Blogs from Colonia del Sacramento, West, Uruguay, South America - page 15

... but all of the relevant stores were closed today. I will go back and add photos at a later date, and I´m sorry I´ll have so few photos of this wonderful place. I took a bike ride today, and it was nice to get some exercise. From the top of the point, the ocean looks blue, and everything was beautiful and sunny today. One of the very wonderful things here is that no one builds up to the ocean, so that the beaches are wonderfully natural and private in a way ... they aren´t in someone´s back yard. Some interesting things about uruguay: They don´t believe in bread here. Its hard to find in the store, and there are no bread/panaderia shops, and the sandwich bread is weird! They make this bread that come out ... read more

Buenos Aires means "good air", although as we walked throught the fumes of the rush hour traffic toward the ferry port yesterday morning, we weren´t convinced. It was nice to get away from the busy city to explore the relatively peaceful Colonia del Sacramento, just across the Rio de la Plata in Uruguay. The crossing takes about an hour and was relatively smooth. The Rio de la Plata is the widest river estuary in the world and for most of the trip we couldn´t see either side (though the haze may be partly to blame for this). Colonia del Sacramento was settled by the Portugese as a port to smuggle goods across the river into Buenos Aires in the 17th century. These days, some of the original buildings survive or have been restored in the old ... read more

My first attempt at making it to this place wasn't all that sucessful. I managed to haul my ass out of bed on time to hop onto the subte for the closest station to the BuqueBus port (Puerto Madero). I was so happy with my ability to get out of bed until I realised I'd left my passport sitting in the locker at the hostel and I didn't have time to return to get it and still make the ferry. Bugger. It wasn't my brightest moment. I forgot that I was in fact heading for another country and as such a passport is one of those things that should be pretty high up on the list. Instead I booked my tickets for the following day and made a mental note to take my passport. In the ... read more

We didn´t have to travel far to our next destination, it´s just a hour one ferry ride across the Rio del Plata from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. In our last blog, we talked about being beach bound, and although Uruguay has some of the best beaches in South America, unfortunately we didn´t quite get the weather for it. Temperatures had hit 30 degrees during our stay in Buenos Aires, but on our last morning, we woke up to torrential rain. We underestimated how big of a tourist draw Colonia is for South Americans, even on a wet winter weekend, and really struggled to find a hotel for our first night, a Saturday. Luckily thw 5 star Radisson was able to squeeze us into an executive room. It was a bit of a ... read more

D'abord, la fin de Buenos Aires... Nous avons terminé notre séjour d'une semaine comme prévu avec notre partie de foot. Wow! Ambiance tout simplement malade, comme nous nous en doutions, cela n'a RIEN à voir avec une partie des Canadiens de Montréal, même en séries éliminatoires (sauf peut-être lors des affrontements Canadiens - Nordiques!!). Les gens sont survoletés, ils sont fous, des fanatiques! Et pourtant, deux clubs d'Argentine s'affrontaient, deux clubs de la même ville! Nous avons eu droit à un match fort excitant, nous étions du côté des locaux, Independente, et ils ont perdu de chaude lutte 3-2 contre La Boca. Nous avons filmé des images et des sons qui rendront une idée plus juste de ce que nous avons vécu que les quelques photos prises... Mais certains faits peuvent vous expliquer un peu la ... read more