Uruguay

Hola todos,

I am going to take a quick break from the Blue Backpack Break series to tell you all about what I did this past weekend. Because it was the Carnival holiday here in South America (and yes, it is an actual holiday when businesses close!), my classmates and I were given from Friday to Tuesday of this past week to travel again!

The Uruguayan flag (which holds a striking similarity to the Argentine flag)

Even though I am a little travel weary from winter/summer break still, I knew that I needed to see Uruguay! So for 4 of our 5 travel days, three students and myself found ourselves across the river in the country where Argentines and celebrities vacation. (Again, one reason why we only used 4 days and 3 nights- although Uruguay wasn't super expensive, it certainly wasn't cheap!)

Day 1

We started off early because we had to check in for our ferry ride at 7:15 am. The station was across town and we were busing- it took us nearly an hour to get there! We had no problems checking in, though, and took the ferry across the Río de la Plata from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacramento, otherwise just known as Colonia.

A little history: The Río de la Plata (meaning Silver River) was called that by the Spanish who arrived in Buenos Aires during the period of the conquistadores. The river, which is the widest river in the world (or so I've been told by Argentines), seemed silver when the sun reflected off of it. Needless to day, this excited the Spanish who were looking for precious metals. Imagine their disappointment when they discovered that the glittering surface was caused only by the churned up dirt in the river!



Colonia is a very cute, quaint town that reminds me a lot of Smalltown, USA. I would have loved to stay the night there just to walk around the town a lot, but there really isn't much to do there other than sit in a very nice park.


So we took a 3 hour bus to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. From there, we took another 2.5 hour bus ride to Punta del Este, where we had booked our hostel for the night. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that our hostel was yet another 30 minutes away from Punta del Este! A lot of bus travel that day.

However, we got to see two cool sides of Punta del Este, the ultimate celebrity touring city in Uruguay. Right on the beach, this city has the expensive resorts right along the coast of the ocean, but it also had these very small beach towns with a few beach houses and dirt roads. (If you are familiar with Rocky Point/Puerto Penasco, Mexico, I got déjàvu from El Chorro, the beach town outside of Punta del Este that we were staying in. I suppose it was appropriate that I was at a resort beach town this past weekend- so was my church's Rocky Point mission trip!) It was nice to get a break from not only the hustle and bustle of city life in BA, but also to get some nice ocean weather- less humidity and much less heat.

Day 2

We decided to check out Punta Ballena, a cool beach with an awesome house, which was about an hour away from us. Of course, we had no idea where to get off of the bus or where we were going when we got to Punta Ballena, but we figured it out. ("We'll figure it out when we get there" was the motto of this trip, I think.)

The beach was incredibly gorgeous, and the houses in the area were stunning. However, the best part of Punta Ballena was seeing the Casapueblo, an artist's house that was converted into a museum and hotel.

Much of the work of Carlos Páez Vilaró (the owner) was on display throughout the house.

Then we checked out the beach and saw some paragliders! The wind that day was perfect for any sort of gliding/sailing activity. Here is a video of some of what we saw (WARNING: one of my traveling buddies got a little explicit when the paraglider looked like he was going to crash...)

We hung out at the beach at all afternoon and then headed back to Punta del Este, where we walked along the beach and the town there.

We also dropped by a casino to withdraw cash from their ATM. Uruguay is the only place in our area of South America where you can withdraw US dollars from ATMs! (No, I didn't gamble while at the casino. Kind of a wasted opportunity, but I was low on cash!)

Day 3

We left Punta del Este today. It was probably good that we spent beach time yesterday, since rain was spitting on us all morning!

However, before we left we checked out Los dedos (The Fingers), which is a big statue of a submerged hand in the Playa Brava of Punta del Este.
(PS. The story behind this statue is very sad- a father watched his son drown and the last he saw of his son were his reaching fingers. The father had this statue made in memory of his son.)

We headed off to Montevideo which, although we had spent about 15 minutes here on our first day in between our buses, we didn't actually get to see the city at all.

The Plaza Independencia in Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo

We went to Ciudad Vieja (a Montevideo neighborhood) and checked into our hostel: Los Jardines de Babylonia. Like the name suggests, the theme was the lost gardens of Babylon, and the decor inside the hostel corresponded perfectly! We all really liked this hostel and wished that we could have stayed longer- alas, we depart Montevideo tomorrow.

We headed to the Mercado del Puerto to see the restaurant/tourism area in Ciudad Vieja. Tons of authentic restaurants were grilling up meats. Yum!

We headed to Los Pocitos, the main beach in Montevideo. (The water was a gross brown, though, because this beach is from the Río de la Plata, not the ocean, so there is a ton of dirt!)

Our travel crew at the Montevideo sign. The backlighting is weird because of the sun, but I am on the "o" on the far left and the rest of the group is on the "t" and both "e"s.

We wandered around in search of some dinner and came across a mall. Although it had a severely limited food court, it had an awesome candy shop! (And they had sour gummy worms, which I was seriously craving!)

We ended the night with a walk down the pier near our hostel. Seeing another beach sunset was beautiful!

Day 4

Today, we woke up early in the morning (5:30 am!) to head to the bus station, where we caught a bus from Montevideo back to Colonia. From Colonia, we ferried to Buenos Aires (and even though both Immigration and Customs were slow, we made it through without any problems!). We ended the trip with an hour-long bus ride back to our side of BA.

Well, another country checked off of my list and 4 more stamps in my passport. At this rate, I am going to need extra passport pages before my 10 year expiration is up! I had a great time in Uruguay, and even though is was short and sweet compared to winter break, it was nice to get out of BA a little (especially since the weather here has been horribly hot and humid).

Until next time...

Besos,

Tina the Exploradora