Colonia - February 6th

Today we leave Buenos Aires for good and Argentina temporarily, as we go to Uruguay.  Our first stop there is Colonia Del Sacramento, the oldest town in Uruguay.  To get there we are taking a ferry from BA’s port to Colonia. After checking out of our apartment, (not as easy a process as it could have been) and getting a taxi to the port (definitely not as easy as it could have been, the traffic was terrible) we go through the airport style ferry terminal very easily.  Our big bags were checked in, we went through the security queue in no time, our Argentina exit and Uruguay entry were all done in seconds, and then we waited in a nice lounge.   Airports could learn from this ferry terminal.
The ferry journey itself is on a big SeaCat type boat, claimed to be the fastest ferry crossing in the world.  Whether it is or not, it is helped by the fact that although it is a 45km journey (which we do in an hour, so it is fast) it is across a river not the ocean, so it is pretty calm.  The Rio del Plata is quite wide at this point, and actually gets wider down towards the ocean.  If I had one complaint about the ferry it is that it didn’t have any outside areas so I couldn't take photos of the receding BA skyline, but I guess there are safety reasons when you are traveling that fast.

When we get to Colonia we don’t have any accommodation booked, but chancing our arm that by a Monday there will be some, we call at the first hotel by the ferry terminal, and they have a room available, so we take it.  It’s slightly pricey, but it is very handy for the bus terminal as well.  We are only a few blocks away from the old town, so we walk there and into the tourist office to enquire about sights, tours and maps.  After a quick look around town (actually a search for a working ATM) and an ice cream, we decide to go to the shopping centre and cinema to see if we can see the films we missed in BA.  However being a small town they are still not on release here, so we have to give up and walk back to town.

And were we glad we did.  We walked down to the water front, Colonia being built on a peninsula that faces west towards BA, and sat down for a beer.  As we did the sun began to set, and due to the way the clouds were arranged over BA (another rain storm there we think), we were treated to the most spectacular sunset.  It was a good sunset in its own right, but when looking at it we noticed a few little dots in front of it.  It took a second to figure out what we were seeing, the tops of a dozen or so of the highest skyscrapers in BA peeking over the horizon 45km away.  It was a truly amazing sight; I can’t think there are many sunsets like it.  The strange thing is that a lot of the people who visit Colonia are day trippers from BA so they never get to see this sight.  It definitely made up for the lack of BA skyline photos on the ferry earlier.

After that we went for dinner to a little restaurant which was the top rated place on Trip Advisor, even though it only serves cheese and ham plates.  All we got were 6 different types of cheese, some sauces for them, some chorizo and salami, and bread.  I say all we got, but we got these in such quantities that it was amazing, and not only was it the biggest quantity cheese plate I’ve ever got, it was the best quality.  I mean it, the Uruguayan cheese is of top quality.  Food was good in Argentina, but if this is what it is like in Uruguay we will be staying longer than our planned week.