Colonia del Sacrimento, the oldest city in Uruguay, is a chilled, quaint little town about 2 hours west of Montevideo by bus, and we had an awesome time there. It was first founded in 1680 by the Potuguese as a smuggling port to get goods accross to Buenos Aires, and then Portugal and Spain spent the next few hundred years fighting over it. The old part of the city has now been declared a UNESCO world heritage site, so most of the old buildings have been preserved. There are many museums exhibiting old tools, weapons, clothes etc. so you can really get a feel for what things used to be like there.

We arrived in the afternoon on Monday 5 March and because the town is so small, we found our hostel pretty easily. It was amazing, easily the best we've stayed in so far - very spacious and everything was super clean. We settled in and then took a walk into the old city for dinner. We'd read about and also been recommended this place called El Drugstore and we had a great early dinner. The decor is quirky - a bit like Royale back home. Monique had fish and I had a burger patty with a bit of salad (turns out burgers don't come on rolls here...) Just as we were about to leave it started to rain, so we just sat and enjoyed our wine until it passed - perfect chilled evening :-)

Tuesday we got up early, had breakfast and headed into the old town to explore. We started at the old city gate, which at one point was the only way into and out of the city, and wandered around the old streets - some still with original paving hundreds of years old, visited the various small museums, and got a great view-from-above from the top of the lighthouse. We had a late lunch on one of the sqaures and then headed back, buying a few things for dinner on the way.

Wednesday we caught a bus to the old bull ring, about 5km away. Its been abandoned for some time - the walls are falling down and everything is rusting away. It is all fenced off, but we quickly stuck our heads in and had a look. We tried to see some museums nearby, but they were all closed?? So we went to eat our lunch on the beach and then walked back along the coast. The sun was hot and it was further than we thought, so we were pretty tired when we got back. The hostel was doing a pizza special for dinner that night, so we joined in for that and enjoyed chatting with other travelers about their experiences in South America while sampling the local Uruguayan wine.

Thursday we settled our bill and headed down to the bus station. We were taking a bus to Carmelo and then a connecting ferry to Tigre in Argentina. We had used up the last of our Uruguayan pesos, but figured we'd just pay on the card. No such luck - the bus company doesn't accept cards, AND the ATM at the bus station is broken, AND the foreign exchange place wont give us any pesos, AND the nearest ATM is like 6 blocks away, AND our bus leaves in about 20 mins. So Monique guarded the bags while I ran to the bank and back :-/ Fortunately we managed to get tickets in time :-) We bought our ferry tickets in Carmelo and took a short walk into town while we waited. We were just chilling when we glanced at the tickets and, not being able to read Spanish, panicked and got confused with the time and thought that our ferry was leaving in like 5 minutes. So now was the second run of the day, about the same distance but this time with full kit. Turns out the time on the ticket is the boarding time and not the departure time, so we were safe :-/ We glad to finally get on the ferry and be on our way to Beunos Aires :-)