<<<<series begins several entries earlier - don’t start in the middle!
Saturday, December 30:
Today, Uruguay!!
Elaine and I thought it would be fun to see not just one new country on this trip, but TWO, since it sounded relatively easy to get to Uruguay from the port in Buenos Aires by ferry. In a nutshell, our day would be to go to Colonia del Sacramento, a tiny historic town right across the bay from Buenos Aires, take a tour, have some lunch, and come back to BsAs! Easy, right?
So up and at ‘em with no hangover (because we chose sleep over dancing all night at the Brazilian place, heh), breakfast with our handsome Breakfast Boy (aka Ponytail Dude) who greeted us each and every morning in the little garden area and brought us scrambled eggs, and then off in a taxi to the ferry port.
We were advised to get to the port an hour early and boy, did we need it. Didn’t realize that taking an hour-long ferry ride to Uruguay would actually be so difficult! It was like getting on an international flight because we had to (a) check in, (b) go through security, (c ) go through CUSTOMS…all with long-ish lines. At one point, Elaine and I were separated by a customs agent and they pulled us out of line to get some kind of clearance (which turned out to be stamping us out of Argentina and into Uruguay - 2 separate agents). We didn’t know what was going on and a security guy yelled something at me and I just yelled back, “NO COMPRENDE!” and he shook his head and let us both walk down the gangway. Heh. When in doubt, plead ignorance!
No biggie really, just all seemed like a much bigger task than we realized for just an afternoon in this little town.
We boarded the boat (the first photo in this article is what our boat looked like) and Elaine and I looked around for a decent seat. Note that I always have some kind of minor fear about any mode of transportation that doesn’t involve ME as the driver, so of course we had to find a GOOD spot with which to see where we were going. Elaine found an upstairs part of the boat and that seemed perfect…nice leather seats and everything!
A quick life vest check (under the seat, naturally!) lifeboat check (never did figure this out) and exit check and we were off!
The trip across the bay/gulf (which is actually a RIVER, by the way, if you’re from Argentina and like to tell people that it’s the widest river in the WORLD at 140 miles wide!) was uneventful as we had great weather, if not scorchingly hot. No need for life jackets or blow up boats. We docked at Colonia after about an hour and 15 minute sail.
As we were de-boarding and walking down to the first level, I noticed a sign that said we’d been sitting in business class. No wonder the seats were so luxurious, roomy and leather! But the interesting thing is that nobody ever checked our tourist class tickets or even looked at us in a weird way because we just made ourselves at home in the Biz Class cabin! Oops! See? Ignorance pays.
Off the boat, we went to find our tour. Turns out, the tour was going to be in Spanish, but the woman at the information desk said that we could get headsets for a self-guided walking tour in English, provided I give her my return ticket for collateral. Hm. This did not make very much sense to me, and I looked at Elaine and we both were like, no thanks…just show us on the map where we can eat our lunch. I know how mix ups can happen with tickets, passports and such, so I chose to hang onto everything I had in my possession!
Super glad we did that because, while the little colonial town was beautiful, the heat was beyond blazing and we ended up walking to the restaurant, eating and drinking exceptionally cold beer - and that was really all we wanted to do. It was simply too hot for any kind of standing in the sun and listening to a tour, self-guided or not!
Yes, the town was cool and old and there was a lighthouse and cobbled streets and…kind of a beach. Yes, the place was quaint and beautiful. But OMG it was pretty much too hot to do anything but walk in the shade and stop to get water and beer!
Oh, and Elaine got some US$$$$$ out of a cash machine at a bank! Cha-ching!
But that was pretty much it.
So, we walked back to the ferry port and had to go through the same checking in and customs process like on the way, only the lines were a lot shorter and the security was a LOT funnier! Cute little dude who looked at our tickets and said in broken English, “go over there for the bar and the photos!”
More passport stamping and then more waiting around for our ship to come in!
It finally did and we boarded our ferry and innocently (ignorantly!) found ourselves back up in the Business Class seats on the way back to Buenos Aires. Another non-eventful hour and 15-minute cruise and we were back at the port, watching the clouds roll in. Turns out, those dragonflies didn’t lie - the rain was coming!!
Then a quick taxi ride back to the hotel in time for showering our sweaty selves and figuring out WTF we were going to EAT. Because, I mean, that’s what you do on vacation, right? Kind of funny, though…neither one of us was in the mood for red meat. Hm..how could that be possible?
We both got on our phones and Yelp’d and Tripadvisor’d and actually found an Asian noodle bar close to our hotel that sounded excellent, so that’s where we ended up for dinner - sitting at a noodle bar, slurping spicy soup - because we could!
We were also very, VERY excited about the fact that (a) we’d made NO plans for the morning/afternoon the next day - which happened to be New Year’s Eve Day, and (b) it was going to rain overnight, which means perfect sleeping weather and the heat was going to dissipate!
So, Asian dinner noodle soupfest was pretty fantastic. We talked to the guy sitting next to us at the bar. He was German and in town staying with his Argentine friends for New Years and just having an evening to himself. Talked a bit about New Years Eve and how different it is in Argentina as compared to other parts of the world. Talked about some other stuff too that I don’t recall, but he was a really nice dude.
He left and shortly after, we left, but the guy didn’t get far because we found him again down the block sitting at a table outside a pub and drinking beer. We waved goodnight as the wind kicked up and cooled us all down.
Back to the hotel for the rainy night ahead. Guys, we were tiiiiii-yerrrrddd!!
Next up…New Year’s Eve!!!!
xox,
GS
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