Advertisement
Published: January 24th 2012
Day 101 Friday 20
th January
I (Scott) had a really dodgy stomach all night, which is the first bad case I have had this trip so at least I waited till day 101. Woke up in the morning feeling like crap and felt even worse after breakfast of tea and stale croissants. Took a little while to get moving but I was determined that I wouldn’t let it stop us from doing things and today we had decided to take an excursion out of town.
The lovely lady at the tourist information booth at the bus station had told us how we could get a public bus to the nearby town of Real de San Carlos so we headed off to the street corner where we were able to hail the bus. The journey was only about twenty minutes long and it was easy to know when to hop off because it was at the huge bull ring. And before you start thinking that we had gone mad and was off to see a bullfight, the bull ring at Real de San Carlos has been closed for a hundred years. The story goes that an Argentine
millionaire Nicolas Mihanovich in the early 1900’s spent 1.5 million dollars building a tourist complex at Real de San Carlos, complete with a whole range of different sporting venues including a 10,000 seat bullring. In 1912 shortly after it was completed the Uruguayan Government banned bull fighting and the whole thing fell into decline, with the only thing that is still functioning being the racecourse. Never seen a bull ring before even an abandoned one so we figured it was worth a look. The whole outer skin was brick and now huge chunks have come crashing down leaving gaping holes through which you can see the collapsing seating beyond. The area is now fenced off but it would have been easy to slip through (as some tourists did) and have a look over the remains, but we were happy to look over it from the road. Not too sure what the crime is like around here but I didn’t want to take the risk wandering around the darkened passages of the bullring and besides the whole structure looked like it could come down at any time.
From there we wandered down the road to the remains of the 3000
seat “Fronton” court that was built for the Basque sport of Jai alai. He also built a large Hotel Casino, but saw no sign of that so figured that was long gone. Most of the area is just residential that has spread out from nearby Colonia de Sacramento, so it is all really sleepy with nothing much else to do, so we decided to head back. Like idiots we didn’t ask the woman to mark on our map where we should stand to get our bus back so we had a bit of a long walk around till we spotted a bus stop and then eventually a bus.
Wasn’t a lot to see but the bus trip there and back only cost us $2.50 so we couldn’t complain. When we got back I was feeling like I needed something to settle my stomach so we picked up a bag of empanadas from “Don Gato” (meaning Top Cat – hopefully not in our empanadas). Every time we have got empanadas in South America and asked for them Caliente (hot), we get them zapped in a microwave for a minute and they are still motherless cold. We are now convinced that
Colonia del Sacramento
Old couple from paradethe microwaves are nothing more than a large box with a timed bell. Nevertheless wandered over the road to the town plaza and sat under a tree eating our cold treats. I already had a dodgy stomach so couldn’t see how a semi cold ham and cheese empanada could damage me further.
Went back to our hotel afterwards where we got our blog done and I was able to have a lay down and try and recover my energy for the night. At 8 Shelley put on her party dress and me my party cargoes and we headed up to the main street to watch the Colonia de Sacramento carnival. When booking this town we hadn’t actually been aware that this was carnival night and this may explain partially why our hotel was so expensive and why we had so little choice. From what we have read in the LP and what the guy at the reception in our hotel told us, the carnival is called “Desfile de las Llamadas” and comprises of “comparsas”, which are neighbourhood groups. The comparsas each put on a similar routine which apparently depicts the old tradition where the slaves were given a day
Colonia del Sacramento
Preparing to join the parade off a year and bands of them would go out beating their drums to let the others know they could come out and dance and party. Although the slavery in Uruguay ended in 1850 the tradition has been embraced by everyone at carnival time and is a great excuse to party. The Comparsas would be led by guys waving huge flags and then followed by dancing girls in skimpy outfits of varying ages. Then would come a couple dressed in period costumes that were generally large and shown to be elderly. They would be accompanied by a voodoo dancer and one or two dancing beauties. All this was completed by a huge group of drummers beating out a rhythm for everyone to dance to. Because this was supposed to depict “black African slaves” a lot of the performers wore black face paint which we weren’t sure was overly politically correct but we weren’t about to put in an official complaint. The whole carnival was started by a school marching band and then with a short break in between, each Comparsas would assemble and then take off up the road. They were of varying size and ability but even the worst
of them was amazing to see and you could see the effort that was put into each attempt. The thing that I was more amazed at than anything else was the women dancing up the road in high heel shoes as I figured it would take about 90 minutes to 2 hours to cover the distance.
We had positioned ourselves down near the start where there was less of a crowd and the view was better, as you will see from the photos. We later moved up to near the end of the parade where it was packed and there wasn’t enough room to swing a camera. We could have paid to sit on the seats that were set up along the road, but we didn’t mind standing. Unsure what the cost of the seats were but we lost count of how many people got up and left when asked to pay so it couldn’t have been cheap. The first parade started at nearly 10 and about an hour into it an older guy 2 metres from us collapsed on to the footpath with his wife screaming over him. He was quickly surrounded by people trying to help him
and although having first aid certificates we could probably have rendered him the some help, the lack of Spanish made that impossible. We quickly went looking for help as we had seen police everywhere earlier but they had just vanished and thankfully when we crossed back at the guy he was conscious and had only fainted. This gave us both a huge scare and made us realise how lucky we are in Australia where events are so heavily patrolled by the police and St Johns Brigade.
The party was going to continue till dawn but by midnight my energy levels had hit a low and we still needed to pack for our 5.40am bus so we headed back. Managed somehow to get all our packing done fairly quickly and I then crashed into bed. Around 3.30 in the morning we were woken by the sound of a short burst of fireworks.
Day 102 Saturday 21
st January
The alarm went off at 4.30 and we just had to hit the snooze for another 10 minutes before falling out of bed. We had, had calamari for dinner last night and instead of getting lovely
Colonia del Sacramento
Drummers in the parade light batter we got that horrible heavy stuff they use to encase nuclear waste. We both woke with dodgy stomachs after that feed but thankfully as the day went on it settled down. Because we had packed only a few hours before we only really needed to slip on our clothes, throw on our backpacks and slip out the door. The streets were pitch black and deserted as we walked down to the bus station but once we got there we were met by the remnants of the carnival. Outside the terminal the area was covered with people in varying degrees of sobriety and enthusiasm. A line went out the door for people buying tickets out of town and who had obviously only came for carnival. Thankfully we had our tickets so could bypass the line and wander out the back where we only had to wait briefly before our bus arrived.
We were glad when the bus finally got underway and we could at least give our very best impression of sleeping on a bus. We both find it almost impossible to sleep on a plane and a bus isn’t much better, and we generally only ever get
snatches of a few minutes at a time. The bus trip today started in darkness and as we went along we stopped constantly to let people on and off and at a few points during the day we had people standing in the aisle. This would be the first time we have encountered this in South America but we are sure it won’t be the last. As I may have stated before there is nothing more tiring than sitting on a bus all day, and would much rather a long hard hike or working on the house. We don’t know why but we always feel wrecked when we finally get off them and after so many it hasn’t got any better.
Today’s final destination was the town of Concordia in Argentina, but to get there we had to first get to Salto in Uruguay where we arrived at 2pm after 8 hours on the road. We made our way into the terminal and thankfully we were able to pick up the connecting tickets for a 3pm bus. We hadn’t been sure that we could do this and we may have had to spend the night in Salto, but lucky
for us our plan fell into place. At 3pm we were on our bus and leaving Uruguay after only being in the country for one week. We had planned on a longer stay but the cost of the accommodation was killing us but we may make it back again at a quitter time. The Argentinian town of Concordia sits across the Rio Uruguay directly opposite Salto so it was just a matter of crossing over the river and getting our stamps out of Uruguay and back once more into Argentina. This would be our fifth entry stamp into Argentina.
We arrived at the bus terminal in under an hour and before heading off to find a hotel we needed to get our tickets out of town for tomorrow, as there isn’t much to see in this town and we were only using it as a stepping stone. We soon discovered that the only bus companies selling tickets to Pasadas (our next destination) were closed for siesta. We also soon realised that although we had thought that they would soon be open, we were now in a different time zone and had gained an hour meaning we had to wait
an hour. After travelling since 5.40 this morning the last thing we wanted was to be sitting around in a bus terminal but we didn’t have a choice. As each one opened I ran around enquiring about tickets and instead of being able to get a morning bus all they could offer was a night bus. We contemplated about backing up another bus that night which would mean waiting till nearly midnight and getting a “sleeper” that would have us arriving at 8 in the morning at Pasadas. We have done worse but were keen to avoid it, and thankfully the last bus company to open its doors could get us on a 10.50am bus in the morning…thank God.
With that sorted we got a taxi into town and lobbed on the door step of The Hotel Salto Grand, where we splashed out on a “tourist room”. I had to laugh that the “tourist room” was less money and of course less quality than a “standard room” but we were only staying the night and in the end the room was okay. With two of the three essentials of travelling sorted, transport and shelter, we went looking for the
Real De San Carlos
Fronton - Jai alai sport court third food/alcohol. Because it had only just turned 6pm, not much was open but managed to find a bar a few blocks from the hotel that we were able to get a beer and a decent burger at a great price. We would have loved to have kicked back there all night but we were both absolutely stuffed and so stumbled back to our room where we just crashed into bed.
Day 103 Sunday 22
nd January
Thankfully no 5.40am bus today and we were able to sleep in to 7.30. The breakfast at the Hotel Salto Grand was fabulous with fresh warm croissants….a first. Because we hadn’t dismantled our bags last night it was easy for us to just zip them back up and hit the road. Got the taxi back to the terminal through a town we hadn’t had much of a chance to look over but seemed fairly pretty.
At 10.50am we were once again underway and today we were cruising down the back roads of Argentina along the shore of the Rio Uruguay. Yesterday on the bus we had noticed how the terrain was changing subtly as we headed north, the
Posadas
Fountain in the plaza open fields of crops were now being interspersed with larger and larger alcoves of palm trees. The land was becoming more lush and green and as the day wore on huge storm clouds appeared on the horizon, we were now closing in on the tropics. The bus journey was agonisingly slow with plenty of stops in small country towns and each stop more people got off than on. In late afternoon just after a brief heavy downpour we came to a bridge border crossing for Brazil, and briefly it seemed as if we were about to cross but thankfully our bus steered away at the last minute, leaving our crossing for another day.
The LP claims the bus from Concordia to Pasadas is 8 hours long but instead of arriving at 6pm we didn’t arrive till 8pm making it 10 hours long. We had originally planned on just rocking up and finding a Hotel but we spotted a good deal on booking.com yesterday and instead we booked ahead, which as it turned out was lucky for us. Therefore when we got off the bus we were able to get a taxi straight to the Hotel without having the hassle
Posadas
Statue in plaza of wandering around town with our backpacks on at 9 at night. The taxi we ended up getting was in fact just a normal car with no meter and a fixed rate of 40 pesos ($10) to get us into town. We have copped this heaps in other countries but another first for South America. We are staying in the HA Posadas Urbano hotel, a large fairly newly renovated hotel where we got a huge room with balcony on the 9
th floor. Once again we have splurged with the room costing nearly $90 a night, but it is great value and surprisingly cheap for we got. This may be the best room we have got so far, and the staff are once again friendly and helpful, which is equally as important as the quality of the room.
By the time we got into the room it was nearly 9 and although we both desperately needed a shower and to just crash, we headed out on the town to see what the place was like and to get a feed. We could have spent hours looking around but once again we were tired and just wanted something quick and easy so went just a burger and beer at a café on the mall. As usual the cafe was deserted when we had arrived but when we left around 11 the place was packed making us feel guilty that we couldn’t stay up and rage.
Day 104 Monday 23
rd January
Before coming to our Hotel I had told Michele that I thought that this was going to be probably the best place we will stay at on this trip and after one night of rest I am already willing to hand it the trophy. I sort of based my prediction on the booking.com score of 9.7 (out of 10) which is probably the highest I have seen and the fact that most of the reviews were glowing. The breakfast was a little Spartan but halfway through our feed Shelley translated a sign that told us that if we wanted bacon and eggs ask the staff, so I now know what I will be doing tomorrow.
After breakfast we hit the streets to check out the town and to seek out a tour company the Lonely Planet recommended. Found the place about 5 blocks from the hotel and the woman running the place was really helpful in explaining the tours we could do around the area. All the tours are a lot more expensive than we had thought they would be but they are sites that are difficult to get to using public transport so we are therefore sort of locked into doing tours. We didn’t want to book anything straight away but took the option to come back later. We then headed off to a camera shop where we got some passport photos done and also photocopies of our passport in preparation for getting our Paraguayan visa. We found the Paraguayan consulate but by this time it was just about to close so we opted to go back to the hotel and to sit by the hotel pool and to nut out what we are going to do over the next few days.
The day had been incredibly hot and humid and we were both just about melted into puddles so the thought of a swim was appealing. The pool was located just behind the foyer and we discovered that it wasn’t exactly squeaky clean but had bit more of a jungle green hue about it. Not as bad as some pools we had seen but wasn’t exactly overly inviting either. Before we could jump in it started to rain and as there wasn’t any shelter for our bags and clothes we opted to give it a miss and head back to the room. The sky came over incredibly dark and it looked as if we were going to cop a huge storm but in the end it was just a brief shower.
Late in the afternoon we headed out again for a walk around the town and got ourselves a feed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 12; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0338s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
traudy glasencnik
non-member comment
Colourful heels.
Nice little carnivale taster of whats to come, the larger than life parade! Those bus rides sound long and tiresome, glad your pad is a nice one, enjoy xx