Adventures in South America: Colonia del Sacremento, Uruguay

Today I made a day trip to Colonia del Sacremento in Uruguay, just across the Rio de la Plata.  The trip is popular with locals and tourists alike from Buenos Aires--catamaran ferries make the trip in just over an hour.

There are several companies that do the crossing, but it was easy for me to choose Buquebus, because their terminal is just a few minutes away from the Hotel Melia.

The immigration process here was pretty nifty, because they have an Argentinian officer sitting beside a Uruguayan, so they literally pass the passport down the line and once you get it back it has your Argentina exit stamp and your Uruguay entry stamp.

We pulled away from Buenos Aires quite late but it did not make too much difference to me.

We were less late arriving in Colonia than we had been leaving Buenos Aires, but I do not remember what time we arrived.

Once ashore I meandered towards the old town, which is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is probably only 500 metres from the port. 

Colonia's history is interesting, because it traded hands extremely frequently between its founding in 1680 and 1828, since when it has been part of Uruguay.  Here's the chart from Wikipedia:

1680	1680	Portugal	conquered by José de Garro
1680	1681	Spain	Provisional Treaty of Lisbon
1681	1705	Portugal	conquered in the War of Spanish Succession
1705	1713	Spain	Treaty of Utrecht
1714	1762	Portugal	First Cevallos expedition
1762	1763	Spain	Treaty of Paris (1763)
1763	1777	Portugal	Second Cevallos expedition
1777	1811	Spain	Revolt led by José Gervasio Artigas
1811	1817	Liga Federal	Portuguese conquest
1817	1822	Portugal	Brazilian Declaration of Independence
1822	1828	Brazil	Cisplatine War

I had about five hours in Colonia, but had not made any plans because I was not too sure what to expect.  I probably could have made better use of my time and enjoyed everything a bit more if I had planned a bit more intentionally, but anyway I spent an hour or two just walking around.

You can climb the lighthouse, which appealed to me, and there are several museums, including an Indigenous museum which intrigued, but nothing was open yet, so I made my way out of the old town to mail a postcard.  There is a bit of a main street with lots of shopping, restaurants, and so on.  It seems besides the historical site, Colonia is a bit of a shopping destination as well.  Nothing struck me as especially unique or otherwise noteworthy, so I think the only appeal might be that you can save the VAT if you pay with a foreign credit card, but since a) my Spanish is lousy and b) I did not really care to figure it out, I am not quite sure.  

After mailing my postcard I picked a restaurant to have lunch in.  I "successfully" ordered entirely in Spanish, and ended up with a litre of beer.

I ate a steak, and was tremendously disappointed: it was probably the toughest meat I have ever eaten, and very fatty.  Granted, I was eating this in Uruguay and not Argentina, and granted this was not the nicest steakhouse, but after hearing so much about Argentina's beef, I had higher expectations.  

After lunch I still had a couple of hours or so before I had to return to port, so I decided to head to the beach.  I was intrigued by the artwork, advertising, and graffiti that lined the road.

Including advertising for communists:

On the way I took a short detour down this staircase. 

I felt like I was in the jungle.

But, I ended up at a dead end, so had to retreat and go back up the stairs.

Soon after I was at the beach.  I had not prepared at all for the beach, and I had expected it to not be very pleasant, because the Rio de la Plata is very, very muddy, but it turned out to be much nicer than my expectations.

I walked along it for a few minutes just in my shoes, then looped back to return to the ferry.

I passed this cool car on my walk back toward the port!