COLONIA DE SACRAMENTO & MONTEVIDEO - URUGUAY

After my somewhat dissapointing stay in Buenos Aires, I headed across the River Plate hoping to leave my greivances in Argentina. I might mention firstly that even getting to Uruguay proved to be a bit of a mission as one of the ferries operated between Buenos Aires and Montevideo, crashed into a fishing vessle, essentially putting the fleet 1 boat down for a fewdays. As such I had to wait a little longer than I had anticipated before I could get out of Buenos Aires and this meant that I wasn´t able to catch up with Fernando and Alison (´Tango masters´) in their home city.

My first destination in Uruguay was the peaceful town of Colonia de Sacramento, one of the oldest settlements in South America. I managed (just) to keep myself occupied in the town for the 5 or so hours between the arrival of my ferry and the departure of my bus to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo. Despite the intense heat beating down on Uruguay at the time of my visit I managed to wander a fair portion of the cobblestone streets, taking in the picturesque views of the Uruguayan coastline and colonial style architecture of the town. In addition I also managed a brief visit to the bull-fighting arena, in use up to around 1810 although my interest in this attraction was lessened by the fact that the sight was fenced off meaning I was not able to go inside and look around. Other highlights were the harbour area, which was filled with boats and looked somewhat similar to many of the cities Ihad visited in Scandanavia.

Colonia I discovered is one of the oldest in SouthAmerica (according to an old Argentine history professor who pestered me for the entire ferry trip from Buenos Aires with his terrible American accent.) After giving me a low down on his life story, the history ofUruguay and a whole bunch of other things that I didn´t really want to hear about, such as the fact that ´Johnny Ray´ was the first American singer to tour Australia (if anyone can confirm or deny thisor even tell me who the hell Johnny Ray is, I´d be very appreciative), he offered to look after my bags whilst I looked around the city for a few hours... an offer which I of course accepted (sometimes it pays to be nice - but not always !!). It was however nice to have a bit of a history lesson before gettingto the city and it meant I was able to appreciate various landmarks.

In around 3 hours I felt that I had covered most of what was on offer and embarked on a 1 hour walk around the coast to check out some of the beaches, which were definately better than those in Argentina but still not that flash.The bus ride from Colonia to Montevideo reminded me alot of Australiaand if it weren´t for the conversations in spanish going on around me I could have been taking a bus in country Victoria as I was surrounded by stock fences, eucalyptus trees, windmills and manycattle. It was however possibly a little green to be Australia !

Montevideo was described to me prior to my arrival as a small version of Buenos Aires and whilst I would not necessarily describe the city as such, there were definately similarities between the 2 capitals. The view of Montevideo across the harbour, just prior to my arrival at the bus terminal was certainly quite impressive and from this point of view the city was more visually appealing than Buenos Aires because of the way in which it incorporated the harbour area into the city (a trademark of many ´beautiful´ cities around the world... Sydney, San Francisco and Stockholm being just a few examples).

Despite the fact that I stayed only 1 and a half days in Montevideo, I still felt that I took in most of what the city had to offer and spent much of my time there wandering around the old sections of the city (Ciudad Vieja), admiring the colonial style architecture and watching as the local population went about their daily business. A particularly appealing aspect of the city was the pedestrian walkway along the coastline and nearby beaches and I enjoyed walking along this route, watching exercise freaks, relaxing couples and the rest of the soccer-mad population soak up the last few hours of sunlight at the end of a busy day. In addition, the city had a number of picturesque plazas in which I found it easy to just sit down and relax, watching the locals goabout their daily business.

Photos 1&2: Coastline around Colonia.
Photos 3&4: Lighthouse and remains of the colonial fort used to fight against the Portuguese.
Photos 5-7: Coastline around Montevideo.