Day trip to Uruguay

From Buenos Aires it's an easy ferry trip to get to Uruguay. There are connections to the capital Monte Video which is about 5 hours on a fa$t boat or the much closer Colonia de Sacremento on a more affordable 4 hour trip.

Leaving BA as the morning sun lit up the skyline was a pretty spectacular sight. The old docks area has been "redeveloped" with the usual huge apartment blocks but there is a large wetland nature reserve which has been retained.

Not so spectacular was the amount of rubbish in the murky brown waters of the harbour!
The crossing of the Rio de la Plata was uneventful and a bit boring as there wasn't much to do on the ferry. An obscenely overpriced duty free shop which we thought had reasonable prices until we found out they were in USD not Pesos Argentinos and some old-school arcade games were all the entertainment on board.

Arriving in Colonia we walked through the town and visited an ancient church and the old lighthouse. It's quite a pretty town with some cobblestone streets and cute old houses.
The lighthouse had a good view out over the water and town. Colonia is one of the oldest towns in South America and Uruguay was actually created as a "buffer" state between the Portuguese and Spanish colonies of Brasil and Argentina.

We wandered around for a while trying to find a restaurant for lunch and settled in at one which had an engaging and entertaining waiter who kept changing silly hats and reminded us of the movie Office Space with the impressive amount of "flair" he was displaying on his uniform. The food wasn't anything special though and we were still charged for the "table service" even though we refused to accept the fish spread and stale bread that was presented. Also when we got the bill we found we were given a 250 peso bottle of wine instead of the 100 peso bottle we had actually ordered so we left with a bit of a sour taste in our mouths. Not impressed with places which deliberately rip off tourists because they don't need repeat business.

After lunch we browsed some shops and visited the old fortifications near the water and Beau had a Cher moment with the old cannon. (That's the smokin'-fast boat to BA in the background)
Then we were pretty much just killing time waiting for the Ferry.