URUGUAY
Colonia deL Sacramento
November 14, 2022
We arrived at the Buquebus terminal in Buenos Aires two hours and fifteen minutes before departure and were one of the first ones in line.
It's super windy today and the water looks like whipped up chocolate.
"First in line" doesn't mean the first to get on. The ferry was very crowded, and we were forced to sit in an interior seat. A woman sat in the same row with us, and it turned out she was from Atlanta. She's an attorney that was originally from Puerto Rico and spoke Spanish (yay!). The ride went by fast because we were talking with her the entire time.
Afterwards, we all departed together but then we lost her because she was only coming over for a few hours and we still had to get our checked suitcases. We were in the wrong line, and it took us forever. So, Laura was long gone when we came out of the terminal. We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to her.
Our hotel is literally right on the water with a large group of older women staying here. At least, older than us! After waiting behind a long line of them to check in, we left to go find lunch. The ferry only had junk food, and we wanted something healthier.
We found this unique little sandwich shop...
... so we could have MORE CHEESE!
Afterwards, we wandered the streets of the picturesque historic district with the most beautiful Bougainvillea everywhere.
Every wall has giant pink blooms covering half of the wall.
We walked for a couple of hours and stopped to look at the restaurant menu for Bistro Charco… an upscale restaurant we were planning on coming back to later for dinner. Guess who we ran into…. Laura!
So, she joined us at this wonderful restaurant. Because it was between 3:30 and 7:30 (no one eats lunch or dinner during this time frame), they were serving a limited menu. We had a lovely time talking with her and now are Facebook friends.
She left early to catch the ferry back to Buenos Aires and we ordered probably the best dessert I've ever had in my life. It was a dulce de leche volcano cake with vanilla ice cream and it was absolutely delicious.
The water was still looking like chocolate milk.
We then walked around the old town area and took many pictures because the lighting was perfect.
November 15, 2022
We've really had issues with the language since arriving in South America. Very few people speak any English and none of the websites or restaurant menus seem to have English options available. We were told by the front desk person here at the Radisson to book our bus tickets online... but there is no English option. Later, I went downstairs to ask a different front desk person and he said they will not take a foreign credit card online anyway. They will take the credit card once we get to the terminal, but they won't take it online. So, once again we will be dealing with buying tickets and not speaking any Spanish. Later, we went to an ATM and there was an English option at one point, but then it switched back to Spanish and we didn't know what it was asking. Instead of getting hundred dollars’ worth of Uruguayan pesos, we ended up with a $100 American bill. That cost six dollars just for that bill that is useless to us. So, then we tried to get $100 in Uruguayan pesos and the ATM machine told us it was going to cost us $256!! Robin panicked about that amount, so I canceled the transaction but realized afterwards that it was in pesos and it would just cost another six US dollars. So, we still don't have any pesos. It's hard for us to get by in South America without speaking the language. So much easier in Europe!
We've really had issues with the language since arriving in South America. Very few people speak any English and none of the websites or restaurant menus seem to have English options available. We were told by the front desk person here at the Radisson to book our bus tickets online... but there is no English option. Later, I went downstairs to ask a different front desk person and he said they will not take a foreign credit card online anyway. They will take the credit card once we get to the terminal, but they won't take it online. So, once again we will be dealing with buying tickets and not speaking any Spanish. Later, we went to an ATM and there was an English option at one point, but then it switched back to Spanish and we didn't know what it was asking. Instead of getting hundred dollars’ worth of Uruguayan pesos, we ended up with a $100 American bill. That cost six dollars just for that bill that is useless to us. So, then we tried to get $100 in Uruguayan pesos and the ATM machine told us it was going to cost us $256!! Robin panicked about that amount, so I canceled the transaction but realized afterwards that it was in pesos and it would just cost another six US dollars. So, we still don't have any pesos. It's hard for us to get by in South America without speaking the language. So much easier in Europe!
Breakfast at the hotel makes you feel like you are on a boat. It was much better than the last three breakfasts we had in Argentina.
We then walked around the cobblestone streets of Colonia to get a few more pictures.
I love this shot because I accidently photographed a bird in flight through the top left window.
We bought a few pastries for the 3-hour bus trip and dragged our suitcases for the 20-minute walk to the bus terminal. We wore our masks the entire time on the bus because there was clearly someone nearby with a bad cold. Hopefully, we don't end up with something.
montevideo
Our Hilton hotel in Montevideo is beautiful and is one block from the Rio de la Plata.
We went to a food hall that had a ton of choices and was completely empty and we thought we'd have the place to ourselves. However, that was not to be… because once again we were way too early and nothing was open yet.
We had a few hours to kill, so we walked God-knows-how-many steps.
We stumbled on this lovely park that didn't have a single park bench in it.
The only place to sit was on the log dividers along the sidewalk.
First time I've seen an MLK street in another country.
Hours later we ended up an at a total dive Mexican restaurant. However, looks were deceiving because it was really good.
After another 20,000+ step day, it was great to put our feet in the rooftop hot tub.
November 16, 2022
So happy to NOT be having Jamón and cheese at the hotel breakfast!
We decided to walk the 3+ miles to the old town area for our walking tour. Although yesterday was decent weather because of low humidity and a temperature in the low 70s, it was not the same for today. The humidity had doubled, and the temperature reached 84°. By the time we arrived at Independence Plaza, I was already way overheated. The tour consisted of about 18 people (too many) and our guide had a very heavy accent. Between his accent, the loud buses constantly driving by, the workers jackhammering, car alarms going off, dogs barking, and cars honking… I think I heard less than a third of what he had to say. Plus, instead of stopping in a shady area to tell us something, he seemed to like standing in the full sun. So, I would go off to the side into the shade and be far away and could not hear him. I felt a little exasperated by the whole tour.
We started out at the building where the Uruguayan president works. I was surprised there were no barriers built around it, nor any major guard presence.
We learned that Christmas is called “family day”. Easter is called “tourism week”. This is because 45% of the country is atheist or agnostic. The other 55% do not practice their religion, so it’s basically a no-religion society.
Even though the traffic was crazy busy with avenues as wide as 16 lanes in Buenos Aires, at least they had a great system of walk symbols for people to cross the street. That's not the case in Uruguay. In fact, some intersections don't even have stop signs at any of the four corners and the drivers just know that the person on the left yields to the person on the right. There isn't a walk/no walk light to be had anywhere. The cars do not stop and are coming at you very fast, and the roads are really busy. So, the best thing that we could think of to do was to stand with other people as they were waiting to cross the street and just crowd up right next to them and walk when they walked. If they were going to get killed, there would be about five of us getting killed at the same time. It's really difficult to cross the street.
I couldn't wait for the tour to finish and the last thing that we did was gather in a very crowded and hot mercado where they all did a shot of alcohol.
Of course, neither Robin nor I knew what it was because we couldn't hear or understand the guide. We only knew that we needed to turn it down when it came our way. As you can see... we are usually the oldest ones on the free walking tours.
Once we were done, we headed over to Jacinto – a restaurant that Robin had found in her research.
After all the cheese, ham, and pastries that I've eaten since we flew down here, I was craving something extremely healthy. I was happy to see that we could have a kale chicken salad as well as roasted vegetables and a seeded bread with more vegetables piled on it. Of course, after eating that healthy it seemed justifiable to have a fabulous lemon cheesecake!
Later, we went back to the food hall that wasn’t open last night. It just seems so complicated to order anything other than a hamburger with Papas Fritas.
We wanted to order some ice cream but didn't want to translate all the flavors in the case and so we ended up with a giant chocolate chip cookie instead. One more time… I really wish I spoke another language!
We finished up our Montevideo leg by walking along the wonderful La Rambla. Supposedly, it's the longest sidewalk in the world - 14 miles.
On to Chile!