uruguay and buenos aires

carla and me at an english speakers event where i learned how to describe city planning in spanish.

colonia, the western-most city in uruguay that faces onto the rio de la plata, which is so wide it looks like the sea. this was the only sunny day i got in my four days in uruguay. the old town of colonia was cute, but only took about an hour to walk around. 

sorry for the rotation, it won't upload properly. this is a view from the lighthouse in colonia, a town that was build by the portuguese to smuggle goods into spanish buenos aires.

colonia had a lot of fun old cars, like this one with the plants growing out of it. another car in front of the aquarium had two large paper machè fish in it (see below).

uruguay is well known for its tiles. this is an old painted map of the rio de la plata delta, with BA in the middle left and colonia across from it. montevideo, uruguay's capital, is in the upper middle, and the atlantic doesn't start until the far right. 

the hammock on the roof deck at my hostel in montevideo. a nice old building that would have been much more enjoyable in fair weather (it rained almost the whole time i was there).

a parade with drums that passed below the hostel. the drumming is a direct piece of cultural heritage from africa, this connection is much more called out and celebrated in uruguay that it is in BA (which is more euro-oriented), and there are many more similarities between montevideo and the US as well as brazil, that there are with BA. 

three pieces of delicious (if fatty) steak, a side salad, and a large glass of wine: $12.

four flights of a spiral staircase up from the second floor of the museum in montevideo. i was getting bored, so i stepped over the rope and climbed the stairs for a rainy view of the old city. there were no musuem guards in the whole place, which was a beautiful old palace. 

a lover's fountain, i'm assuming. the outside is coated in locks. 

the public squares at night. i walked home from a movie, when it had finally stopped raining, and felt totally safe walking through the city at 12.30 in the morning by myself. 

at the cementary in montevideo, facing out to the sea. a lot of people were visiting graves, and there were a ton of fresh flowers and live plants. 

puerto madero, the newest and most expensive neighborhood in BA, where all the capitalist infrastructure is located. lots of big glass buildings down here. the land was sold off in the 80's when everything was tanking (or so my bicycle guide tells me). farther left of the buildings behind me is a large ecological preserve, where carla and i went for a walk yesterday. we reached the river bank and put our feet it to cool off. finally, a warm spring day!

the pink house, where the president works but doesn't live. the white paint was mixed with horse or cow blood, depending on who you ask. amazing how close you can get to the building. nothing like the fear of attacks that the US has. 

i just bought my bus ticket for puerto iguazu. next stop, brazil!