THE LAND OF MATE

colonia was the perfect weekend getaway. only one hour boat ride and we were there. martijn asked me a couple of times how it felt to be in another country. looking at my passport stamp, it was very cool, but to be honest, it really didn't feel very different. it was a small town for sure, but everyone was still speaking spanish, looking pretty much the same, and the fact that the boat only took one hour made it feel almost as if we'd only travelled to a different part of argentina. but there were some significant differences. some of the spanish was slightly different. (this was obviously something i myself didn't notice, but martijn enlightened me). mate was the other huge difference. this is a tea-like drink that i had seen being carried and drunk by many argentinians, but not nearly as much as i'd seen in uruguay. we took a walk on saturday evening and passed a large number of people along the beach and i'd say approximatley 90% of them were drinking mate. very popular drink there.

our days pretty much consisted of walking around the town (which wasn't big). we walked through the park a few times, checked out the six very small museums (seriously...two rooms each) and walked along the streets. it was a nice town to spend a couple days in, but you really don't need more than that.

we stayed only one night and on saturday we headed back to buenos aires to enjoy our last days in south america together.