Have it Uruguay!

This weekend included a trip to the small land wedged between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay. Besides being just a stamp-collecting exercise (who could resist the opportunity to get more in the passport when you're so close to the boarder?), I was interested in visiting the country and capital, Montevideo.

The population of Uruguay is roughly 3 million, with around half living in the capital city. In terms of economic strength, it's up there with Argentina and Chile (although if pavement quality is to be used as a gauge of economic development, Montevideo is doing better than Buenos Aires) and has won the world cup twice (most recent performance was 4th in South Africa). Wikipedia also informs me that it has the highest number of cattle per head at 3.8. Who knew!

Anyway, the trip to Uruguay is most conveniently made by boat - a roughly one hour trip across Rio de la Plata, which takes you to Colonia, a rather picturesque colonial town, before a two-and-a-half hour coach trip down to Montevideo. Going abroad means going through immigration, which makes you briefly grateful for the ease Schengen brings most cross-boarder travel back at home.

Coast in Montevideo

I arrived pretty late on Friday (midnight) but fortunately the bus terminal is in the centre of town and was pretty packed full of people. I hopped in a taxi to the hostel with a very friendly driver who upon telling me the cost of the journey went to great lengths to explain how that was calculated and cross-checked with his official journey price list. I wasn't really that concerned given it had cost a few dollars...

Saturday was spent wandering around Montevideo. It's fairly similar to Buenos Aires in terms of architecture (Argentinians have described it to me as just another "district" of BA), but was considerably less busy than BA. It's probably not a town filled with things to do that would keep you busy for hours, but it was nevertheless nice to walk along the water front. A little further up the coast is Punta del Este which is the Argentine beach resort of choice, which has more of the tourist oriented beaches and activities.

Colonial architecture, this is the museum of indigenous art

They have lots of really old cars all round the city.

Late Saturday afternoon I got the bus back to Colonia. I'm hesitant to describe the bus journey as interesting because there is literally nothing between Colonia and Montevideo. There was a rather impressive sunset over the horizon which provided some entertainment before I fell off to sleep in the extremely comfortable and super-reclining coach seats they have here.