Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay

As Chris has no doubt already mentioned, Uruguay is significantly quieter than Buenos Aires - this can be at least said for the towns we visited. Having said that, it is South America´s smallest Spanish-speaking country with only 3.5 million people.

After our 3 hour bus between Montevideo and Colonia de Sacremento, we set off to scope out a hostel which was deemed suitable for our needs. We eventually found a great place where Monica was encouraged to stay in her very first dorm room - albeit, there was no-one else in the room with us but still, it was a step up (or down?!) from the private rooms we had indulged in in Montevideo. She was on her way to becoming a fully-fledged backpacker! Good job, Monica! It was a cool place to stay actually as it was filled with families who had brought their children to compete in the National Chess Championships next door.. was a lovely atmosphere, especially at night time when the kids were all playing table football in the cute little courtyard outside the rooms.

After our accommodation had been found and judged adequate enough, we set off immediately to see the sights this town had to offer...

Colonia has an interesting 17th century history as a Portugese smuggling port - the intent being to disrupt Spanish control in Buenos Aires. While Colonia de Sacramento may be Uruguay´s oldest town (since European settlement, that is) we found the old town itself to be rather small. Clearly we are spoiled brats who have enjoyed growing up in Europe where antiquity abounds and perhaps we were being unfair - this town did gain UNESCO World heritage status in 1995 after all.

It is home to the oldest church in Uruguay, set amongst quaint cobbled streets where colonial buildings from the 19th century interest its visitors. And to be honest, there is a certain romance in the air as you walk around alongside the rest of the tourists (of Argentine origin - this is so close to Buenos Aires, it must be a hot-spot for Porteño weekends away). Having said this, twenty minutes after we´d arrived in the old town (so 25 minutes after we´d left our hostel in the ´new town´- this town is so tiny, seriously) we found ourselves repeating our tracks already.

As luck would have it, there happened to be a vintage car rally out in full force as we wandered around the tiny 17th century dwellings. Chris´ excitement can only be imagined. Monica and I left him running around to take photos while we explored the cool little artsy shops, browsing at the knick'knacks for tourists.

We spent our two days here wandering around the old town and enjoying hostel life. Monica commented on the weirdness of a few aspects of being a backpacker which I can completely understand... It is quite normal to see travellers of all ages in hostels, for example. In Colonia we chatted for a while with two English men who, it seemed, were travelling solo: one in his mid 30s and one in his 60s. It is often strange to think why people might be travelling on their own, yet I´d say the larger majority of people we´ve met are.

Secondly, it is also quite normal to find backpackers staying in hostels for hours on end, watching DVDs or the TV or purely sitting down to read for hour after hour. Monica commented on this and wondered why people weren´t out and about and enjoying the new experiences a completely different town and culture may bring. Chris and I also took a while to get used to this, however now... we can be placed inside this group of travellers ourselves! At first, when in China, India and South East Asia, the travel bug was still very new to us and there was so much to see and do. We rarely spent any time in our hostels other than to sleep. New experiences and crazy cultural experiences seemed to abound. Yet, when you´ve been travelling for a long time, you tend to slow down quite a lot as we did by the time we reached Australia. This was our explanation as to why, on more than one occasion, Monica had witnessed whole groups of travellers lazing around watching DVDs instead of seeing what´s out there (which is what you´d expect them to do since they´ve paid a lot of money to get to a place: why would they just sit and watch tv all day?!).

We had a few really good meals in this town, similar to those we´d enjoyed in Buenos Aires (though poor Monica is getting quite sick of the ´Sandwich con queso´ option forced upon her as a vegetarian! You did well, Mooonooo!). We also sampled a few new Alfajores varieties which is always a treat... Apart from this, Colonia was purely a place to wander, reflect and chill. We kind of ran out of things to do by the end of our two days and decided to take a bus the long way around town to find the old, now unused, bull ring which we´d read about. After some confusion about which bus to take, the old man who ran our hostel told us he´d take us in his car. And so it was that the three of us had our most local experience yet in our backpacking adventure to Uruguay. The man told us in slow Spanish all about the history of the bull ring and how it was never used for bull fights any more due to animal rights (this surprised me as it´s still ongoing in Spain as far as I know??). He told us about his grandfather who had owned a hotel in the area back in the 20s and showed us the street named after him. We were shown how the town used to be and where the ferry from Buenos Aires used to drop people off before they were taken by train to his grandfather´s hotel. This was such a special experience for us, not least because the whole exchange was done in Spanish and between the three of us we had managed to translate much of what this lovely man had said while replying with a few measly phrases: ¨Aw, muy bien, muy interessante¨ etc.