Uruguay

On Tuesday Heidi and I went to Colonia in Uruguay. For those of you who are not familiar with Southern Americas Geography (like me), Uruguay is a small country next to Argentina. In order to get there we had to take the Buquebus (boo-coo bus) ferry. Ours was called Buque Patricia Olivia II. It is incredibly large and had a cafe and duty free shop on board. It took about an hour to get there. Once we got there, without any real plan, map, or language skills, we went through their version of security and headed into town. Lucky for us this is a big tourist trap so we were able to get a map and pointed in the direction of the historic part of Colonia. It was very beautiful, but had a very odd smell. All day we tried to figure out what the smell was. Camp fires? Burning garbage? We never figured it out though. Colonia is very small and there is not a whole lot to do. We wandered around and took pictures for several hours but the shops were not open at that time so we stopped to get some lunch. After lunch we went to a shopping center. It was actually a very nice, but small, mall. Currency is different in Uruguay than Argentina so they have places to exchange money everywhere. Most stores took dollars or Uruguay pesos which was nice because Argentina does not take the dollar.
After shopping and seeing all of the historic district, our feet were sore so we rented a tiny little red car. It was fun to drive around and see where all of the local live and visit a little of the country side.
On our boat ride back to Argentina, we met a lovely couple from Chilie. The wife spoke English, French, German, and of course Spanish. We did a lot of small talk until they realized that I knew a little Spanish, next thing I knew I was in a full blown Spanish course. It was again, very overwhelming for me. They helped us get the "correct" type of taxi once we got back to Argentina and even shared it with us so our ride only cost 5 or 6 pesos (about $2). They recommended an opera to go to so we may run into them again.