In order to flea Buenos Aires (overstating it, slightly) we caught the ferry to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It´s just across the Rio de la Plata, and can take between 50mins and 3 hours depending on how much you want to pay. We, of course, opted for the cheaper (longer) option. Unfortunately, being the week before Easter, a lot of Porteños (inhabitants of Buenos Aires) were heading over to the Uruguayan beaches and booked out all berths with the cheapo company for the next two weeks, and we had to go with another ferry service which still took 3 hours, but cost 5 times more!

Oh well, it was worth it to get to Uruguay.

Our first two nights we stayed in the capital, Montevideo. We were blessed with two fine days in MVD and managed to walk around most of the central city. There are some really interesting buildings in the centre, and the whole place had a much more laid back feel than BsAs. At Playa Pocitos, about 30mins walk from downtown, it felt a lot like surfers paradise (perhaps Surfers in the 70s), with the sun being blocked by the apartment buildings at 4pm, but there were a few other beaches at walking distance which were much less developed.

From Montevideo we caught a bus for 4 and a half hours to Punta del Diablo, which is a small fishing village cum beach haven. We effectively skipped over Punta del Este, which is the biggest beach resort in South America, ultra-touristy, and pretty much the opposite of Punta del Diable. The population of the town is only about 1000 ppl, but there were plenty of cabañas for rent (we managed to get one right near the centre of "town" for an alright price), and lots of restaurants serving up fresh seafood. Unfortunately, the seafood platter we ordered on our first night was all deep fried (from the sounds of it, this is pretty normal in Uruguay), but we managed to get some grilled fish the next day for lunch and cooked our own prawns in our cabin on our last night. Felt good to get some seafood after a lot of barbequed meat in BsAs and Montevideo.

We made the most of our two days at the beach in Punta del Diablo, as after this, it´s only going to get colder (Patagonia isn´t know for it´s beaches!!)... and it´ll be winter in NZ when we get home. Felt like a bit of a holiday from our travels, if that makes sense.

We then caught the bus back to MVD and another back to Colonia, where we´ve been the last two days. The town was set up back in the 17th century by the Portuguese to rip of ships going to Buenos Aires (or something like that), and it has a quaint old town area with cobblestoned streets and remains of fortifications. We borrowed two bikes from our hostel today and rode out to the "beaches" just out of town (techinically it´s the river, and a murky brown river at that, but there´s sand and it´s a nice place to read a book).

That´s pretty much it for Uruguay. As we´ve stuck mainly to the coast, it hasn´t been particularly cheap (same or more expensive than Argentina). There´s even more people drinking yerba mate (take some ground up yerba herb, add hot or cold water depending on the season) than in Argentina... it seems like such a hoohah, carrying around the special cup and thermos all the time. We tried some in Brazil when a customs officer let us wait inside his airconditioned office for our bus to Bonito, and it´s an acquired taste alright.

Anyway, in the early hours of tomorrow morning (like 4am or something), we are catching the ferry back to Buenos Aires. We then have the day to kill before catching an overnight bus to Cordoba. After that, the vineyards in Mendoza, then south south south!