TNT Travels

A late entrant into our travel plans but what a hidden gem.

Getting there

Our day started with a 5am 30min Uber trip to the airport in Mendoza, followed by a 1.45hr flight to Buenos Aires, 20min Uber to the ferry port and a 1.15hr ferry ride to Colonia de Sacramento in Uruguay. Sounds like a lot but it went without a hitch. Other than having to pay £100 each to rearrange the flights as I hadn’t fully appreciated that we needed to treat the ferry port like an airport in terms of arriving in plenty of time (90mins before the ferry leaves, in reality 60mins is fine in March). There are 2 ferry companies. One is meant to be better (Buquebus) than the other but we went with the better crossing time for us. This was with Colonia Express (the poorer cousin) but we thought it was good for a short crossing.

Colonia de Sacramento

As the name implies, it’s a beautiful colonial town right on the River Plate (Rio de la Plata is the stretch of water between Argentina and Uruguay). The River Plate looks like a sea, it’s so vast but is a dirty brown colour which is slightly off putting. Didn’t see anyone in the water in the whole time we were in CdS.

You can hire golf buggies to get round but no need as it’s such a small place (unless you have mobility issues). Also, the old part of town is cobbled so not good for all the denture wearing oldies who opted to rent the buggies!

Our pousada was a 15 min walk from the ferry port. It was fantastic.

Again limited English speaking but that’s the norm given we are the gringos. Pousada Don Antonio gets a big thumbs up from us.

We dumped our bags and went for a wander. We stumbled across a fab bar with a lovely view down to the river.

We ordered a couple of G&Ts and beers and chilled out listening to the awesome playlist. We asked for the bill and then discovered they don’t take card payment. The money curse continued. Fortunately there was a bank 5mins walk up the road. I nipped up and then spent 15mins trying to withdraw cash. I couldn’t withdraw Uruguayan pesos on any of our cards. I tried various amounts. With the aid of google translate, the bank receptionist advised me to try withdrawing 200US dollars as that seemed to work best for foreigners. I managed to get 100 out. Seriously getting fed up with how hard it is to get cash. From here on in everywhere we went we asked if they took card 1st. Everywhere but one other place did.

Anyway, we then got stung for 41 USDs for the drinks. We didn’t bother to argue the toss questioning it because the bar owners was massive and I had PTSD from the bank experience.

On the upside the sunsets in CdS were were stunning.

Lots of bars and restaurants were still open despite it coming to the end of the season. It wasn’t buzzing but it had a quiet charm and weren’t empty. All the drinks were generous and genuinely felt like a punch in the face on the 1st sip. However, it’s very easy to quickly get into your stride after the second sip 😉

With the exception of “ferret and coke”, all the cocktails we’ve had in South America have been amazeballs. So much so El Tel reckons we are going to learn how to make most them when we get home. To be honest, I feel like I need to go to a clinic and dry out.

Strangely, there were lots of randomly placed old cars about.

Electric chargers for travelling around S.America deserve a mention in one of my blogs. The one I bought, having checked it could be used in all the countries we were going to, sold me a lie. Fine for Columbia and Argentina, not for Brazil and Uruguay. There were also different types of plug sockets in different places in Uruguay. Basically 2 different types of adapters will sort you out for the 4 countries we went to.

In Uruguay, 90% of the population walk around with a flask and a mug, filled with ‘mate’ drinking through a metal straw. ‘Mate’ looks like some kind of cross between tobacco and spirulina. It’s probably more popular than tea in Britain.

Both of us loved Colonia de Sacramento. It has the same old colonial historic charm as Paraty in Brazil. It also had rainfall on a similar scale but fortunately there are more sloping streets in CdS so the streets don’t flood as much.

We stayed here twice; 2 nights before we headed down to Montevideo and Punta del Este and then on our last night before getting the ferry back to Buenos Aires. Both times staying in the same Pousada. Recommend paying slightly more for the superior room.

Getting to Montevideo

We rented a car through Punta car to drive 2 hrs to Montevideo. You can also go by bus or ferry. We liked the idea of having the flexibility you get with a car for when we got to Punta del Este. Our car reg was BAA which seemed fitting given the Welsh Heritage.

Punta car rental people kept stressing the importance of adhering to speed limits as Uruguay has loads of speed cameras and variable limits and they are very strict on not jumping red lights, unlike Argentina. Why do I mention this in the blog? All will soon become apparent!

The drive to Montevideo was mainly via one dual carriageway that the Romans would have been proud of. Not because they needed dual carriageways back then, just that the road was unbelievably straight for most of it.

Montevideo

Another huge thumbs up for our accommodation. Hotel Fauna located in the old town.

The location was perfect, the owners clearly love art deco. Everything was tastefully done in the hotel and they were extremely helpful. Not just about where to go in Montevideo but also where to go in Punta del Este.

Uruguay consistently had some of the best food we’ve had on the whole South America trip.

Probably the dearest but still cheaper than home. We couldn’t properly fathom the exchange rate and rebate thing. Apparently to incentivise tourism the government, encourages us gringos to pay by card (oh! The irony). Most restaurants and hotels then give you 22% back off your bill. They say to keep your receipts and then you can get the tax back from places that don’t do it at point of purchase. We couldn’t see anywhere to do this at the ferry port so I am now carrying around tonnes of bl00dy receipts. However, we are fairly confident that most places reimbursed us at point of purchase.

1st point of call

As usual, the 1st place we headed to was the market.

One waiter who was trying to entice us into his place and told us he was a Blackpool football fan. Random! Anyway, we struck up a deal and said we would come back the following day if they put the England vs Ireland 6 nations match on for us. Which they duly did!

Montevideo old town is one of the safest places to walk around. To quote the hotel owner “you could walk around at 4am with your phone in your hand”.

It has a weather beaten charm. Looks a bit run down in places but safe (just like Wl Tel). Montevideo old town is right next to the docks so you can well imagine the hustle and bustle back in the day.

Places to visit /eat

◦ El Tio Bistro – run by a great husband and wife team. It’s the only time we ventured into the newer part of town. It’s in the middle of a residential area. Looks like you are going to someone’s house. You ring the bell and the owner promptly appears. The magic happens in the back garden which is a lovely oasis, mainly undercover and the food was immense

◦ Mercado del Puerto in the old town – Cabana Veronica restaurant

◦ Apparently carnival lasts up to 3 months here (a bar owners words, not mine) and we got to witness some of the spill over

◦ Andes 1972 Museum – it seemed only fitting that we visited given we had recently be chatting about the air crash / eating your friends to survive. You get to watch a 5mins video featuring some of the survivors explaining how survival mode kicks in and you exist as a community and normal civilised society rules can’t exist. You do the unthinkable! I found it fascinating. El Tel was taking notes. Watch out Mark and Coxy!

◦ Drinks to try; Tennet wine seemed pretty good and a locally made gin called Capicua was lovely. The distillery is also a bar and was just around the corner from the hotel

◦ Esmercat restaurant does great fish and seafood. Not sure about the entertainment though!

Coast Road

There is a lovely long stretch of coast road (over 20kms) with a promenade running alongside for most of it. Loads of people were out cycling, jogging and walking. There were several little beaches but a lot of people sit on the promenade wall with legs dangling over drinking ‘mate’. Hardly anyone was in the river swimming but it’s still pretty brown in colour here. That said, it didn’t stop my parents making me swim in the sea at Barry Island when I was a kid and quite often that was a similar colour!

Punta del Este

This seaside city is a further 2hrs drive south of Montevideo.

First port of call; it’s 20mins into the Wales vs France match when we arrive so we head for the only sports bar we could find, The Moby Dick. No-one was in it, the staff were having a leaving lunch for one of the team but they put the match on for us 🙌

Punta del Este is where the River Plate meets the Atlantic. It is definitely a case of how the other half live. There are a lot of skyscrapers but a little further south in Jose Ignacio, where the houses start to get huge.

There are a lot of holiday homes in Jose Ignacio for wealthy Uruguayans and North Americans.

Given we were just outside of the peak season, Jose Ignacio was practically closed as a town. Punta del Este had more life being a city but lots of places were closed or empty.

Back to Punta del Este

We stayed a bit out of town in the Live Boutique Hotel.

It was easy to uber in or you could walk for an hour to get down to the centre/harbour. I would probably stay more centrally if doing it again.

The yacht club was a good place to eat. The beach restaurants further up the coast were also fantastic. We only experienced them during the day though.

The marina area was fairly busy around sunset with some friendly seals.

Beach clubs

Lovely locations, food, drinks and service. We went to Magnum Sands and Posto 5. Both were great.

On the way to Magnum Sands beach club, I had my head down looking at the map. Just as I looked up, I caught the traffic lights on red. I asked ET if he had just gone through on red. Apparently it was amber when he went through. Fast forward, 24hrs we get an email from the hire car company saying the BAA-car had been caught on camera going through a red light.

£230 (11,360 Uruguayan pesos) later…..

In the evenings

We located Capi Bar, a (the only) busy bar with a good live band, good food and people watching. Although lots of people seemed to enjoy watching us, given ET ordered the ‘tablet of beer’ to himself. For most people it was like a sharing platter, for ET is was a tasting platter. He didn’t even drink them in order which was very annoying!

The last day was a bit of a slog. We had a 4hr, ‘compliantly driven’ journey back to Colonia de Sacramento through showers, storms and sunshine. Unfortunately, there is next to nowhere to stop on the main route between Montevideo and CDS so we (ET) did the whole drive in a straight run.

Other than the minor driving infraction, our visit to Uruguay was great. Albeit, the most expensive county (still cheap vs Europe) it generally had the best food and even better I had no mozzie bites during the whole week.

Next stop: ferry back to Buenos Aires to get the flight to Florianopolis in Brazil