24 hours in Uruguay

After a day of running around Buenos Aires to figure out how to get to Colonia, Uruguay, we finally got on a 7 o'clock boat to cross the Rio de la Plata, a small bay in between Buenos Aires and Colonia. Our ferry took about an hour to cross the bay; we passed through two very easy immigration checks, simply scanning our luggage and filling out a few forms. There was no reciprocity fee to get into Uruguay however, which saved some money after Blake had to pay two 160 dollar fees to enter Chile and Argentina. Then we landed in Colonia after 9, having lost an hour in time difference, and had to find a place to stay. What I didn't realize was that it was a holiday weekend for Argentina, so all of the hostels in Colonia were full. We walked to about 8 places before finding a place with room. But they provided a great breakfast, so it was worth the extra trek.
    Amanda and Megan were in Colonia already, so we met up with them, and went out for dinner. We had to compare Argentinian pizza and beer with Uruguayan pizza and beer, which was quite good, and had bacon, which I never see in Argentina.
    Colonia is a very small historical town right on the coast of Uruguay. It has old ruins from the Portuguese style city that used to be there, made with all cobblestone streets with old churches and an old  coliseum. There is an old lighthouse you can climb up too, which we did. The view at the top was amazing; we could see the whole town, the sandy and rocky coasts of Uruguay, and all the way to the buildings across the bay in Buenos Aires. The ocean in that area isn't swim-able because it's contaminated and very dirty. The water is brown. But the weather was a little over cast that day, which kind of matched the tone of the dark and rocky beaches.
      Since Colonia is a tourist town, they accepted Uruguayan pesos, Argentinian pesos, most credit cards, and US dollars, which was very weird to see, but made the trip easier since I didn't even have to take out money. However, the exchange rate between Argentinian pesos and Uruguayan pesos was the worst, because the Argentinian pesos is less stable than the Uruguayan, so things cost more that way. Food and hotels were actually quite expensive there, similar to US prices, since Colonia's economy is based on income from tourism. They were also super friendly to tourists, giving discounts to foreigners, and had a lot more connections to American culture than Argentina does. For example, I saw a Mac store right away, where in Argentina, Apple product imports are banned. Not many people have Apple products here. My host sister didn't even know the name of an iPhone, which in my opinion is the most well known phone in the world. And in Buenos Aires, whenever we asked someone to take a picture of us using the iPhone, many people didn't know how to work it.
    To explore the town more, Blake and I rented a golf cart for two hours, and raged it through the town to see the coasts, a couple foresty parks outside of the main town, and we found ourselves at the ritzy Sheraton hotel in town that was surrounded by an extensive golf course and very modern mansions. Downtown Colonia is so small that none of the intersections had street lights, and many lacked stop signs too. But the traffic there is much tamer than in Argentina. The drivers in Colonia have worked out a system of taking turns at intersections and graciously letting all the pedestrians cross safely without trying to run them over; the exact opposite of Mendocinians. The town is small enough that the car companies rent out golf carts for tourists to use, so we passed a bunch of other golf carts. We drove ours onto the beach, through the neighborhoods and along the coast.
    After an asado lunch and ice cream, we got back on the boat to Buenos Aires, and jumped in a cab to take us to the bus terminal to catch a bus 30 minutes later. We told the cab driver we were in a hurry, so he took that to heart and sped through the city, cutting in front of other cars parked at red lights, and passing aggressively. We filmed the whole thing on the GoPro because he was one of the most sporadic cab drivers I've had here. A quick 14 hour bus ride later (the bus rides really are starting to go by so fast), we were back in Mendoza. I had the weirdest coincidence on the bus, when I had my DU water bottle out, the guy behind us on the bus recognized it, because he goes to DU too, and was in Buenos Aires visiting his brother who was studying abroad. Small world.