Colonia Del Sacramento

The Nirvana Hotel.

John and I enjoyed a coffee on our break.

The cobblestone streets of Colonia.

A lighthouse added later to the ruins of a nunnery.

John and our lunch waiter.

Montevideo and Colonia both feature tree lined streets.

A small part of the Guiness Book of Records pencil collection.

Birding again.

Sunday, October 20^th.

Today John and I took a full day bus tour to the colonial city of Colonia Del Sacramento. We’re not fans of the cattle type tourist bus trip, but it suited our purposes for today. We are only here for a couple of days and wanted to see a few things. This trip took us out into the countryside as we journeyed to the World Heritage site of Sacramento. In addition, the guide gave us a lot of information and history about both the city and Uruguay.

Our first stop was at the four-star Hotel Nirvana for a pee and coffee break. The hotel was built by Swiss people whose ancestors had been Swiss immigrants and given full citizenship for working there for years. The grounds were huge and peaceful with many interesting trees (including monkey puzzle trees) and birds flitting about.

When we arrived at Colonia our guide took us on a 40 minute walk about tour showing us the highlights of this small area where the Portuguese settled. Over the years it changed hands several times between them and the Spanish. As a result, the town has characteristics of both countries. The most interesting difference was the original Portuguese cobblestone roads are concave so that rain will run to the centre of the road and then flow down the road, whereas the Spanish built them convex so that the rain would run off the road and into the gutters. The town has been altered since those days by generations of people who have built new buildings or renovated others. The original church and convent burned down and the Portuguese destroyed some buildings when the Spanish took over the first time. But enough of the original town still exists to have it designated as World Heritage. After the tour we had a couple of hours of free time and John and I wandered off and found a little restaurant in one of the old buildings and had an excellent lunch. We had ‘chivitos’ which our waiter explained as breakfast, lunch and dinner in one meal. It was a thin piece of steak, with ham and bacon on top covered with a fried egg. All of which was on a bed of French fries with potato, carrot and lettuce along the edge.

There is a 50 minute ferry ride from Colonia across the river to Buenos Aires which is 40 kms away. This apparently is the widest river in the world and at its mouth where it exits into the Atlantic it is 240 km wide! I thought it was a bay or inlet from the ocean but apparently not.

Then we walked about before meeting up with the group and the bus again, for the ride back. We stopped at ‘Museo Arenas de la Collecctones’ where some anally retentive man had huge collections of things, including the Guiness World Records collection of pencils. The rest of the ride was back through the countryside which is mainly flat and agricultural. This is the dairy production area of Uruguay with cattle and sheep flocks on large farms. The houses are small and pretty basic looking. The farms and countryside looks similar to Ontario except for the palm trees.

Today our guide told us some interesting facts about the country. Education and health care are free and many young people from the countryside go to Montevideo for university and then never return. Therefore, the city grows and the rural areas are depopulated. Many young people emigrate due to lack of opportunities in the country which contributes to over 20% of the population being over sixty. There is a low birth rate, as she said not because they don’t practise, but they don’t want and can’t afford large families. The average wage is about $700 US a month, so life here is expensive. And along the lines of my assumptions about Catholicism, 40% of the population is non-religious! Unlike other countries in South America, like Bolivia and Peru, there is no evidence here of a native population. We arrived back in Montevideo at our hotel by 7:30. We skipped dinner and just relaxed for the evening.