The other side

It's only 45 minutes by high speed ferry to the other side of the Rio Plate which is Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. A short nap basically. Colonia is an interesting place. It was the only area of the Rio de Plata that was colonized by the Portugese. It feels like some strange social experminent gone terribly right. The streets are coble stone, very few structures are above two stories, there is little traffic and the locals drive mopeds, motorcycles and in our case a golf cart. It is one of the cleanest cities I have ever been and this being a peninsula you can see water almost everywhere you look. Something about it reminded me of the island that Patrick McGoohan was trying to escape in the British TV series The Prisoner. Aghh the dark side of Utopia.

One curious phenomenon was the homeless dogs. There were no homeless people but homeless dogs everywhere. They are looked after though. It is not uncommon to see shop owners generously sprinkling dog food on the sidewalks in front of their shops. So the fact that these dogs have no roof over their heads is of course an issue but I didn't see one pup whose rib cage was showing. These dogs get around too. There were four specific dogs I saw regularly in different parts of town and we kind of looked at each other knowingly in that "what's up?" sort of way. One of them was quick to befriend us - we named him Pepo. Pepo only had three legs but damn if he didn't have the slightest problem keeping up with us.

What I previously described was the old part of the city. We took the golf cart beyond the confines of the cobbled stone street peninsula where it looks similar to the poorer parts of Mexico. A striking contrast to the old port. We set out for an old bull fighting ring that seemed to be out pasture for some 20 odd years. Along the way there cows and horses that grazed freely on the side of school houses, libraries and police stations. At one intersection we met up with a man in a horse driven cart who was ferrying around some newly cleaned brush. We also found the Hippodrome which is the local race track. The hippodrome seemed to have fallen on hard times. The grand stands looked like bleachers one would see at a High School basketball game, paint was peeling everywhere and in the middle of the track was chest high weeds and grass growing with a few untethered passing the time. It was all a bit strange.

On a gastronomical note. The local specialty is called a chevito and the places that specialize in them are called chevitorias. The chevito is a sandwich comprised of sirloin steak, ham, cheese, bacon a fried egg, served on a hero bun. This is the sort of sandwich you get at 4:00AM from Verdi Mart in New Orleans during Jazz Fest. Not at all heart smart but insanely delicious. It is curious that a fishing town has a steak sandwich as its local delicacy no?

This is also one of those places where you go the cambio to trade in your Argentine Peso which are manageable in both volume and denomination and you receive a wad of notes that say 500U on them. One Argentine peso is worth 7 times what the Uruguay Peso is worth and momentarily you feel very wealthy until you realize it is 130 pesos for that Chevito sandwich. Its all sadly relative.


I will leave you with a tongue twister I learned laste last night it is akin to "she sell sea shells by the seashore." ditty. It is a tour de force of the rolling R.

erre con erre guitarra
erre con err carril
que rapido ruedan las ruedas
del carro cargado de azucar
del ferro carril

R with R guitar
R with R railway
How quickly the rolling the wheels
from cargo car of sugar
from the train


Some recent pics can be found HERE


C.