Colonia, Uruguay - Apr 19-28

 Just to get a bit of a taste of Uruguay, we took the ferry from Buenos Aires across the Rio de la Plata to Colonia, Uruguay and spent a bit over a week there.  Colonia being so close to Buenos Aires, was a smuggling port town back in the day.  The country of Uruguay is minute in comparison to Brazil and Argentina -- the two countries it had to fight off to become independent.  This smallish city (population ~22,000) is a draw because of its historic quarter in a pleasant setting.  Anyone wanting bite-sized museums, this is the place!

The engineer studying the restoration of the city wall and door.

Something we have noticed over and over in SA is that the rivers are often quite brown.  The Rio de la Plata is huge -- you barely can see across it and it is brown.  That is a lot of erosion going on up river!

Part of the historic center with the light house in the background.

Unlucky for the one who put up the money for this bull fighting ring, Uruguay outlawed the sport only 8 fights after completion of the stadium.

From our experience most kids in SA wear uniforms to school.  The variation to that in Uruguay is that both guys and girls wear a white coat over their own clothes.  Given my background in hospital and labs, at first it looked like kids playing "adult".

We camped a couple kilometers out of town and rented clunker bikes to get back and forth.  There was wifi available in the mall, at the tourist information center, at a restaurant on the river beach and in the main plaza...  kinda crazy. 

Single speed clunkers - did the job!

A fellow camper - Gian Carlos is a traveling artesan.  We had a couple meals together at the campsite.

A moped rental one day made for some fun riding around the countryside -- lots of pastures for cattle and fields of corn!