The Luxembourg of Latin America

Colonia del Sacramento :: Uruguay

A testicle in the vice of history.

Places: Colonia del Sacramento.

Coolest thing I did: Went to a beach that faces the actual sea for the first time on this trip. Pity the water was rather brown.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Uruguayans seem to have won the best steak sandwich so far with an artery cracker called a chivito. Apparently your steak sandwich needs at least two hard boiled eggs on it.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of Uruguay yet, because I'm having trouble not being surrounded by Argies at the moment - it seems like the fact Colonia is quicker to get to that some BA suburbs there are more Argies here than anyone else. I've been told the people are noticeably friendlier and more laid back but I'm starting to suspect I'm just being quoted verse and chapter from the Lonely Planet. Like many other tourist-centric towns in South America so far this one seems to be full of people who somehow seem to forget tourists are their source of income. The girl at the bakery who got frustrated I didn't speak good enough Spanish really doesn't deserve to sell a whole lot of empanadas. I'd think it was just me, but speaking with a few people who haven't read the Lonely Planet it seems like there is an agreement that a lot of the people who work in the service industry here are dicks. It could also be that everyone is just snappy at everyone because it's still so damn hot here.

I'm starting to wonder if my time in England somehow predisposed me to whinge about hot weather all the time? That should go away when there's a beach nearby. There is a beach here that faces the mouth of the La Plata, but the water is really a bit brown for me to swim in and I'm kind of conscious of the fact I can just make out the skyscrapers of BA on the horizon. That, however, does make for a rather cool sunset as BA is directly west of here.

So Colonia, like Uruguay itself is a little bit of a historical oddity with a story that reminds me of all those wacky micro-states in Europe that don't make rational sense either. It all started with the Pope drawing a line through the middle of a blank page.

There was a bit of a problem when the New World was discovered in that everyone wanted it because it had heaps of cool stuff like gold, silver and natives to enslave. In order to sort this out the Pope of the time drew a line down the middle of the world and said to Spain "you have this bit" and gave the rest to Portugal. If you've got Foxtel and watched the historical drama The Borgias then the Pope who did this is played by Jeremy Irons. Who I only really remember as being the baddie in Die Hard 3. Anyway, Jeremy Irons divided the New World between Portugal and Spain with a Papal Bull called the Inter caetera and as a result Brazil speaks Portuguese and practically everyone else here speaks Spanish. I skipped some big bits but that's basically the gist of it.

With that sorted out the Spanish took hold of the south bank of Rio de La Plata and founded Buenos Aires in order to handle the trade coming up the river from Paraguay and whatnot. The Governor of Rio de Janeiro wanted to challenge that so sent some people with guns to found what would become Colonia del Sacramento, a fortress right across the river delta. Then it changed hands about 6 or 7 times, including for a short time when the Brits got it to further their policy of letting pirates plunder Spanish ships at will, before the music finally stopped. After independence from Spain it was originally part of a confederation with the other Plata colonies but went it's own way to form South America's smallest Spanish speaking country.

So when the centre of gravity in the country shifted out to Montevideo what was left was a quaint little colonial relic an easy day trip from BA. The streets don't at all conform too the grid pattern the Spanish imposed on the Argies, making me suspect that at least the old part shows it's more chaotic Portuguese roots. It's got cobbled streets, old churches, the walls of the fort and all that other good stuff you expect from a historical town. Probably the best bit is by the historical accident of it having to point at BA in order to shoot cannons at people it also has a nice Rambla that faces out at sunset and people have put nice cafes on it so you can watch the sun go down while drinking cold beer.

I do also like the fact you can hire golf carts from Hertz here to get around town. That would have been cool but then I saw a beach buggy with a Thrifty logo on it but all my attempts to find one of those to rent have come to nothing.

I've actually made the concious decision to skip over Montevideo and head directly for beaches on the Atlantic Coast I can probably swim in. Uruguay is know for having lots of nice beaches that are packed with Argies this time of year so I'm not expecting it to be cheap, but after a couple of months of hard core touristing I'm kind of looking forward to the break. I might even finish that copy of Catch-22 I've been carrying since Sydney.

Filling in the gaps

Colonia del Sacramento :: Uruguay

Buenos Aires wakes up from it's holiday slumber.

Places: Buenos Aires & Colonia del Sacramento.

Coolest thing I did: Spent a lazy Monday night watching people with drums go crazy at La Bomba del Tiempo.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Tango was probably the result of their being way too many blokes in BA when it was expanding in the 19th century so being a crazy good dancer was a way for the very few women around to pick between all the men on offer. I'd have been doomed.

Just to mix things up a little bit I chose to base myself in the barrio of San Telmo this time as a change from the awesomeness of the streets of Palermo. It's an area south of the centre of town which has heaps of cobbled streets and bars and restaurants decked out in a traditional style. That alone should have been a warning it was probably going to be a bit touristy for my taste, but I assumed that my body would probably thank me if it was a quieter part of town than Palermo, but somehow I still managed to find a way to stay out way to late for the 4 extra nights I ended up spending there.

So really everything I still had wanted to do in BA was a night time activity so I spent most of my days staying out of the sun and mooching around town. It was nice to not feel like I had to see anything in particular, and just wandering around different parts of the city I'd already been to I kept uncovering new and interesting things to see. That's one of the primary reasons I think I tend to like big cities to base myself rather than out in the country - there seems to be a never ending supply of new and interesting things to see in a city. One accidental gem was stumbling across the El Abasto shopping centre on my way to see something else. This used to be BA's fresh food market however it's been gutted and restored in order to house a shopping centre, but it's been done with such respect for the original building that you can't help but be taken aback when you first see it towering over you when you exit the subway station.

I spotted that one on the Monday night I went to La Bomba del Tiempo, which if you've spent any time in a hostel in BA you'll not only have heard of, but more than likely gone to. It's in the Konex centre, which is an old factory with it's roof ripped off to house cultural events, and every Monday about a dozen percussionists of various musical backgrounds take to the stage as they have been every Monday for years and smash out some highly infectious tunes. This tends to turn the crowd of somewhere like 1000 people who have been drinking beer out of litre plastic cup for well over an hour into raving lunatics. It's hard to get a good feel of how many people there are tourists due to the high concentration of non-Argentinian Spanish speakers but there's definitely a high concentration of Anlgo and Euro backpackers about the place. I liked it because you can basically dance like you're having a brain hemorrhage and everyone thinks it's normal. Well recommended.

I was quite happy to slip out of BA having only seen the Tango performed on the street for the tourists. It's a big draw in La Boca for the daytime crowds, and one of the benefits of being in San Telmo was on Sunday I got to see the antique markets spill out and take over the street. Towards the end of the day, once the tourists have had their fill of buying tat the stall holders give way to the performers, and there is quite a few couples dancing Tango as a kind of busking. That would have been enough for me, I didn't need to go and see a hugely expensive Tango show, however I was told the thing to do, even by other Australian males so I knew it was probably not too So You Think You Can Dance, was to go to La Catedral on a Tuesday night.

La Catedral is a dance club which takes place under the high arched ceilings of an old converted factory that on it's own is probably a more hip place to have a beer than practically any bar in Sydney. They do lessons every night of the week, however it's somehow become an accepted fact that Tuesday is the night that all the foreigners who have no rhythm at all show up and embarrass themselves in front of an equally poor group of dancers. The lessons are mostly in Spanish, with a smattering of English, but that doesn't really matter because half the crowd speaks not much of either. Being a single male you're generally outnumbered 3:1 to single girls so it's a good way to meet girls who speak practically no English, are all 5 feet tall and get a bit miffed when you're crap at dancing. Well, that's what seemed to happen to me anyway. Thank God there was a group of about 5 French girls who couldn't really dance at all either so you could spend most of the time you're stepping on each other's feet laughing.

Once the tourists have had their shot (there's two classes so I was able to spend a couple of hours drinking beer and feeling like an accomplished dancer watching the later class stumble about like I had been earlier) the real show starts. La Catedral is a serious dance club, which tends to attract a young, non-traditional crowd who just want to dance and it's hard to explain just how good some of these people are. None of them are paid, they're simply on a night out. At midnight. On a Tuesday. There's a large part of me that was sitting there wondering what went wrong with our culture when we'd rather sit at home and watch reality TV than go to something like this. A few of the Argies I spoke to said they never really come to dance, it's just to watch other people who are really good and sit around talking crap with your mates. If you've ever seen the crowd at a pub that happens to be open at 2am on a Wednesday morning then it's hard not to be stuck by the contrast.

So back in the day Argentina became independent from Spain and decided that what they needed to do was go on a massive expansion spree to try and make use of the mass of natural resources on hand. To do that they needed blokes, because back then stuff like tractors and cars hadn't been invented yet, and a good source of those were the struggling countries of Mediterranean Europe, most importantly for the culture of Argentina one of those was Italy. Not only did they get decent pizza and pasta, but they also got heaps of macho blokes in a town with practically no women. They theory used to be the tango originated in the brothels of BA, due to the fact there was a shortage of women brothels were a good business to be in. However it seems that it's more likely that the dance originated in the tenements of BA, where all the women were and the blokes needed to stand out from the crowd by being top notch dancers. And it's likely there would be more buskers annoying you in La Boca, because all those people silently dancing the Tango for your money would have had to find other work.

I'm glad I went back to BA and stayed a bit longer in the end, I got to do a few things that I wasn't able to do due to the holidays last time and it only added to my opinion of the place. I'd really love to come back on day in Spring when the city is in full flight and see it in all it's glory, but I get the feeling from what I saw that it would be one of those rare places I could actually see myself living in, which is unique in Latin American cities I've seen so far. Despite having lovely bits much of Mexico City looks like a war zone and Santiago would be a bit too dull. If it's wasn't for the hyper-inflation and the lack of vegetable content in my diet making me feel a bit woozy all the time it would be almost perfect.

So my trip today was a 1 hour ferry ride over Rio del La Plata (the river of SILVER!) into Uruguay. I'm in a former colonial outpost called Colonia del Sacramento which is a manageable little pueblo (town, gringos) whose story I shall tell next time.

Mucho agua

Buenos Aires :: Argentina

1800 cubic metres of water per second!

Places: Puerto Iguazu & Buenos Aires.

Coolest thing I did: Took a jetboat ride right into the wash of some of the medium sized falls at Iguazu and looked like I'd swum there.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Iguazu falls were the ones that Roger Moore nearly goes over in Moon Raker, which aren't really at the end of the Amazon River like the movie says.

There's times I feel like I might have become a bit jaded with all these years of travel and am finding it hard to be impressed by the really high volume tourist sites that are considered must sees. I kind of shrugged at the Sphinx, thought the Mona Lisa was a bit small and Chitzen Itza was probably my least favourite pyramid site in all of Central America. However, every now and then I go somewhere that completely exceeds all expectations, and I threaten to bore the pants off everyone I meet for weeks after extolling it's virtues. Iguazu Falls is one of those places.

For those of you who have been to Niagara Falls, imagine that multiplied by about a factor of 10. Rather than one big waterfall it's a series of falls coming off the edge of load of cliffs around the face of a sheer valley, with massive jagged stone breaking out of jungle in between. By sheer luck I happened to view the falls in order of size, from the smallest upwards, so by the time I saw The Devils Throat (you'll note the Argies like calling things The Devils Throat) which is the biggest I'd already been smacked about the gob several times during the day. Apparently the view of Diablo is better from the Brazilian side, but the Argentinians have built a series of catwalks so you're standing pretty much right on top of them and the sheer volume of water flowing down the face of it plays tricks on the eyes. I could have watched it for hours, only I was sharing the catwalk with about 3 thousand of my closest friends.

The Argentinian Dream is a camera and a step ladder over Iguazu Falls - there were about half a dozen guys there cleaning up by taking portraits of families and couples from a slightly higher vantage point.

I loved spending the day walking through the jungle and all of a sudden getting a different perspective on the falls - I think I took roughly 1000 pictures so I'll try very hard to cull them before inflicting them on anyone. Some of the catwalks take you along the rivers at the top of the falls and it always amazes me just how slowly the appear to be flowing up until the point where they drop off into a massive wall of white water. Again, I could spend all day just watching the water disappear off into the crowd below.

So just to give the park more of a Disneyland feel there are companies that do adventure tours inside the park. My mate Claudio in Salta had told me the one to do was the jetboat up to the face of the medium sized falls (once you see Diablo you know why they don't try and get close to that one) so I made sure I gave up an extra 100 pesos or so to do that. The boat seemed to be filled mostly with the rowdiest family I'd seen in the park so they pretty much treated it like a roller coaster - hands in the air and screaming and shouting. I couldn't help but join in. I loved it when the boat tore right into the falls and then swung back out and the whole boat was changing Otro, otro, otro,...(again! again!). Despite the fact you get soaked right down to the bare skin it was well worth it. I felt sorry for whoever had to sit next to me on the plane that night back to BA with my walking shoes that had slowly been drying with my feet in them all day.

Nothing much could take the glow of the day away from me, not even the Saturday crowd. I'd been warned to get there early, and even arriving at about 8.30am was probably a bit too late. By lunchtime the park is packed any you spend a very long time lining up for things. To anyone trying to do the Argentinian park in a day I'd suggest trying to go on the very first bus at 7.20 am if lining up for things irritates you as much as it does me. Then go back to town and sleep the afternoon away. The only other thing worth doing was walking to the end of Puerto Iguazu and seeing the confluence of the rivers, the only place you can get Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina in the same photograph.

Doing Iguazu in a day was not a cheap experience - I took my bags to the national park and put them in storage and instead of going back to town I got a taxi the 4km to the airport. That cost 90 pesos, which is about $20. I also had the misfortune of only being able to fly back to EZE, the international airport which is also a money sink. The shuttle back into town literally passed by the door of my hostel and I couldn't even bribe the driver to let me off early. There's nothing like landing at 8pm and not getting into the hostel door until 10pm. I did consider sharing a taxi with some other whiteys on my flight but they're priced the taxis at 200 pesos, meaning even 3 people sharing it would be cheaper to get 3 tickets on the shuttle bus. I've not seen a scam for fleecing tourists so blatant since Macquarie Bank found a way to charge for the train ride from Sydney Airport into the city using 2018 prices.

So back in BA in time to catch Gerry before he has to fly back to Oz tomorrow night. Hopefully I'll get to do another couple of things I wanted to do last time that I couldn't due to the New Years shutdown before I shuffle off to the beach in Uruguay.