Uruguay

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Uruguay (or Colonia to be precise) is only 1 hour (3 hours if you take the cheaper slow boat) away from Buenos Aires. Since I had two days spare before I had to leave for Iguazu, I thought I'd make the short trip over.

Colonia could be a town in Argentina, they even accept Argentine pesos, but it's another world from Buenos Aires: less people, less noise, less traffic, and the drivers actually give way to pedestrians, rather try to run them down like in BA. Unfortunately, my experience of Colonia was somewhat ruined by my need to pee, and the breakdown of the visa . These two problems are related, because with no money, I couldn't buy food at any of the restaurants and use their toilets. Thankfully, the ATMs eventually decided to comply and my problems were solved. Not being able to get money was a little worrying, and made me realise how awesome and convenient global banking is, there's no way I could have travelled for this long by only taking cash.

Anyway, I think I got sidetracked...yes, Colonia. Well, it's just a nice quiet sea-side town, with some very old (and authentic) buildings and I climbed the lighthouse for a view of the town. All quite nice, but you can probably tell that I wasn't really taken in by it all. I think after almost 6 months of travel, I've become harder to impress and I was bored by mid-afternoon, so I took the bus to Montevideo.

Montevideo is like BA again, though just not as busy. There are lots of big squares and grand buildings, and also a beach, but nothing really extraordinary and I felt I'd seen enough a day. See what I mean about being hard to impress?

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