The Cloud Factory: Colonia, Uruguay

One of the reasons I was most upset about losing my stuff was that I was supposed to go to Uruguay with some friends on Saturday morning. Since we don´t have work visas for Argentina, we have to leave the country every 90 days to get our passports stamped. The easiest way to do this is to go to Uruguay by ferry for the day or the weekend. There are two options for the ferry: the fast boat (1 hour) and the slow boat (3 hours). My friends and I had bought tickets for the 9:30 am slow boat, but OF COURSE I missed it in my frenzy to find my bag and get ready to go. I got to the Buquebus port station at 9:20, but I wasn´t allowed on the boat. Fortunately, I got a seat on the fast boat leaving at 11:30, and arrived in Colonia at exactly the same time as the rest of my group (literally- I walked off the boat and heard people yelling my name from behind me. I had no cell phone so this was verrrry lucky). Both ferry options are pretty swanky, with flatscreen TVs, a bar/cafe area, and a duty-free shop. The one hour boat costs about 30 pesos more, but it was totally worth it on Saturday morning.

Once I got to Uruguay and found my group, I felt tons better. Saturday was rainy and cold, and Colonia is a tiny little town, but we still had fun wandering around, eating at el Drugstore, and watching the Argentina-Paraguay soccer game on TV. Our hostel was pretty comfortable, despite the fact that I had to share a room with 7 guys (5 of whom were with our group). groooosssssss. :-P

On Sunday, we rented dune buggies (Matt and Charles rented bicycles) and drove around Colonia. It´s a very small town, but we had a lot of fun roaring down the little roads in our ridiculous buggies, waving to strangers, and chasing each other. It was FREEZING on the coast road, and the buggies were completely open, but that didn´t cancel out the awesomeness factor. After dune buggying for most of the day, we walked down to the edge of the Rio de la Plata (the body of water we crossed to get to Uruguay) and hung out. We could easily have been somewhere like Scotland or Ireland, everything was so green and rocky. Not how I pictured Uruguay at all, but completely amazing.

I lost my camera as well (boo!), so I´ll have to steal some photos from others. Stay tuned!

Edit: Here are some pics: