Off to Uruguay on Friday the 13th
Article Date: Friday, June 13, 2008
Written By: Russell Rawlings
From Allison Holmes
(Friday, June 13)
We met in the hotel lobby at a little after 7 a.m. local time to meet our guide Alejandro. Alejandro had been reminding us for days to not forget our passports, because today we were taking a ferry to the city of Colonia in Uruguay. After some of us decided to joke with Alejandro about having forgotten our passports, we were off to the Buquebus station. (“Buquebus” means “ferry-bus” in Spanish.)
Someone noted that it was Friday the 13th, perhaps an ominous day to be boarding a high-speed ferry. Alejandro assured us that in Argentina and Uruguay bad luck occurs on Tuesday the 13th and not Friday, so we were immediately reassured.
After dealing with immigration and customs, we boarded our ferry. Less than an hour later we had crossed the Rio de la Plata, the widest river in the world, and were greeted in Colonia by Karin, our local Uruguayan guide. Karin first showed us some of the areas outside of Colonia, where many five-star hotels are being built. We also saw treasures from the 19th and early 20th centuries, including a railroad museum and a Moorish-inspired bullring that was abandoned two years after being built. The crowds apparently lost interest when a law was passed in Uruguay prohibiting the killing of the bull during the fights.
From the outskirts of Colonia, we went to the city’s historic center, which has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. There we saw buildings that reflected the city’s Portuguese and Spanish heritage. We also saw a still-functional solar-powered lighthouse that guides boats around the sometimes shallow waters around Colonia.
After making our way back to Argentina in the evening, many of us decided to try Argentine pizza, a dish that is extremely popular in a city where over forty percent of the residents are of Italian descent. The pizza in Argentina is very good and reflects the abundance of the country’s home-grown food products – the traditional Argentine crust is thicker than most, owing to Argentine wheat production.
End of Day 7 in Argentina