26.11.2013Uruguay for a Day

From Buenos Aires “Colonia del Sacramento” can be visited during a long one-day outing. Starting in the morning we took a speedboat to Colonia, which lies in the “Rio de la Plata” region of Uruguay. The town is filled with old colonial buildings and cobblestone streets and is recognized as an UNESCO World Heritage site. As the trip involves leaving Argentina and enter Uruguay and leaving Uruguay and re-entering Argentina we got quite a lot of stamps in our passports during that day trip 🙂

The Portuguese founded Colonia in 1680 to smuggle goods across the Rio de la Plata into Buenos Aires. Sandwiched in between the Portuguese colony of Brazil and the Spanish Vice Royalty of the River Plate (later Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil) it had a strategic position. Its sovereignty was fircely contested and the city changed between Spanish and Portuguese occupiers several times.

To get a good overview of the city we joined a walking tour through the Barrio Historico (historic center), which lies on a small peninsula, and strolled around the little alleys lined with old colonial buildings.

The old light-tower is just perfect as a lookout over of the historic center:

And of course we spotted flowers along the way:

In the afternoon we stopped at one of the many cafes around the Plaza des Armas:

And enjoyed some mate and alfajores which are cookies filled with caramel cream and thereafter rolled in coconut flakes:

In the evening we went to the tip of the peninsula to watch the sunset and even catch a glimpse of the skyscrapers of Buenos Aires, that are located on the other side of Rio de la Plata.

As our ride back was scheduled for 10pm, we still had enough time to look for a nice place for diner.

Tini had a pork chop with plum and apple compote, which turned out to be a really interesting and delicious combination:

And Andy had spicy garlic prawns which were also quite delicious:

After this long day and all the walking around we slept during most the ride back to Buenos Aires. Overall we were very pleasantly surprised by Uruguay and with more time at hand would have loved to explore it in more detail!