Colonia

Above are our new good friends from Uruguay, Gerardo and Rosario Galvez.  We spent a lovely weekend in the oldest town in Uruguay, a place called Colonia.  They drove up the three hours from Montevideo to spend Saturday with us exploring this interesting little town.  Colonia was first settled by the Portuguese in 1680, but since it was just across the river (Rio de la Plata) from Buenos Aires, the Spanish would come across, conquer ,and sack the city.  Eventually the Portuguese would get it back and rebuild it and the cycle would repeat itself.  There are still buildings and streets from those old days and even though it is a small town of only 20,000 people, it has been taken over by artisans and is filled with all sorts of hand crafted, painted, sculpted, etc. pieces of art and is filled with little boutiques to sell the art stuff or other touristy stuff.  I got Bonnie a hand crafted necklace and earring by the amazing and wonderful artist, Mario!

This is the wall and bridge entrance (they built a moat) to the original old city (it was built as a fortress, although from reading the history books, it didn't seem to help much!).  I don't recognize the big, fat guy in the funny hat that is with Bonnie and Gerardo & Rosario.  The hat is something the people or gauchos from the country often wear.  I thought it might help me "blend in" with the locals.  However, Uruguay is a place where we gringos do not stand out.  Bonnie and I often get asked directions from people on the street, so we must look like the locals.  I say locals rather than natives because there are no natives.  The indigenous Charrua Amerindians were virtually wiped out in the colonial era.  As such, nearly 90% of the population is Caucasian, mostly from Italy and Spain.  The Italian heritage must explain the outstanding pizza they have here.  Once you get away from downtown to where there are individual houses (instead of high-rise apartment buildings), it seems like every house has a brick barbecue grill and a pizza oven built in the back yard.  Grilling here is done with wood and many restaurants have interior, wood-fired grills.

Since our camera gives us fits and rarely takes pictures, you will have to settle for the few it did decide to take, like this one of Bonnie on an old Spanish cobble-stoned street peering down an original Portuguese street.  The Portuguese used larger rocks and pieced the streets together rather than use cobble stones so it was easy to tell who built which street.  As we looked at all these 300 year old homes and streets we couldn't help but wonder how many or our modern day buildings will still be in existence when the same amount of time has passed.

Some silly people coming down one of the streets that radiate out from the old main plaza.

Bonnie has just grabbed some of the blooms from this tree and placed them in her billfold because tradition has it if you place the petals in you billfold you will never want for money. 

This is the old main church and pigeons and swallows use all those visible holes in the outer wall as nests.  There were lots of birds (we enjoyed sitting on that bench in the background and listening to all the different birds) including many green headed loros (like parrots).  Above you can see a beautiful lora (female loro), which we learned is the word applied to people who talk all the time!

We saw our first Mexican restaurant here and we also saw a restaurant that offered "Arroz a la Cubana" (kids- that should bring back some memories; good for some and otherwise for others!).  We are being very good with our budget, however, so we couldn't afford to eat at those places.  Bummer!  Nevertheless, our budget led us to another new experience- we stayed in a hostel.  We had our own humble and simple room with shared bathrooms down the hall.  It turned out so well, we joined Hostelling International so we can do the same in other cities.

Buenos Aires is on the other bank of the river (and it truly is a river here) only 25 miles away so you can see the tops of the skyscrapers from Montevideo.  We climbed the light house and were able to see a little more of Buenos Aires from that vantage point as well as all of the city. 

Interestingly, the only bullfighting ring in Uruguay is in this city.  It was built by an entrepreneurial Argentine in 1920 as a place for wealthy Argentines from Buenos Aires to come to gamble.  After only eight bullfights the Uruguay government outlawed bull fighting.  Not all entrepreneurs are meant to be successful!

You can wake up now, I'm done.