Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Side step to Uruguay



The ferry to Colonia del Sacremento left port at 9:30am. It was of course raining in the morning, but we decided to make use of the heal-toe express anyway and walk the 10 or so blocks. The process of check-in felt like we were in an airport. We had to clear security and considering we were leaving Argentina for the day and entering Uruguay had to go through immigration. It was actually more of a formality than anything. Another stamp for the passport. The ferry left on time and the 40 km distance between the two countries took three hours; we had booked the slow ferry. The other option was for a one hour ferry ride, but that would have cost about double the price. So we settled into our first class seats, which reclined nicely, and I got some shut eye for a good portion of the sailing. We docked in Colonia and the rain had stopped. I was so elated, but the draw back was that it was extremely windy. But that was better than the rain and we only had the day, so onward and forward. Colonia is a small seaside town. It was originally a 17th century Portuguese smuggling port designed to disrupt the Spanish base in Buenos Aires. It’s a quaint, picturesque little place. The architecture in this town consists of a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese because these two had battled long for control over the town. In fact, as our guide informed us, the Basilica of the Holy Sacrament was destroyed and rebuilt seven times, and each time either the Spanish or Portuguese rebuilt it using their own style. Today, you can definitely see the striking difference in a couple of the exterior walls. Once pointed out, you can tell the two architecture styles in the buildings in the “Portuguese part” of town. The buildings are all older, and there is not much in the way of modern building here. The beaches look really nice here, but the water was rather dirty.

Before joining up with our tour guide in the afternoon, we wandered around the town and found an artisan’s market. They had some really neat handcrafted things for sale here. The town is really not that large, there aren’t even any traffic lights. So after we saw everything without going into the area where our city tour would take us, we decided we’d have some real lunch because what was provided wasn’t overly substantial. We found this great restaurant called Mercursor and they were offering a lunch of the day. Ziad had been wanting to try a restaurant with a lunch of the day ever since we arrived in Buenos Aires, so we took the opportunity to try it here. It’s a set menu lunch for a set price. In this case, it cost us $20USD total, including a generous tip, and considering the exchange rate is about 1 to 19 it was a steal of a deal! The set lunch menu consisted of a drink, a cream of vegetable soup as an appetizer, a hearty beef with vegetable stew as the main course and a flan with cappuccino for dessert. The stew was to die for.

Some facts our guide told us about Uruguay that I found interesting: it’s the smallest Spanish country in South America, the population is 3.5 million and agriculture and cattle raising are the main industries. There is a population of about 15 million cows and sheep, which highly out numbers the human population. The Uruguayans, just like the Argentineans, enjoy drinking their maté and you can see people carrying around thermoses and their special maté cups around town. This drink is definitely an acquired taste and there are rules of etiquette and ritual involved in drinking. I tried a tea bag version (not the “real way) in Buenos Aires and absolutely hated it; it tasted awful, but Ziad actually liked it - not sure he’d feel the same about the real thing.

Remember, how I mentioned it was really windy? Well this caused a problem for the return ferry. Apparently, the water level was not high enough for us to leave because of the wind and we were stuck waiting for about an hour so the water level could rise. We did make it back to Argentina safely, quite a bit late, but it all worked out.

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