Buenos Aires is built along the shore of the Rio de la Plata, or River Plate (although it looks a lot more like an ocean than a river to us). On the other side of the river is Uruguay. We took a short boat trip from BA to the closest Uruguayan port, Colonia del Sacramento, where we spent the first of our four relatively uninteresting days (with the exception of three main highlights) in Uruguay.
Our first highlight was exploring the streets of Colonia, which is a beautiful small town that has retained not only its colonial streets and buildings but also its charm despite becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination.
Our first highlight was exploring the streets of Colonia, which is a beautiful small town that has retained not only its colonial streets and buildings but also its charm despite becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination.
Our second highlight was going to see Uruguay play Northern Ireland at the national stadium Centenario, which hosted not only the first ever World Cup final but also a couple of devastating Socceroos world cup qualifying matches. The atmosphere in the packed ground was fantastic, although we weren’t too impressed by a national team that is supposed to be among the best in the world. Thankfully the Uruguayans managed one goal to avoid an embarrassing defeat and reduce the risk of us getting caught up in a riot.
Our final highlight was treating ourselves to a big steak lunch at the Mercado del Puerto. Like everything else in Uruguay, the meal was substantially more expensive than in Argentina but at least the meat was good.
Other than that, there’s not much we can say about Uruguay. We spent a fair bit of time exploring Montevideo and its city beaches but it is not a particularly pretty city. We’re told that a few hours to the north of the capital there are some beautiful beaches, but at the best of times these were not likely to impress Californians and Australians who were on their way to Brazil (and even then winter is certainly not the best of times).
