Sheraton Colonia Golf Spa Resort Colonia del Sacramento

After a couple of nights in Montevideo, I moved back to Colonia Del Sacremento. It´s a very small town which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It´s old part was built in the 1600´s by the Portuguese, and they used it as a place to smuggle goods to Buenos Aires. The town still has a lot of the original houses, streets ...

... the police!! Yep, its true. Pulled over by Uruguayian police in a small buggy, after some Spanglish apologies they decided they couldn`t be bothered to talk to us further and we were on our way. Close one.

Then we were late for the ferry,... so we had hot foot it back to the garage to fill up and return the buggy. Fast walk across town. Check in for the boat. Go thru outgoing and incoming immigration departments. We made it, just

... a treaty, ratified by the Pope that divided the entire non-European world between these two titans of the Age of Discovery. But for almost 150 years, they fought over control of this town clearly located within the Spanish half of the world.

Today, Colonia is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The historic city sits on the end of a peninsula that was ...

... town. It had better damn well be pretty special, is what I was thinking.

Well, it was a nice day, but nothing all that special, to be honest. Colonia is a sleepy little town, which maintains a lot of its original Portuguese architecture, so UNESCO has declared it a heritage site. There's not a whole lot to do there, though. One main street with restaurants and shops selling the same cheesy souvenirs over and over again. It was also incredibly hot today, so after a few ...

... me dirige au guichet des renseignements où l'employé qui avait pris la souche de mon billet m'explique que quelque chose d'anormal s'est passé à l'immigration et me demande d'y retourner avec lui. Effectivement, après vérification, je n'avais reçu que mon cachet de sortie d'Argentine. L'employée de la douane m'avait indiqué de passer à un autre guichet pour remplir les formalités d'entrée en Uruguay, ce que je n'avais pas compris. Une chance que ceci ...

... tour of the newer and older areas of the town (respectively), wandered around and returned home that night. I think we were both ready for the slow boat to be the 'fast boat' on the way back home though! We were lucky with the rain, it timed itself perfectly to coincide with our bus-portion of the tour. This trip was really one of 'sightseeing' more than 'reflection'-- so I'll let the pictures do most of the talking!

... first you pad the bill and then offer to give me a few cents back ... how generous of you! Why even ask me? At the Buquebus terminal - there's another company that offers ferries to Uruguay, but Buquebus is the biggest, and offers the most departures. They obviously do well for themselves, because they have a brand-spanking new, private ferry terminal. They could do a better job labeling things inside - there isn't an obvious ticket office ...

... of great pride for Argentineans. I regretted not getting the same shirt shortly after Ranjit bought it, but had even more regrets after seeing the reaction of the waiters - perhaps the Argentinean senoritas would fawn over the shirt in the same way ... Since R&D were running low on funds, they asked if they could charge the meal, and keep everybody else's cash. None of us had a problem with this, but then Ben decided to do ...

Notre but aujourd´hui, vsiter la ville et rester a l´ombre. Nous nous levons tranquilement pour prendre le petit dej avec un couple de vieux americains de l´etat de Washington, Robin et Steeve. Nous visitons la vieille ville qui est tres charmante, des petites ruelles pavees relient des places ombragees pleines de bar a tapas ...

... sea, mystery solved. Colonial was lovely, very peaceful and the people were a lot friendlier than in Argentina, the men were a lot more normal and didn´t act so much like cavemen. The Portuguese were in Colonial and so the architecture was different which made a welcome change. We did a lovely walking tour of the old town which has some wonderful cobbled street and old cottages. Later we got some ...