Buenos Aires and Uruguay

Buenos Aires is a Latino New York. In short its sky crappers, old colonial buildings, tango and steak. After Havana we felt like we were in some sort of culture shock- no horse and carts, but modern cars and a B & B to die for- Casa Vaiven in funky San Telmo. It was all ex factory/ loft type minimalist but with a South American flavour.

In San Telmo we watched the professionals followed by the locals dance tango on the square on New Years Day and then paid homage to Evita in Recoletta Cemetry. I have to say when I picture Evita- I see Madonna ( I cried at that movie- Esther tells me she laughed), but as I am fan- the real Evita doesn´t do too badly. We did decide that depite the amazing ice creams, Buenos Aires was still a dirty city (your hands are filthy after walking down the street for 1o mins) and therefore needed escaping after 4 days. Therefore we nipped across the river (the widest in the world- 3 hours by ferry) to Uruguay.

As we took a scenic route over, via the Tigre river delta, we arrived early evening in Carmelo and made a little mistake.

We wanted to spend our 2 nights in a beautiful old colonial town- Colonnia deal Sacramento and needed to take a bus there. As the next bus wasn´t until 22.40 we tried to see if there was a way of getting their earlier and when nothing materialised, bought bus tickets and sat around the town square, finally going to a bar. Returning at the alloted hour, the bus had already gone-an hour before. We hadn´t cottoned on that Uruguay is 1 hour ahead. In South American terms its right next door/ just across the river. We ended up looking for a hotel at midnight and travelling early the next morning. A plus point was the English couple who took us to their hotel and then accompanied us to Colonnia turned out to be on our Machu Pichu trek in March.

Colonnia was beautiful with a number of great beachey picnic spots. Esther impulsively hired a scooter and we went for a 2 hours drive along the coast at sunset. Stopping to watch the local race horses be taken for an evening swim. The worse point was that the only ferry we could get back left at 5.30 am the next day.