of me! :)

Evening rolled in and Brim and I were due back on the 8pm boat so we had to leave. A further customs stamping procedure required, with different stamps compared to the BA side and we boarded the boat back to BA.

As an aside, Tim and Fuzz, thanks for getting back to us so quick on the text regarding the exchange rates. Brim and I still spent most of the day trying to figure out if the perfume in the duty free on the boat was just 2 pounds and if the dairy milk bar was 17 pence or 6 pounds!!

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