Blogs from Colonia del Sacramento, West, Uruguay, South America - page 22

Didn´t get time to load the Uruguay pics yesterday, so here goes...... read more

Having spent almost a week in busy Buenos Aires , we decided to 'pop over'to Uruguay for a day for some fresh air. This meant a boat trip to Colonia del Sacremento, which by fast boat took one hour and cost 100 pesos, but by slow took three hours and cost 50 pesos. Now seeing as the fast boat left 2 hours after the slow boat... (duh!) the decision was simple! Colonia was a nice little town with cobbled streets (painful on my ankle!), various dinky museums, a little harbour for the local yachting fraternity, and some nice beaches. Unfortunately not having brought our Driving licence on the day, we couldn´t hire a moped to get to the Bullring, but seeing as neither of us had driven one before, probably a good thing! On the way ... read more

After two days in Buenos Aires (of which more later) we boarded a high speed ferry to cross the Rio del Plata which is some 45 km wide (!!) to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. Colonia is a historic Portuguese / Spanish style old town preserved as it was 2 hundred years ago (UNESCO heritage site). Narrow cobbled streets with cafes & restaurants in white-painted colonial style buildings under blue sky, spring sunshine, oranges & lemons on the trees, parakeets squawking overhead in the palm trees - what have we done to deserve this?! Today we visited Conchillas - some 50km away - with a Spanish speaking taxi driver to investigate the site of Pete's dad's birth & early childhood. We found the "English houses" and stone-cutting plant there preserved as a museum. (Pete's paternal grandfather ... read more

And so on to Colonia del Sacramento. It is a listed Patrimonial Site by the UNESCO as the most complete illustration of Colonial Architecture in South America. It is pretty. The moment we got there we felt we were back on the tourist trail as we saw back packers the moment we arrived! There were lots of locals also between the station and town offering us accommodation etc. We headed to one of the recommended hotels, got ourselves installed and headed off to see Colonia. It is pretty, it really is. You can tell I was inspired by the number of photos I ended up taking! There are lots of little squares and cobbled streets with the sea as a backdrop in the distance. This meant sauntering from one plaza to the other and soaking in ... read more