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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Colonia, Uruguay

So on Saturday I went to Colonia, Uruguay. Basically, I think it may be one of the oldest towns in Uruguay or Argentina or something, my mom keeps telling me it's a UNESCO world heritage site. Isn't that a kind of wafer? To be honest, I have not opened any guide book since I've been here and I also took a walking tour of the city but I have no idea what the lady said because I was paying zero attention (I'll explain why in a second). However, I do know that they built a giant stone wall around the city to defend against the Spanish and that eventually the city expanded outside the walls.

Colonia is hands down one of the coolest places I have visited in Latin American (It was also my first time outside of Buenos Aires in 3 months, so that could have something to do with why I am gushing over it).

I'm on a 90 day tourism visa here and my 90 days expired last week so it was time to hop the ferry over to Uruguay. On Friday I bought a round trip ticket for Saturday (future reference, obviously much cheaper to buy well in advance but that is tough to do unless you are a woman and have the special planning gene that comes with having two x chromosomes. SCIENCE. There should really be different time frames for booking things for men vs women, for example if something is cheaper if you book it a month in advance, it should stay cheap for men an additional two weeks, this is what we would call a positive form of gender discrimination.) Anyyyyyway, I got on the hour long ferry ride at 8am, lost an hour due to a time zone change so arrived at 10ish, and then took a walking tour which was included in my ticket, where I met a very nice older gentleman Norman, who is from New York went to BU and is now semi-retired but previously did marketing for the NHL, among other popular labels/places, which is genial as the spanish say. I also met Suzanne who lives in Somerville and is is just about to start working for a non-profit in Roxbury doing urban planning and housing. I got her info so I will definitely be contacting her when I get back to Boston, that shit is right up my alley. They both were on vactation for a few weeks in Buenos Aires taking Spanish classes, which seems like a very neat and productive way to spend a vacation and meet people.

So the reason why I couldn't concentrate at all during the tour other than the fact that the town is beautiful can be boiled down to two points: stray dogs and motorized vehicles. But first some pictures of the town:



and of course me with one of my stray doggies:

There are about a million different places where you can rent different modes of transportation and the square-butt fancy boy ass-licking segway is yet to make it down here yet . . . There is a God! Looking at the vehicles I was literally like a kid on Christmas morning. You could choose from golf carts, scooters, atvs, and fucking go-karts, no word, no words. I have never ridden any of the latter 3.

After we ate lunch and I got a little bit liquored up I went off to rent one of these perfect creations. I basically went up to the counter of one of the places and I was like, "I want to rent it all" and they were like, "okay, you want to rent it all day? Which one do you want." and I was like, "No, I want to rent it all." There were like, "ok we get it, all day, but which one" and I was like, "obviously there is some kind of language barrier here, I want to rent them all." and they were like, "you have to choose one."

Talk about asking to do the impossible, this is like walking up to a table that has a machete, a gun, and a box of fireworks laid out on it and someone telling you you can only play with one. It is just one of those ultimate life choices where you can't go wrong with any but it is also physically, humanly, any kind of -ly, impossible to make a choice. It reminded me of a trip to Big Woody's Fireworks.

What I ended up having to do was weigh the pluses and minuses of all the vehicles:

ATV:
Handling //////////////
Top speed /////
Acceleration //////
Gas mileage /////////
Off road //////////////////
Risk of injury //////////
Intangibles Bad Ass
OVERALL //////////



Scooter:
Handling //////
Top Speed ////////////////
Acceleration /////////////////
Gas Mileage ////////////
Off Road ///
Risk of Injury /////////////
Intangibles Kind of Gay
OVERALL /////////


Go-Kart (Buggy):
Handling ///////////////
Top Speed ///////////
Acceleration /////////////
Gas Mileage /////
Off Road /////////////////
Risk of Injury /////
Intangibles Every Kid's Dream
OVERALL /////////////



In the end I went with the Scooter, sorry to disappoint you with the reveal, I'm guessing you had no doubt I that I went with the buggy. I was so close to going with the buggy, finding a stray dog, grabbing some more beers and just taking off with the dog in the passenger seat, I actually went to 3 different places to get the buggy, but at the moment they all were rented and I didn't want to have to wait for it to come back. When all was said and done, very happy with my choice. At heart, I think I am a 2-wheeled vehicle being. (I passed on the atv because I didn't want to look like an asshole driving around on it while everyone else was in cars going down the streets.)
I rented the scooter for $25 USD for the day and the guy basically gave me a helmet (I actually got pulled over later in the day by the Uruguayan police for not wearing it and I had to give them my Massachusetts drivers license, please don't tell my mom), showed me how to fire it up, and I just kind of drove away. I did some laps of the town and then found a dirt road with nothing/no one in sight and simply just drove. It felt amazing.


I eventually ended up at a National Park, where I asked how far Colonia was and they told me about 30 kilometers away. I almost didn't make it back and ended up having to fill up the tank, Dumb and Dumber is not an acccurate portrayal of the gas mileage scooters get.

Things to take away from my scooter adventure:
- I now know why people where sun glasses and goggles, when I got above 70 kilometers/hour it was hard to keep my eyes open because the air was making me tear up so bad.
- I also developed a sick blow out from the wind (I failed to take a picture)
- Every once in a while I would get hit with a bug, luckily never in the eye . . . I thought about what would happen if I did but I never really came up with a plan as to what I should do.
- I made an epic pass of a bus on the shoulder of a dirt road.


Anyway to end the day I went to the beach, where I went swimming . . . gorgeous gorgeus water, also stays shallow really far out which is good for someone like me who is afraid of sea life.


Finally I ended the day by going across the street to a bar, or what I thought was a bar. The set-up was similar to Wollaston Beach, beach on one side of the streets, bars/restaurants/clubs on the other. Let me just preface this place by saying it was awesome/ it could have been someone's house I had just walked into.


I went in, asked the lady if they had beer, she was like "uhh, ya, we have beer" I was like, "ok, I'll have one" and she got me out a liter of the Uruguayan beer, "Pilsen" 1000x better than the Argentine beer. However, all I had was Argentinean pesos, which is not usually a problem in Colonia (unless you are in someone's house) because it is truly international in terms of visitors, they will accept almost any type of money, Uruguayan, Argentine, US, Euro. The lady didn't know what the conversion was though, but an old man sitting in the living room was like, "I'll find out" and picked up the phone and called in the conversion, it was strangely awesome, it reminded me of how back in the day you would call the local weather forecast recording for a dollar. My parents hated when my sister would do that. Getting the change was the best part, they didn't really have any but had a little coffee cup that was filled with various coins from different countries and had me pick out the coins I needed, I just grabbed whatever.

I ended up grabbing a seat on the patio outside where I thoroughly enjoyed the beer, it was the ultimate pressure free place to down a beer. I think the place used to be or was or they were making it into a place to stay for visitors, and I'm supposed to go back and help them out!

It could be awesome, it has a bocce court, an awesome little pool with a little wooden bridge over it, and another bridge over the driveway. I ended up talking to the old man for a bit, it turns out he was an ex-representative for Uruguay to the UN. When I asked what happened to the place he said "the winter," if by winter he meant Hurricane Katrina had recently hit then I understand what he was saying.



Anway that was my Uruguayan adventure, after the beer I hopped back on the scooter, for the first time fired it up with no problem and made my way back to the ferry. Colonia is definitely a place worth visiting and I think I want to go back and at least spend a night. Also, the rental place swore to me they will have the buggy waiting next time.

1 comment:

  1. There are so many things that seem awesome about this day, mostly the image I have in my head of a drunk dog driving a go-kart.

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