We awake to another cold morning, Uruguay is about the same
latitude as New Zealand so we are feeling the cold like everyone back home now,
although by the looks of all the snow around New Zealand at the moment we are
getting the better deal. But then again
we have just come from 35 degrees!
We head out to explore the town. This town is a UNESCO world heritage listed
town and is number four on things to do in South America in our Lonely Planet
guide book. The historical area of the
town was established in the 17th century by the Portuguese for
smuggling of goods across the Rio de la Plata into Buenos Aires. The streets are cobblestoned and are lined
with historical homes. Trees also line
the streets and would look fantastic in the summer when they would have leaves
on them. It was still a great
sight. We enter the historical part of
town by walking through the Puerta de Campo, a thick wall which runs to the
river (there is a tunnel on the road).
We then just walk through the town and take in all the historical buildings
which have been restored and maintained but still have their character. Walking through this town takes up a lot of
time, it is very enjoyable. Eventually
we find ourselves at the football museum of Uruguay. It was quite ironic we were in this museum
today as Uruguay play Peru in a South American group world cup 2014 qualifying
match. This museum shows the history of
the Uruguayan national football team, including them winning the Olympics twice
in the 1920’s and also hosting and winning the first Football World Cup in 1930
(the national team still plays their home matches in the same stadium). The museum also shows the national team
winning the South American competition last year.
We decided to take a break from the old part of town and
book our ferry to Buenos Aires for the following day. Our guide book told us to go to the bus
station but there was a recently completed boat terminal now in operation, well
supposedly in operation as the majority of the company offices were empty
(lunch time). We waited and eventually
booked a ferry for 1030 the following morning.
Back to the historical part of town we go and we find a place for
lunch. We order a barbeque for two
people, this consisted of meat, meat and meat.
We also got a beer too. It was
very tasty and filled us up, but by the end of it I was craving for a few
vegetables. We then head to the
lighthouse which you can climb for views of the town. This wasn’t the greatest view as there were
not many buildings with nice roofs. The
buildings from ground level looked fantastic but the maintenance of roofs
around town were not up to the same standard.
Never the less, a view is a view and it wasn’t too bad. We also had a look around a few shops selling
souvenirs etc. As we were looking in
these shops I was trying to ask the shop owners what time the football started
as we were quite keen to go to a local pub and join the locals while watching
their country play. We found out that
kick off was at 4pm and there were no pubs to watch the game. You are kidding me, no pubs? Every television
in town was playing the game but there were no pubs in town. This has to be a joke, but as we found out,
it wasn’t. We decide to go to a restaurant
and watch the game while having a beer.
When Uruguay scored a goal, you could hear shouts from neighbouring
buildings yelling “GOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLL” and cars tooting their horns,
obviously listening to the game on the radio.
South Americans are very passionate about their football. I love it!
For the record, Uruguay won 4-2. We
then went out for dinner as the kitchen in our hostel was not nice. After dinner we went to the waterfront where
we could see the lights of Buenos Aires shining in the distance, about 50
kilometres across the Rio de la Plata, then went back to the hostel and watched
the movie “Evita” to get up to date with Argentinean history.
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