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Published: March 2nd 2006
Three weeks three countries... No I'm not just collecting Stamps in my passport I really heard its worth going to Uruguay.
Colonia
What is there to say about Colonia. It was founded 1680 by the Portuguese to piss of the Spanish which just founded Buenos Aires and to smuggle stuff into BA. It is named by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site; it is really cute and has lot of old building and cobble stone streets. Have a look at the pics and you know what I mean.
Montevideo
Before you ask no I didn’t mention that I live in Australia while I'm in Montevideo. Somehow that didn’t seem to be a wise thing to do. (For the non Australians. Australia beat Uruguay in the qualifier of the WM and kicked them out of the race which they didn’t take to well).
Montevideo is like Buenos Aires just a bit smaller and with less to do. Saying that it still has a nice feel to it, which is good as I have to stay here three days. First I was planning to take a bus the next day to Posadas in Argentina to look at some Jesuit ruins but the bus was full. Now I will
have an easy 20 hour bus drive on Friday to Asuncion in Paraguay (yay another Stamp) and from there I will go straight to the Iguazu falls which is another 4 hours on the bus. Ill have to be in Iguazu on the 22nd to catch a flight to Salvador in Brazil.
The entry was a bit short so I thought I add a couple of sentences.
So far everything has been way more civilized as I thought it would be. That’s probably my fault for assuming that all of South America is third world but it certainly isn't here. The shopping street in Buenos Aires beats easily Pitt street mall in Sydney and in fact most other shopping streets in Europe.
Argentina has been the fifth richest county (and Uruguay wasn’t poor too) in the world around 1900 and you can certainly see it in the architecture. The buildings are of the old we build big, grand and beautiful type. Luckily they didn’t have any major wars or the 70s (concrete is beautiful) building boom that destroyed most of the nice old buildings in Europe.
Another thing is that all cities are planned so everything is in a grid system. Not sure how I still manage to get lost in them. A certain obsession with one way traffic can also be observed. Every street under four lanes is always one way. The drivers here cope with this fact by driving like maniacs. There is no such thing as staying in the lane if the other lane just looks to tempting and then the next and the next...
The people here are also obsessed with drinking a tea called Mate. Not sure exactly what it is but you see nearly everyone walking around with a thermos and the Mate cup all the time.
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