Colonia, Uruguay

The first full day of my Mom and her friend Pat's visit we spent in Uruguay. If you are like me, you may have forgotten that Uruguay was a country - but there it is, wedged in between Argentina and Brazil. It is a quick trip from Bs.As., there is a boat service called Busquebus that can take you to and from Colonia or Montevideo, Uruguay for a very reasonable price. Montevideo is a bit known for being the access town for some really nice beaches, but it's a bit further away and you need to take an hour and a half bus ride to the beach after you land so we decided to go to Colonia. There are two "speeds" t0 choose from when buying tickets, the rapido boat which takes one hour and the other boat which takes 3 hours. They run specials during the week, so our tickets were roughly US$82 round trip for the fast boat. The ride is comfortable, clean and has a little cafe with food and drinks on board.



The town of Colonia is quite small, very easily navigated by foot, but we preferred to look around using this sweet ride. We had a blast. We drove 5km up the road on the coast to an area just outside of town where they have some nice beach area. This part of Uruguay is on the Rio La Plata, which is nice but the water comes from the rain forest runoff in Brazil so it is a bit brown. The beach area is nice, there are a few cafes and shops that you can stop at, Pat got a really great horse themed thermos at one of the places we stopped.





We went down to the beach to feel the water, the sand was clean and the beach was pretty much empty so we had the place to ourselves.


We drove up to an old bull fighting ring that is now closed, but the building is really cool. We also saw these little kids on horseback that were having a great time riding with their Dad. When they saw our cameras they came right over to have their pictures taken.

We had a great time in Uruguay, it was a wonderful day, relaxing and calm. I was also excited to add another passport stamp to my growing collection. This is a great day trip, and we will definitely go again with other visitors.