We took the ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacremento in Uruguay on Monday. Took just over an hour, but had to checkin early to go through both Argentine and Uruguay customs, which only took about 20 mins rather than the two hours we had been warned about.
Colonia is an old town with lots of Colonial style buildings and fortress walls with cannons, which were built by both the Portuguese and Spanish from 1680, the town has been fought over between the two countries until 1828 when Uruguay was formed. Colonia’s historic district is a UNESCO heritage site.
We picked up a hire car and ventured to Carmelo and Conchillas both North of Colonia, if you carried going north you eventually get to Fray Bentos, the site where the original pies in cans were made and although pretty derelict has been given UNESCO status. Camelo a small provincial town, has a stunning coastline on the River Plate a popular place with the locals. Conchillas has an industrial factory on the river, for processing local stone and sand, used in the building of the port in Buenos Aires in 1890. The factory was set up by the British firm C H Walker, who created the local town, whose buildings were made of thick stone with lime/mud mortar, plastered and painted yellow with red gambled tin roofs, almost unique in the world. The company minted it’s own money and brought a local of English traditions with them. Unfortunately, WW11 caused the factory to be closed in 1951and the town was sold to two local Uruguayan businessmen, who sold parts on to the locals, who had leased and worked the land, meaning that a lot of the old buildings are still intact today.
We then headed East along the coast for a few days visiting Piriapolis, a beach resort with a lovely cooling sea breeze, what amused us was the amount of ladies carrying folding chairs back from the beach! It reached 40 degrees on our travels.
Punta del Este and Montevideo, both of which we visited on the cruise, but we got to see more of each place.
Of course we managed to visit the larger Hard Rock Cafe in Montevideo and Nigel now has his Tshirt!
Uruguay is not cheap, fuel is expensive, there are tolls on nearly every road (no alternative options) and eating out is double what we were paying in Argentina. You do get the 22% tax back on eating out but it’s still dear.
Uruguay was not quite what we expected, Colonia and it’s historic town is lovely, the rest of the countryside is very flat with the odd hill here and there, lots of horses, cattle and sheep in the fields, the majority of the land is used to grow crops. There is no planning rules on style of house so you can build what you like, thatched cottage, square concrete boxes, ranch style houses and apartment block after apartment block!
The Northern and Southern parts we visited are all beach resorts, including Montevideo although a city with over 40% of the countries population, it still has lots of beaches. Maybe if we had gone to the North East, but generally this area is full of horse ranches.
However the people were lovely, as very few English visit here, hardly anyone spoke English, so Google translate was our friend, accompanied by lots of smiles and mispronounced words!
Fortunately for us it gave us time to relax, drink the very nice local wine and chill out for a change.