Voyage to Colonia

The trip to Colonia started well. We were up fairly early, caught a cab within seconds, and had a leisurely ride to the Buquebus ferry terminal. However, the quick part finished then and there. After a few minutes in one non-descript line, it appeared we needed to be in the long, long line over there.

We got there at 8:30am. The lineup wasn’t that long, maybe 50 people? To cut to the chase and not make you wait while reading this. We spent over an hour just to get our tickets for the 10:00 ferry.

Time check 9:45. We’re now in line to pay.

Time check 9:55. We’re now in line to check bags.

Time check 10:05 (we should have missed the ferry) We walk up the stairs to what we think will be the boarding ramps and nope, it’s the impossibly long lines for customs to Uruguay, or maybe it’s actually customs to leave Argentina. We’ll never know.

At the start of all of this standing in line business, we heard a fellow with an Irish accent talking in front of us. However, he had Air Canada tags on his bags. Turns out he lives in Toronto and has spent a ton of time in Calgary. He’s in the chemical supply business selling test tubes and what not. And I guess they need those everywhere. We passed the time discussing world politics, Buenos Aires, Argentina…..

Finally we set foot on the ferry, already wearied from our journey through Argentine logistics. The ferry left around 11:00 and took about 3 hours to reach Colonia - the last long part of our trip. The other ferries that were no longer available only take 1 hour….

Colonia is a pretty little town on the edge of the Rio de Plata. It was built by the Portuguese to spy on the comings-and-goings of the Spanish in Buenos Aires, circa 1700. The port is a World Heritage site, with cobble streets and stone-work buildings sloping down to the water. We enjoyed the peace and quiet of a sleepy town that looked lost in the past. Old, rusted out antique trucks and cars were still rambling down the street right next to the horses and buggies hauling wood and other things. Oddly though, a few short blocks from this old centre, was a newer shopping mall and other luxuries of the present. We had a memorable dinner at a quirky little restraint called “El Drugstore” – though it didn’t resemble one, it may have been one?

The next day, we were intending on going for a horseback ride and had even placed a deposit the day before but alas, it was raining fairly substantially and the weather report off the internet didn’t look good. We still went up to the place we booked the excursion because even if we weren’t going out, we still needed our deposit back. We decided to bum around a bit and wait and see what happened. Another of our plans – renting a scooter was washed away by the rain as well. It eventually started to clear and we ended up going anyway. We were picked up by a truck with a middle aged man and his dog which of course, reminded Brooke of Kula. We rode on benches built into the back of the truck which gave us a great but rather unsafe view of Colonia.. The operation was pretty down scaled. I think it was a fellow who owned just a few horses and had his kids guide a few tours here and there. The whole thing was 700 Uruguayan pesos each and at 20 to 1 that’s only 35 bucks. The kids took us on a ride through the trees zig-zaging around in semi parallel tracks in order to elongate the ride. It was pretty fun once we hit the beach. The horses were very responsive and wanted to run at a moments notice. We wondered if we might need this after passing a man camping by the beach polishing his rifle. It all worked out to be the best horse ride we’ve ever done together….the only horse ride we’ve done together.