15. Uruguay and Buenos Aires

We flew back to Buenos Aires from Posadas. Still pretty unsuspecting after 2 1/2 months in mostly smaller places, we were fleeced the first day back in the big city. The old "bird poop on the jacket" trick. Suddenly you have people diligently trying to help you clean it off. Meanwhile they are actually trying to clean you out. After they departed we were $50 poorer. Fortunately we purposely left credit cards and passports locked at the hostel.

A backwater in the Delta

Spent a day near Tigre - in the Parana R. Delta. Water everywhere and the only way to get anywhere - no roads. Lots of flowers.

Uruguay is a small country - about 3.3 million -about the size of the greater Toronto area - lying directly

Atop the old lighthouse in Colonia

across the wide Rio de la Plata from Buenos. Aires. About 40% of the population live in the capital, Montevideo. We took the  high speed ferry across the river to Colonia de Sacramento, a small place with an interesting "old city", which we wandered around for a few hours, then caught a bus to Montevideo.

Montevideo was pleasant, but another big city. The old port area has some beautiful old buildings, but is quite run down and not safe at night. We did lots of walking and eating. The Uruguayans are even more red meat fanatics than Argentinians. You get a huge plate of meat with very little else. Back to the cave man days. Visited a great antique car museum run by the Uruguay Automobile Club.

Watched an industrial league football game (read soccer). It was pretty intense, with banners and cheering sections. Before the kickoff, the players all hug and kiss (really) their opposite numbers, then do their best to kill each other after the opening whistle. Firecrackers are constantly going off and each time a big black dog ran into the play. Sometimes there were two balls on the field. Halftime brought a huge smoke bomb.

 Interesting features of most parks are the professional dog walkers. Watching them try to manage up to 20 dogs and their leashes makes for some good entertainment.

After 4 days we headed back to Buenos Aires for the last 3 days of our adventure. Spent a day in La Boca - a pretty rough but colourful part of the city. Check out our tango moves!

The Metro in Buenos Aires is very efficient, but it quite a shock to see the cars totally covered in grafitti. Even parts of the windows.