Date of Entry: April 30th to May 1st 2016
Date of Writing: July 5th, Che Lagarto Hostel, Natal Brazil.
The ferry from Buenos Aires to Uruguay really is the best way to go. There’s three companies, buquebus, colonia express and sea cat and all of them have offices on avenida Cordoba about a block apart. You can check prices online but if you have the time I’m told by my hostel it’s best to book in person. Each company also has its own ferry terminal so make sure you go to the right ones. The ferry’s typically take you to colonia del sacramento with an option to continue on to Montevideo by bus, but if you have the time I really do suggest spending a day or two in colonia before continuing to this small nation’s capital. Colonia, much like it sounds is a charming little colonial town on the coast. There are also buses to Uruguay but these take longer and tend to cost more than the ferry too, especially in low season. Plus a ferry allows me another chance to do my Penguin drinking tea dance (thank you KCVI drama club) And yes, I’m very weird, thank you for noticing.
At any rate Lydia and I end up on a colonia express Sunday around noon for just aroind 500 ARS (45 CAD) and after passing through border control and check in fairly easily we board the comfortable and un crowded ferry. More than almost anywhere in South america Uruguay has a tourism season, in Argentinean summer when Portenos flood the little country, but we’re will past summer now, and despite the colder weather I’m glad of it. I’m Canadian I can deal with cold, with crowds I’m not so good.
Lydia and I chat away getting to know each other better joking and laughing and we are lucky to have very calm seas even if the skies are foggy and more than a little wet. Still by the time we get to colonia the sun is starting to peek out from behind the clouds.
After the roughly 2 hour ferry we shoulder our big packs and head out into the city walking to look for a place to stay with Lydia’s South America on a Shoestring lonely planet book in hand. I don’t travel with guidebooks myself, preferring the online world for my research. I find that guidebooks, and especially lonely planet, offer some good background info and would perhaps be useful reading prior to arriving somewhere, but really for me there is much more valuable on travel blogs and travel forums to help me plan my travels. Still a part of me is excited to have the book for the next three weeks, especially in Brasil where we don’t speak the language.
As we wander through the charming colonial streets of this empty feeling small town with no real plan in mind I find myself pleased with my decision to come to Uruguay before planned not only is it a really pretty town bring with it an incredibly welcome sense of tranquility when compared to Buenos Aires, but Lydia and I are getting along super well, and it’s damn nice to have a travel partner again.
Eventually we find a place to say marked on lonely planet’s book, a charming little family run place with a nice courtyard and okay dorms for 350 Uruguayan pesos or about 15 Canadian dollars. There we relax for a while ignoring a very strange looking old man sleeping in one of the beds before heading out together to wander round the city and hopefully find some food too. Uruguay is maybe even more famous than Argentina for it’s meat, so we are both excited.
As we wander through a pair of charming plazas before finding our way to the coast I grow more and more comfortable with Lydia which unfortunately for her means more and more terrible jokes. It’s one thing I miss when travelling alone, sometimes you really miss having someone you can say incredibly offensive things too (in jest of course) and know that they will still be your friend after, instead of being scared of you and maybe just maybe switching hostels because of it. Lydia, sorry for all the terrible jokes… but I’m really not sorry.
After a little more than an hour of wandering through the charming but stunningly empty little town we settle down for a lunch dinner hybrid in a restaurant where I get the specialty of the house sandwich, a delicious concoction packed with what feels like a dozen different kinds of meat. It’s delicious but expensive, as a lot of food in Uruguay will be. My advise head to the markets and eat as many choripans as you can if you’re on a budget but don’t want to miss Uruguayan meat. Especially in Montevideo this advice will help you.
Back at the hostel we hang out in the living room and meet a german and a swiss german who we end up sharing a small dinner with and playing cards. Alternating between me teaching Yanef to them and Lydia teaching us another fun game. It ends up being a lot of fun, though with colonia so empty we decide tomorrow it will be best to move on to Montevideo, as Lydia is working with limited time and Brazil holds so much we want to see. The Uruguayan entries will sadly be quite short lived and I really do hope I get a chance to come back to this chilled out little country sometime soon.
