Colonia Del Sacramento is a little town in Uruguay across the river from Buenos Aires with very distinct Spanish and Portuguese influences. It was the coolest Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had (shoutout to Brenna for being my travel buddy among all the real couples that day.)
Arriving to a new country by boat is incredible, a ferry instead of a ship this time but nonetheless a familiar feeling that I had missed deeply. Brenna has a friend on SAS right now and we were talking about it as we sat in the big open middle section of the ferry that felt reminiscent of hanging out in the Kaisersaal before going through immigration at a new port. It made that time in my life feel closer than it has in the last year and was quite honestly a welcome burst of nostalgia.
Word to the wise, you’re supposed to arrive at a cruise terminal, even to take a short ferry, an hour before-hand. Brenna and I showed up 5 minutes before our chosen time. We still made it on because the ferry left about half an hour late (no doubt due to people like us, oops.)
We watched the boat pull in and dock on the water that at first glance looked really brown, but which we later found out reflects the sediment beneath the clear water to make it look dirty.
After navigating the cruise terminal for a bit and pulling cash for the day, we joined our tour. We originally chose Spanish because we wanted to challenge ourselves to keep speaking the language as much as possible that weekend, but ended up in a group of English-speakers because they were fewer and younger and felt more our speed.
After talking to Daniel from Denver and Meghan from D.C. in line to get into the country, we were excited to see that they were among the few in our English tour group. Paired with an older couple from Quebec and a younger couple from somewhere else in Canada, we were few enough to really hear and get to speak with our tour guide, who still used Spanish when speaking solely to Brenna and me.
We learned that there are 2 sheep and 3 cows per person in Uruguay, if that gives any sense of how much more laid back the entire country is than Buenos Aires or Santiago in general.
Montevideo, though we weren’t there, has a really interesting origin of its name.
Monte means mountain, VI is 6, D (like de) is from, E (este-east) to O (oeste-west). Essentially, the city is by the 6th mountain if you’re traveling from East to West.
Uruguay’s name comes from an interesting combination of words as well, where Uru is a bird and Guay is a river. Basically the country is called ‘River of the Colourful Bird.’
A few hours of getting acquainted with the old town later, our tour turned in to Brenna’s and my lunch reservation that found us in a van with a family from Montevideo driving 20 minutes out of town. We were taken to this laid-back place in the countryside with a restaurant, pool, hammocks, private vineyard and pastures, and a personal waiter for our table. The only thing not included was the wine that we simply had to buy since we were there, but that was well worth a few dollars.
Walking through the vineyard after lunch surrounded by air that was warm but not too hot and ripe grapes ready to taste, there was this sort of awareness that we were having a real experience. A little fancy maybe, but real. The vineyard was clearly not set up to tourism, and was more of a family oriented, laid-back place in the Uruguayan countryside.
Eventually we headed back to town for the afternoon and hit some shops while exploring the area on our own. I got to try traditional mate finally and it was clear where Guayakí’s Yerba Mate that I drink in the states gets its flavour. The tea was a bit tricky to drink because you add in hot water from a thermos to this wooden cup filled to the brim with loose leaf tea and then stick this oddly specific filter-straw in at the perfect angle to avoid mouthfuls of loose tea. The taste was incredibly strong and bitter at first but, like any other tea, got lesser with time.
The day wound down with happy hour mojitos and aeporol spritz’s at a cafe before we headed back to the ferry, but not without walking through some sort of parade through the streets near the river first. As we stood in the terminal waiting to board we were accompanied by the most intense sunset sending us back off into another place.
Getting a single day in a country was, yet again, reminiscent of the way I did things last fall and it could not have been more of a welcome dose of nostalgia mixed with new wonder.
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