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our venture to Uruguay was only a short stay for an entire country, four nights in total but the weather did not permit us to get the best from Colonia or Montevideo, though it did give us a chance to relax and get back to living in the day light hours after nocturnal Buenos Aires.
colonia was our first stop off the ferry from B.A (a short three hour chug across the rio de la plata)and after you escape the terminal and taxi drivers and hostel touts it almost feels as though you have gone back in time, with cobbel stone streets and creeky old stocko buildings. Of coarse there is a newer area of town
but we didn't bother to see it why would you when you have the ruins of a fortress that was constructed in 1745 to explore.
Colonia started as a Portuguese smugglers port back in 1680 but was captured by the Spanish in 1762 who held it until 1777when it became leagal to transport goods to Buenos Aires the town has so much history that you can feel it as you walk around we vistited the oldest church in Uruguay iglesia matriz was built in 1680 and was almost destroyed by fire in 1799 but was rebuilt by a Spanish architect and Bec even suggested that this would be a nice place for us to make our vows so you all better start saving for air fares ha ha. Aside for strolling the streets hand in hand and sipping coffee alfresco oh and hudeling together to keep warm theres not a lot else to say say about colonia a beautiful small town that reeks of history and romance I don't think I would like to visit in summer the place would be packed with argies and the beaches don't appear to be that nice but in spring this place would rock .
Montavideo the capital and once the owner off the tallest building in south america
Palacio salvo An impressive 26 stories sits on the plaza indepencia(its a park) were we took about a thousand photos of the buddie bears a bunch of two meter tall bear statues that have been painted by artists from all over the world in kind of muralls depicting the artists home country Bec s favourite high light except for the aussie bear which unfortunatly was painted by ken done(the bear was basically painted black and depicted a new years eve fire works display on sydney harbour not to bad of an idea but ken done style????)also in the plaza is a huge statue ofuruguays greatest hero(but I don't know his name) and below it is an underground mausoleum it had a realy eirie feel about it and was guarded by two guys who I almost mistook as statues .ciudad vieja(old city) had much the same charms as colonia just on a larger and much buisier scale. We took a walk along a jetty and watched the locals pull in a few smallish fish it was nice then as we walked back towards the hostel it was time to quit all this romance stuff and go and see terminator four at the cinema(cheap as )for about 8 bucks aussie oh and I grabed a litre bottle of beer on the way home for about 60cents au gotta love uruguay for that if nothing else. on our last day in montevideo we tried the steak at the local markets as recomended in the lonely planet and it was ok but cant hold a candel to des nivel in B.A
so that was our trip to uruguay it was beautiful but cold and no gas heating like in argentina and i have to say i liked it better in argentina anway its probly not fair to rate a country on its steak alone but they brag about it so they deserve it
Damien
P.S we could not find a pool table in urguay so decided to have a three game shoot out in iguazu i won two to one but it was close
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