Montevideo - Capital of Uruguay

Uruguay is a relatively small country with approximately 3.3M inhabitants, where roughtly 1,8M of these live in the metropolean area of Montevideo. Going by bus from slumbering Colonia it was quite a different city that met us upon arrival at the central bus station. We had two full days to finish mapping the city and tried making the best of it.

The first day was spent wandering around the old part of the city next to the downtown area where our hostel was placed. As in every other city most of the sights and historical monuments/buildings are found in the old part of town and Montevideo was no exception. Uruguay's oldest church lies in Colonia, but they had a pretty magnificent cathedral here as well, coupled with some nice small parks, plazas and sculptures. The highlight of the day however must've been our visit to "Mercado del Puerto" - a wrought-iron superstructure sheltering a gaggle of restaurants, all of whom are steakhouses and BBQ joints. Carnivore galore! :-D

Later in the afternoon we head out to an Irish pub that was recommended for Live music, and indeed there was a band playing. Or, "Dos Guitarres" (two guitars) was really what it was. Two guys playing guitar and singing. But they were good - and it was great. And! We met our first Norwegian on our trip here - Olav, hello!

Walking the city center and sights for 7 hours we felt well and done with this on day two so we looked up different "what to do when in Montevideo" lists and found that the number one recommendation everywhere was to go visit one or more of the wineyards surrounding the city in the more rural area. Placing a couple of phone calls put us on the direction of Bodega Bouza which turned out to be a very good recommendation!

What I liked especially well with this wineyard was that it also housed a museum of old cars and motorbikes as the owner's number one hobby was to buy old veichles and restore them to mint condition. Quite a few lookers in his worksohop! I liked this old truck as well - complete with vintage wine-barrels. :-)

First stop - Uruguay!

Getting to Urugay was quite the trip. We flew from Oslo to Amsterdam where we switched planes to cross the Atlantic to South-America. First stop was Sao Paulo in Brazil where we had to wait 8 hours for the connecting flight to Argentina. Normally I'm not too fond of long stopovers, but the time we had in Sao Paulo gave us enough time to grab a taxi to a shopping mall nearby where they had a Hooters restaurant. Great time, great meal.

Arriving in Buenos Aires we drove straight to the ferry terminal and took the ferry across the border to Uruguay and the old smugglers port of Colonia del Sacramento. Our first stop of the trip! 2 continents, 4 cities and 5 new stamps in the passport in one day took its tall on the travellers and Chris and Lars were quick to examine the sheets of the bunkbeds closely upon arrival in Colonia. -Oh, and as most spanish style houses normally have a back garden - so had our hostel. So nice! :-)

Colonia is on UNESCOs world heritage list and a typical "colonial style" old spanish village. Getting around was best done by golf-carts(!) that were available for hire all over the place. As backpackers we naturally used our feet at all times though I must admit it was tempting to rent one..

The two nights in Colonia passed quickly without too much to do really. Taking pictures is fun to a certain point and beside eating, photography is about the only other thing to do to pass time in Colonia. A great place to grow old I guess - but I'm not quite there yet. ;-)