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Published: February 20th 2009
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Rush Hour in Buenos Aires
It might be early morning, but on the rivers the traffic is light So Nearly Not Uruguay
To get to the border with Uruguay you can take various boats from Buenos Aires to Colonia or Montevideo, but we decided to take the slightly slower, more scenic (and cheaper) route from Tigre to Calama. This meant leaving the house on Saturday morning before Daniela had even come home from her Friday night out in BA. The train ride out to Tigre was uneventful but very busy and we were pleased we had managed to squirrel enough coins away in a severely change-challenged city to get tickets from the machine rather than queue up to buy them.
When we got to Tigre and located the river we also found people, LOTS of people. We had failed to take into account the fact we were travelling at the weekend, during summer holidays and that we were travelling to a favourite weekend break destination for a lot of Argentinians...damn. The international boat terminal, which sounds much more grandiose than the shed it really is, was packed full of stressed-out people and impossible to work out. Tracey somehow found herself at a ticket desk and managed to get the last two tickets on a boat going
almost I Know I Parked It Somewhere
At some stage we have all forgotten where we left the car, but this is ridiculous! where we wanted, having established the actual boat we were hoping for was booked up weeks ago and there was a waiting list to get on it. The other boat turned out to be much smaller and slower, but the ride through all the canals in the delta between Argentina and Uruguay was really pretty. We found ourselves wondering what one of the huge river-side houses with boat launch, sun deck and several storeys might cost here, compared to the expensive riverside boxes for sale in Henley or Windsor!
Does Quaint Translate As Over-Touristy And A Bit Dull In Spanish?
The boat ride and 2 sets of very haphazard immigration checks later and we were on Uruguayan soil. We had decided to stop in Colonia Del Sacramento on our way to the capital on the basis of the glowing recommendations from the omnipresent guide book and several travellers who loved it. It turned out to be very pretty, with lovely little cobble streets and quaint squares with huge old trees. But it was also overflowing with overpriced tourist restaurants and the sea was a muddy brown because it is so close to the delta. We walked around
What A Load of Cobblers
Is it a town or is it a living colonial museum? There was beauty on every turn in Sacramento for ages looking for somewhere with a local touch to eat, but in the end had to settle for a tourist place. A few hours is all Colonia needs really, unless you want to totally chill and do nothing but eat and drink for a few days. We were happy to be back on a bus that afternoon, and on our way to the capital, Montevideo.
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Arriving at our hostel - Che Lagarto - in the dark we were told there was no record of our booking (the second time this has happened when we have used their own website to make the reservation). Luckily they had space for us and after a quick trip to the supermarket we crashed, feeling rather boring as the rest of the dorm was still empty!
We seem to have an unlucky habit of arriving in big cities on a Sunday and Motevideo was no exception. When we got up to look around we found ourselves a bit askew of the local timetable. Everyone was still in bed and all the shops and markets were sound asleep. It is always a bit eerie being in a big
Deserted Downtown
The Palacio Selvo in Montevideo was once the largest building in South America
city when nothing is going on, but it did liven up later.
We could count the things we knew about Uruguay on 2 fingers before we arrived (The capital is Montevideo and they won the first ever football World Cup) so we just strolled around to see what we could see. There is a great beachfront walk that goes on for several kilometres around the coast and plenty of little parks with shady trees. Just about everywhere we looked people were drinking mate. It seems to be even more of an obsession here than in Argentina. We saw so many people walking around with their cup in one hand and their thermos under an arm that we begun to wonder if we were breaking some kind of Uruguayan dress-code by not adorning ourselves in a similar way.
Asado is as popular here as it is over the water in BA but having made our way down to the market where the beef is supposed to be amazing we bumped into our old friend the cruise liner. Hundreds of the same people we saw in Argentina a few days before were piling off their floating hotel and into the
It´s A Tough Life
Sipping mate in the sunshine on the Rambla in Montevideo market. Bang went our chance of getting a good deal for any purchases, so we left. We did notice that thanks to Cunard being in town there were bored tourist police hanging around on every single corner, so at least the cruiser made the slightly run down port area of town a bit safer for wandering.
Expensive Cowboy Spotting
Our next stop was Tacuarembo, slap bang in the heartlands of Uruguay. The aim? To find genuine cowboys of course. I guess we expected to get off the bus in the midst of some kind of lasoo throwing, jeans wearing "yee-haa!" fest and were therefore disappointed to arrive in a regular terminal and find a couple of men with impressive moustaches and battered hats were our only welcome party. Overall Tacuarembo was a great example of typical life in Uruguay outside the big city: Smallish houses, lots of farming and pretty rivers. We did have a great picnic by a lake and we were treated to several swaggering cowboys riding through town with ponchos and huge, gorgeous old saddles, complete with wide leather stirrups, but we left feeling like the trip had been more of an expensive detour
A Floating Apartment Block
The cruiser that won´t leave us alone. We´re going to have to go to Paraguay to shake it off! (very pricey buses in Uruguay) than a ´must-do´ for anyone visiting the country.
Immigration Issues
Visiting Tacuarembo did give us the opportunity to pass through one of our favourite (see shambolic/random/bizarre) border crossings at a town called Rivera. It is called Rivera right up to the middle of the main road, where it then becomes Santana Do Livramento...and is part of Brazil. We were taking a chance by crossing here because we had absolutely no information about where anything was or how to move on to our next destination, but how hard could it be...the border was just a road right?
Well, stupidly when we got off the bus we asked where the border was. Having followed instructions we did indeed arrive at said border, but there was no immigration desk, gate to walk through, or even a sign. What we
should have asked for was directions to
immigration, which was 16 blocks up-hill in the opposite direction. We suppose the person who told us where the border was didn´t think about the whole immigration thing because Brazilians and Uruguayans are free to pass back and forth without any kind of regulation.
Brazilians cross the
That´s Bull
All cow and no boys in Tacuarembo road for casinos (banned in their country) and cheap electronics (subject to huge tax in their country). We can´t immediately see why Uruguayans cross the other way, but we´re sure this will eventually become apparent!
Having managed to exit Uruguay we couldn´t face another trek across town so a taxi took us to another, equally inconveniently placed office on the other side of town to be stamped into Brazil. We´re now waiting for a bus to take us on our way, but Tracey is already missing being able to communicate in Spanish after a slightly painful but eventually successful Portuguese transaction to buy our bus tickets!
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