South America Part 16 - Colonia and Uruguay and Buquebus...

Another day - another early touristica 5 am start in order to catch a ferry (aka Buquebus) to another country to check out a town (aka Colonia in Urguay for a day trip)...

After hailing a taxi (for $3AUD) to the downtown area of BA to get to the Buquebus termnial for the aforementioned Buquebus journey - we discovered that the Buquebus termnial was battling Qantas for the stakes of the 2005 Anarchist Convention Title... Even thought it was a lame ferry - we had to line up in three queues in order to get our tickets in able to board. Once we had the tickets - we had to pass thru the "security" of Buquebus. Because I was familar with the toughest of security check points on the planet - I had taken off my belt, my wallet, my money belt and any other metallic objects on my possession and placed it thru the x-ray machine. After I had successfully passed the x-ray / metallic screening - I had noticed that the metal detector was buzzing at just about every single passenger that went thru it!

The Buquebus itself (despite its flash / photoshopped to the maximum website - www.buquebus.com ) was like it hadn't been renovated since the late 1970s. It had looked like someone had personally jizzed on every seat (note to Buquebus - it is time you get your seats steamcleaned!). We made our way past the duty free shop and the arcade featuring original 1990 games (hello Mortal Kombat 1 and Terminator 2 Pinball machine - these came out when I was 10)... to the front of the bottom floor and found us some seats near to the front of the boat. We were sort of enjoying ourselves peacefully for about half an hour until, out of the blue, an elderly Argentinean couple sat down right in front of us and reclined their seats to the extreme... This was war - game on! I then proceded to play "footsies"/"kicking the seat" games with the grandpa in front. After about half an hour - they moved and went away. Some other random person sat down in their seats - and after he went - I convinced Ant to sit in them so noone would fully recline the seats into me. 20 minutes later - the elderly couple came back and Ant "play-acted" sleeping so they would leave us alone.... The old man grumbled a bit and then stormed off... Victory.

The Buquebus journey took about three hours - and when we rocked up to Colonia - it took about 15 minutes for everyone to get off the boat (note to Buquebus - in an emergency - everyone will need to get off faster than 5 minutes!). We were dumped off at the ferry terminal - but it wasn't a problem getting into town (Colonia takes about an hour to walk around everywhere by foot).

Colonia is a fairly historical town in Uruguay. It was founded by the Portuguese in 1680 and was controlled by the Spanish in the 1700s. There was a historic battle in the second world war at Colonia (between the Allies and the Nazis) or something.

We walked up and down the mainstreet twice before we settled on having lunch at El Drugstore - where hamburgers were served (sin buns, tomato, lettuce and sauce)... After lunch - we both wandered off in a tipsy daze (after downing a couple of beers). The waitress ran down the street after us - I had forgotten my bag (con my 20gig I Pod...). Oppps.

We wandered around a bit - and settled on paying USD$1 to go up to the top of the local lighthouse. It was a tight spirial staircase which could only permit one way traffic. The men running it probably had some sort of sadistic pleasure out of letting multiple people in both directions in it at the same time.

All the shops didn't just accept Uruguay Paseos - but also US$s and Argentina Paseos as well - so all menus had about three different pricing schemas to make things confusing. We were probably ripped off a bit in the currency conversion - as we only used the Argentina Paseos (couldn't be bother getting Uruguay Paseos just for a day trip).

We got a "Museum Mega Pass" for $1USD - and checked out a couple of (very small) museums. Of course - everything was in Spanish so we couldn't understand a word. By the time we had checked out three museums - they had all closed up (having a closing time of 4:15pm - and Uruguay being 1hour ahead of Argentina)...

Everything was rather scenic and pretty - but it was quite small and very touristy. We couldn't help but feel that this place felt like the New South Wales' South Coast for BA residents and Montevideo residents. Everything was touristed related. It almost felt like most of the homes were holiday houses for nearby residents. We couldn't help but feel a little underwhealmed by the rave Colonia had received in LP.

Anyhow - by the fifth time we had walked up the same strech of main street (and the fact that there was torrential rain that was remininscent of the storm on our last day of Canberra that had killed someone at Curtin) we decided to make our way back to the ferry terminal and stick around there (for three hours) until our 8:30pm ferry departed. Of course - when we had passed thru immigration and was sitting in the less than ritzy Buquebus cafeteria - the storm had passed and the sun was out.

Our main mission on our return trip on the Buquebus - was to get a front row seat so noone could recline the seats in front of us. Mission Achieved! Because of the early start and the late night from the cinemas the night before - we were fairly trashed (all day) and were both happy to crash on the trip back to BA. Buque Bus were doing their best to make sure we didn't sleep by playing their TVs (with continual Buquebus theme tune music and advertisments) at eleven.

Despite Pedro's sound advice - we decided to have a quick 11:30pm (Latino time) bite for dinner at a local pízza shop nearby the B&B. We ordered one (cheesy) pizza and two beers for about AUD$3. The beer mugs came with optional grime.

Upon our return to the B&B - we decided to share a bottle of good champaigne with Pedro and Jaiver. We had received the bottle (2 actually) from our previous day of shopping at the mall. I couldn't imagine Westfield Woden having a promotion like that anytime soon.

Buenos Noches...