beaches, buggies, boats, buses and bicycles

My mum is always telling me to “enjoy the journey”. The distances we are traveling and the modes of transport we’re using are delivering some interesting times between the traditional sights and stops.

Getting to Colonia from Buenos Aires for example takes a couple of hours on a ferry…well, two ferries for us actually…the first one turned around before we’d barely made it out into the fast lane due to technical issues. The second ferry made the journey across the widest river in the world, the Rio de la Plata without any issues…until we came to rest against the terminal, shattering a large window as the lumbering ferry cosied up to the wharf. I hope they have a third ferry to keep the business afloat!

Colonia is beautiful, just like the postcards and guide books tell you, with her cobblestone streets, swashbuckling airs and a sense of fun and excitement. We walked around the old fortress, climbed to the top of the lighthouse to see Buenos Aires in the immense distance across the brown river and enjoyed delicious chivitos for lunch before buying a soccer ball and hiring golf buggies on steroids to drive to the beach.

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In the yolo spirit of the tour, we did our best impressions of delinquent children as we scurried through a hole in the fence surrounding the historic bullring on the outskirts of town. A crumbling and beautiful structure, it echoed with the shouts of our football game until we made a hasty crawl back through the fence.

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The game continued down on the beach which was populated with weekenders and fishermen, little children in cute swimmers and a rare sighting of a new breed of seahorse…ok so it was just a horse going for a swim 😉 I told you everything seems bigger over here…it’s not every river that can give you expansive beaches and towns that have been declared world heritage sites.

The $8 ball lived down to its expectations and lasted a while before calling it quits. This was the cue for the guys to scamper off and find beers. Forty minutes later they returned with beers and photos of them all in the nude back at the bullring. Of course.

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We hooned back to town to return the buggies, you would think it was difficult to get lost in a small town. It’s not. We also got full use out of Tomás’s current favourite saying “farkin’ Aussies” – sarcasm is not lost in translation – it is probably easier to herd cats than it is to keep a convoy of 4 buggies going the same way, in traffic, on the wrong side of the road. But hey, we made sure the buggies were returned with a full tank!

Dinner was in the top of an old lighthouse and obviously owned by a dedicated Marilyn Monroe and Madonna fan who had spruced up the interior with far too many posters of Madonna in a leotard. Not enough to put us off our food or spoil the view over the dusky bay and twinkling lights. With a cooling breeze on the outer deck we retired to play games based solely around embarrassing ourselves and taking a drink. It’s a good group of people and we are finding out a lot about each other that probably wouldn’t generally come up in polite conversation between new friends. Such is the life on tour!

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Montevideo

The bus the next day took us to Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, home to around 1.5million people and some eclectic architecture. The older part of town is towards the port with its old streets and their lumpy cobblestones, building facades with French, Portuguese and Spanish influences in various levels of maintenance or disrepair and dogs, locals and police everywhere. Half the group picked up some beers and we headed down to the water.

The sun was shining and the kids flinging themselves into the water got a kick out of surprising us with ever more daring feats. It got as far as dodging 2 lanes of traffic, jumping up over the sea wall barrier and making sure to get at least one foot on the ledge on the other side to spring off and glide into the choppy water about 5 metres below. Kids are blessed with no sense of fear.

Nightlife is what you make of it so early in the week so we took to the dance floor and made requests of the band at El Pony Pisador, some even got on stage to sing with the band. It’s hard to keep track of time here and every night stretches like an elastic band, gathering together opportunities to live every moment. I am enjoying being around an average age of 23, I may have already been called “tour mum”, but I gather that’s more down to my penchant for handing out wet wipes at meals. I’m feeling a strange mixture of younger and older – surviving on an average of 4 hours sleep a night and sangria at AU$6 a litre. Perhaps I’ll feel all my 34 years plus interest at the end, for now though, I’m keeping up!

Simon, Tristan, Rhianna and I hired bicycles on day 2 in Montevideo, journeying approx. 20kms around the city, into some suburbs and along the coast. Pocitos beach is the upmarket part of town and Tomás assured me that if I was going to find a sugar daddy anywhere, it was the best place to look. No dice, though it was cool to check out the surf patrol towers with absolutely no first aid or rescue equipment…it’s rescue by correspondence around here.

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Winding up through the leafy suburban streets was an adventure in matching the traffic, avoiding car doors and stopping for empanadas and water on a street corner before coming face to face with Estadio Centenario – the first World Cup was held here, won 2-1 by Uruguay over Argentina. Yeah, it pained Tomás to admit that 😉 If you plan on going to a game, be sure to take a cushion with you or don’t plan to sit still – the moulded concrete seats, complete with concrete arm rests could use some padding. And did I mention there’s a moat around the field? Yep. The pic of the loos is from the stadium. Can you believe I’ve used worse – when you gotta go…

We followed fearless leader Simon following his nose to get back to the shore line bikeway after first getting caught up in the school pick up. Seems it’s a worldwide phenomenon that everyone forgets how to drive, kids run out into traffic, both vehicular and bicyclical and mothers make plans by shouting across the pandemonium to each other.

We hit the bikeway and cruised home, the wide path and no need to thump up and down gutters to cross streets meant the bikes made it back in one piece and all four of us suffered no stacks and some spectacular sunburn, the best of which is Simon’s six line asterisk on his bald head – burnt through a trucker cap…even the sunshine is bigger here!

The bike ride changed my opinion of Montevideo. Until then it was a case of take or leave. In the city it’s a cautious and aloof character, it doesn’t show its good side. In the suburbs of tree-lined streets, countless kick-about soccer games played with all the passion of the pro’s, the families at the park pushing kids on swings down to the sweet lady running the corner take away shop, there is the other side of the persona. Perhaps it’s possible for cities to have multiple personalities too.

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