A weekend in Uruguay

I just got back this morning from a long weekend in Uruguay. Today is a national holiday--Día del Libertador José de San Martín (an anniversary of the death of San Martín), which means no classes for me and a perfect opportunity to travel. Just as an FYI (if I already wrote about this I apologize), San Martín was on of the leaders in the fight for independence of Argentina, Chile, and Peru. However, after he had a meeting with Simon Bolivar he stepped down and Bolivar went on to get most of the credit as liberator of Spanish South America.

Friday morning I left with Sarah, Alex, Sarah, and Annie and we took a ferry to Colonia, Uruguay. I was suprised by how nice the boat was--I guess I hadn't been picturing a car-carrying, almost cruiseship-resembling kind of boat. We slept most of the ride there, which was nice to get a little bit more sleep after an early morning start. Once we got to Colonia we got ourselfs oriented, taking a bus to the tourist office, exchanging some money, finding our hostel (El Espanol), etc. From there we went to find food and stumbled upon a great place for lunch called La Florida. A nice little couple had made a house into a restaurant, fille with artworks and antiques and a comfortable, homey feel. We had a delicious lunch (most notably the chocolate mohito cake for dessert) and Carlos and Ana, the owners/cooks, were fabulous. It was pretty confusing paying in Colonia (and throughout the weekend) since we had a mixture of dollars, Argentine pesos, and Uruguyan pesos, all with very different exchange rates.

After lunch we wandered around the historic area for a while. Colonia is an old colonial (hence the name) town--the oldest in Uruguay. The weather was pretty terrible (very cold, windy, and rainy), which made it a little harder to enjoy the picturesque views. We went back to the bus station to buy tickets to Montevideo in the morning (the only tickets we didn't buy ahead of time so we could decided how long we wanted to spend in Colonia once we got there). From there we just went to El Drugstore, the restuarante we had seen in a guidebook. It was filled with funky artwork and bold colors--a very fun atmosphere. We ended up spending most of the night there, listening to the live music and sharing drinks, dinners, and desserts. It was a very fun night.

Saturday morning we took the bus over to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. Apparently it's supposed to be like the Buenos Aires of 20 years ago. I'm not sure if I see that or not. Sometimes I feel like what my mom says is true--"A city is a city." I suppose it was a lot less hectic, but, from our experiences at least, not as exciting. We wandered around some of the main streets of the city and most of the stores were closed even though it Saturday afternoon. It was just hard to find things to do sometimes since the museums and stores where pretty much closed, which I didn't understand. That night was a lot of fun at the hostel though. We stayed at Ciudad Vieja, which was filled with lots of young people. We met people from Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Brasil, the US, and England. Another group of students from FLACSO was staying there, which was a fun coincidence. Stefan's group of friends was there as well (which I had known but didn't make the connection about until Saturday night when I first saw them). There was a dinner at the hostel, but we went out instead since they were having asado (barbeque) and we had two vegetarians in our group. When we came back the common room was filled with lots of happy, loud (wine-filled) people. There were lots of fun conversations throughout the night as well as music played (and at times sung to) on the guitar and mandolin. A lot of people ended up going out much later in the night, but I decided to sleep instead so that I could wake up for the city tour in the morning.

Sunday morning we took a bus tour of the city. Once again the weather was cold, windy, cloudy, and rainy. The tour was pretty interesting, though I zoned out for a bit since I was in the back, it was early in the morning, the mic stopped working half-way through the tour, and the entire tour was in Spanish. Once we got back from the tour we went to a "feria," which was pretty much a huge fleemarket. They had a little bit of everything there, including clothing, fruit, birds and other various animals, jewelry, tools, bike tires, and antiques. We went back and watched "Something's Gotta Give" at the hostel and chilled for a bit since we didn't have any plans and wanted to get out of the cold. Later we ventured out to the grocery store for a few things, a restaurant for coffee, and, after a quick stop back at the hostel, a restaurant for dinner. We found a little Italian place that was very tasty. I had homemade pasta stuffed with ricotta and salmon. After dinner we had a bit more time to relax in the hostel and then started our journey back to Buenos Aires. We had wanted to leave Monday afternoon but there weren't any tickets left, so we opted to travel overnight. We took the bus back to Colonia around 1:00am and then the ferry back to Buenos Aires around 4:30am. We got into BA about 7:30, though I didn't make it back to my appartment until 9 or so.

We got lucky and had great roommates in both hostels. In Colonia we met Helga from Trinidad. She's a freelance journalist that writes about vacationing, mostly with a focus on wine. She ended up coming to Montevideo as well and we met up again at the second hostel. In Montevideio we roomed with Tinka from Holland, who is doing an internship in Buenos Aires. We hung out with Tinka a lot and hopefully we'll get to see her in BA as well.

Overall it was a fun weekend and I'm glad we went. I might go back to Colonia when its warmer and go to a beach in Uruguay. I'm wasn't super impressed with Montevideo though. I definitely prefer Buenos Aires. This was my first trip though where a group of friends planned it ourselves just for the heck of it. It wasn't a family vacation or a trip through an organization or school. There were multiple times this weekend when one of us would just stop for a second and say, "Hey, did you know we're in Uruguay?"