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Published: April 17th 2006
Colonia
White sand beaches in Uruguay?? Who'da thunk it?Hello everyone, I hope that everything is going well for all of you that have recently finished the semester in Canada, and that you all had a wonderful Easter break with lots of rest, relaxation, and of course, chocolate.
We actually have so many new things to write about that we keep forgetting what we’ve done and think that you already know all of our exploits and adventures, but finally we sat down and wrote a little list out of things that have been forgotten, and as well, our wonderful trip to Uruguay.
So I’m here sitting in my apartment, drinking red wine, and finally writing to you all.
TANGO
So, once a dancer - always a dancer, in short: I have found a Tango partner and we’re ripping up the dance floors of BA. A friend of a friend, I got Derek’s phone number randomly and called one night… Me: “uhhh.. Hi, this is a bit random but I heard you liked to Tango, I’m Canadian, do you want be my partner?” Derek: “Yeaaaaa, this is awesome, I have a private class booked for tomorrow, are you free??” And it happened all like that, I was in an older
Sunsets and Sweet Canadians
Sitting on the dock the first day we couldn't believe the sunset and the view that was too perfect to be real... we have about 30 pictures from that sunset, so here is one of them! house in San Telmo - the heart of Tango, - on a beautiful wooden floor with a tall lanky American and a short sassy Tango instructor. Very luckily, Derek is somewhat of a Tango addict and arranges everything for me, a good thing when you’re as lazy as I am! He calls regularly asking me to come over so we can practice in his apartment, and I’m only too happy to escape the homework and dance around a house.
URUGUAY
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! It was 8:45 and we had to BE at the terminal at 9 to catch our 10 o’clock boat, no no no no no no, we overslept our alarm that was set for 7am and now we were in big trouble… they told us that we needed to be there one or two hours in advance, and now we were showing up 25 minutes in advance.. eek!! We ran up to the balcony where all our wet clothes were trying desperately to dry in the Buenos Aires’ humidity with out much success… we threw the sheets off the bed, the clothes on the bed, some articles of clothing in the backpacks, whatever was on the table went into
The old streets of Colonia
A bit of a view of some old style heritage houses the bags… and go go go, out the door down to catch a taxi… NOOO what do you mean the subway is shut down and now the million people who commute with the subway every morning are all taking taxis as well??? Why today when we have to set sail to Uruguay in 40 minutes??? We got a taxi and fought our way through the crazy morning with out the subway traffic, each having a heart attack on the way…. 40 minutes, 35…30…25…20… finally we get close enough to the terminal to jump out of the taxi and run towards the doors… ahhh, we made it, high fives back and forth and laughs… whew… check the bags, no problem, immigration… no problem…. What do you mean we’re stuck behind the ONE couple that is having problems with their Visa?... we were desperately watching the boat using every source of magic we learned from Harry Potter movies to keep the boat from departing while the immigration lady strolled back and forth talking to her superiors about what type of visa this tall blonde argentine was in possession of…. WHYYYYYYYYY???? 10 minutes…. 5 minutes… NOOO, finally an immigration taking pity of two
Our Hostel
Hostel "El Espanol" in downtown Colonia, a short walk to the historic center. foreign girls frantically twitching desperately looking around for someone to help and looking at the embarking boat with huge round eyes… took pity on us, and got us through immigration herself.. run run run through the gates, up the plank go go go go go, run like you you’ve never run before, like your LIFE DEPENDS UPON THIS BOAT… GOOOOOO… and then with 2 minutes to spare, we’re on the boat, we take a seat and finally relax and breath easily… whewwwww… and then we wait another 20 minutes to depart… oh yeah… Argentina time…
As many of you know, we went to Uruguay to a city called Colonia for the long Easter break. A friend of ours, Mariu, was going to stay with her aunt and uncle and so we ended up booking our tickets on the Buquebus, the ferry that goes between Buenos Aires and Uruguay. I wasn’t expecting much from the next country over, a miniature version of Buenos Aires, same people same food and even though Colonia is listed as one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites, I was only expecting to see a couple run down houses here and there and that’s about it.
Girls and Sunsets
On the white sand beaches: Jenica, Mariu, Me, "la negra" or the blackie However, arriving in Colonia, I was blow away with the city. Founded in the early 1700’s by the Portuguese descending from Brazil, it was an important strategic location and taken over by the Spanish after the Portuguese had built half of the City. For this reason, Colonia is unique in that half of the city is in the Portuguese style, and half in the Spanish style. The original buildings are still very much in tact, just like the harbour, lighthouses, bridges, and cobblestone streets. There are millions of colours in every glance, the red painted houses, red/brown stone buildings, flowers and trees growing out and overtop of the alleys and houses, the white boardwalk forming the parameters of the city, and of course, the brown water of the Rio de la Plata, (brown because it has all the dirt particles in it from the Amazon river).
It was an amazing trip because everyone in the city was happy to be there, and escape the honking, dogs, cement of Buenos Aires, and breath clean air, swim on the white sand beaches and wander the historical streets. We met Marui’s aunt and uncle who were wonderful and treated us like family as
Cobblestone
My foot enjoying the sun, sandals, and cobblestone well, treating us to dinners, chocolate, and adventure that Jenica will go into more detail about. Eugenia (the aunt) had a very famous and successful father who bought a house in Colonia decades ago, and as it turns out, this house is now probably one of the most valued houses in Colonia because it’s extremely unique: it’s two houses made into one by covering the alleyway and creating a big garden out back instead of the two backyards… the special thing is that one house is Portuguese and one house is Spanish. You can literally cross history and boarders in one house, which is pretty amazing, and the house is so well kept that everything is original and surviving the new inhabitants.
THE COLLECTION
Oh boy, this is a weird one… there is a man named Emilio Arenas that founded a farm out in the country of Colonia, where they make Jams and Cheese and tasty things like that, however Emilio isn’t famous for his onion jam, or his eggplant jam, (which by the way were all horrible, by tongue almost fell off after the onion one, fortunately there were some good fruit and dulce de leche jams
The PENCILS!!!
Hundreds and hundreds of pencils!!! to subside the death taste a bit,) or even his red pepper jam, and banana jam … Emilio Arenas is famous for being the Guinness World Records with the biggest collection of pencils: 8,345… matchboxes: 9,130… and keychains: 25, 630. There was literally an entire building devoted to worthless things… the only question that could escape our confused lips was “but why?” Art takes many forms, don’t worry, I realize this, you all witnessed our attempt at household art in the last blog, but 25,630 key chains??? Come on! Even Van Gough would ask why and he was crazy enough to tear his own ear off. Like a devoted family, Emilio’s wife and son got into the family trait of collections, thousands of bottles of perfume, thanks to the lady of the house, and hundreds of used telephone cards thanks to the young lad, both have important spots in the building. We happened to be lucky enough to run into Emilio, and like good foreign exchange students, we didn’t pass up our opportunity to get a couple of pictures of the good man in front of his Guinness Certificates, we wanted it in front of the pencils, but Emilio was
Why?
Something I just don't understand... determined that we would remember the value of his efforts and so we had to take a couple of pictures with all of us standing strategically in front of the Guinness frames. He probably would have been extremely interesting to talk to about all his travels and adventures, and we did get a bit out of him about Canada, Sweden, and Egypt but he was mostly only eager to talk about the pencils, as well, with a strangely high pitched voice and beady eyes that could cut you in half if you dared to mock his pencils, we were a bit nervous and put on guard. Nevertheless he was a very nice man,
and we have some very interesting memories thanks to him.
So we passed the days wonderfully in Colonia and are already longing to return, but we had a nice welcome in our apartment to a disaster of a mess that we had left on our departure, and realizing that its back to the real world we are now doing the routine again: laundry, cooking, cleaning, and studying, but the memory of Uruguay is still fresh an has revived our energy at least for another couple of
Que Vista!
What a view or the docks and boats and water!! weeks or studying.
That’s all that I was assigned to write about, so I hope you are all well, and that we can talk or see you all very soon,
Lots of Love,
Lindsay
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hails
non-member comment
you jerks
que buena vida! seguro q todo el mundo tenga celos de ustedes chicas. las re quiero. long live la joda. besos....