Colonia

After a four hour bus journey on the 10th July we reached Colonia del Sacramento on the Rio de la Plata (translated into English as River Plate, but incorrectly – it is more correct to say Silver River – named after the abundance of fish). This place was founded by the Portuguese in 1680 to act as a smuggling post for goods in and out of Spanish controlled Buenos Aires across the river. It changed hands several times over the next 150 years, until finally becoming part of Uruguay after the Artigas-led Cisplatine War against Brazil. Brazil controlled much of what is now Uruguay after the Banda Oriental revolutionaries had kicked out Spain. Not being a fan of their Spanish rulers, they were even less impressed by the Brazilian invaders, and so kicked them out too.

Nowadays the only invasion you are likely to see are Argentinians from Buenos Aires and elsewhere coming to extract US dollars from the ATMs whilst checking out the historic old town. The ferry service is apparently only 50 minutes to cross and drops the cash tourists right near old town – also the location of the one trustworthy ATM machine we found.

We did not take the ferry. We knew we were heading further around the coast of Uruguay before making the crossing to Argentina, but we also knew that in Argentina, US cash is king, so as soon as we got to Colonia we started taking out our daily limit of $300 so we could exchange it on the blue market when we arrived in the next country.

We decided to jump in a taxi at the bus station, and unfortunately our taxi driver acted like a gimp and tried to overcharge us. I tried to ask him what the extra charge was for, but he got really angry once he realized he had been caught out and drove away, cursing. If I had a penny for every pissed off taxi driver we had annoyed in South America I would definitely be able to buy a twix.

We had booked into a little bed and breakfast called posada las quintas (the fifth inn) very near to the old town of Colonia. It was a nice little place which did not cost much and had a lovely space in the room and, most importantly, gas powered hot water shower. Even in this day and age we have had a huge problem finding somewhere which has continual hot water – mostly because the showers are all electric in Uruguay and the tanks are tiny and so you only get 7 minutes of hot water before it is freezing. And it is already freezing as it is winter! Brrrr.

After sleeping in a very comfortable bed, the next day we immediately started to explore the small city. After a brief stop at the tourist information place, Francesca was itching to get going, so we went straight to the old town, where they still have a large section of the old city walls. We walked past an artist studio which was closed, right outside the old wall – it was a cold and miserable day, but we were in good spirits when we reached old town. There were a few pockets of tourists around – you could imagine in the summer this place would be heaving with people and probably not very enjoyable – expensive too. I felt we really made a good choice visiting at this time of year. We walked past the old wall and through the original old city gate which was restored and rebuilt in the late 1960’s with its wooden drawbridge.

The first place we saw was an old ruin, right next to the city lighthouse. Built in 1760, the convent of Saint Francis was a tiny nunnery, with huge thick walls of 1.2 meter width. The lighthouse next to it was built much later in 1910 – Colonia being at an important point for all ships entering or leaving the river.

There are numerous small museums dotted around Colonia. On their own, they are laughably small and would not be worth a consideration; but all together they are OK to visit and while away some time in. The trick is to visit the museu y archivo historico regional first, because there you can buy a ticket for all of the museums – an all access pass, as it were. They cleverly (or stupidly) close half the museums one day and open them the next, partly, I think, to force people to visit the old town area over a period of at least two days, and partly because they do not have enough staff to keep them all open at once!

After we got our ticket (we would have to come back the next day to actually visit inside the museum and regional historical archive as that was closed!), we set off to visit the museums they had told us were open. The walk was very nice, reminding us of Paraty in Brazil, with it’s cobblestone streets and picturesque coastal views. Most of the buildings here are from the 17th Century and have been kept in good condition with pretty gardens and well-kept streets and plazas. No wonder then, that this is a UNESCO heritage site (unlike some of the Brazilian UNESCO sites, this one actually deserved the title).

We walked to the current yachting and fishing club harbor, where there were a few people walking around, and just a few boats in dock. It was a lovely view, very foggy but with really calm waters.

We walked around and saw some touristy clothing shops and finally came across the Bastion del Carmen cultural center, which started life as a glue factory. The Uruguayan government bought the factory from their Argentine commercial neighbors in a nationalistic trend that swept the region in the mid-twentieth Century (now seen as a huge economic blunder). In the cultural center was a model of the convent and lighthouse we had seen, which was really cool, and some loud, repetitive, looped Tibetan chanting music, which was really weird. There was also a theatre roped off at the back, and on the way out I saw a wooden small model of the whole of Colonia’s old town.

Our next stop was the Iglesia del Santísimo Sacramento, or Church of the Most Holy Sacrament, which was actually established in 1680. However the current building dates from 1810 and has twin bell towers that are very pretty. It was a Roman Catholic church and has a funny statue of Saint Francis holding a skull (apparently this is because of his meditations on his own death by stigmata). Ridiculous.

After the church we stumbled upon the excavated ruins of the Governor’s house in one of the plaza’s. Destroyed by the Spanish in 1777 it was one of the original Portuguese buildings. The trees around the ruins are pretty spectacular, too, covered in thick bark which has split leaving bright luminescent light green tracks with bright red thorns sticking out of it. We thought the tree had an alien disease, a la Day Of The Triffids. Not sure what that tree is yet, but we are still trying to identify it.

After looking around a really cool arts and craft shop, we made our way to the Museu del Periodo Historico Espanol which belonged to a Spanish trader in the 18th Century. This tiny museum held few objects of interest, and specialized in Spanish objects from the 17th and 18th Centuries like coins, pottery, clothing and other ceramics.

We made our up the lighthouse next to see the birds eye view of the city (about 2 dollars each). We got some great snaps, even though it was misty. The lighthouse has some very narrow steps on its high staircase, and mind your head!

At 3pm the aquarium opened. I was excited to see the fish they had because they were all from the local rivers and waterways of Uruguay. My favorite was the electric fish they had, complete with voltmeter to let you see how much juice they give off – not particularly dangerous but very nice to see.

The next stop was a planned stop at a recommended restaurant called Drugstore. Only half full due to the winter period, it was a real pleasure to walk around it and check out all the cool décor. We got some cool pictures of all the art there, not to mention a treat we were both looking forward to since researching Uruguay when we were in Brazil: el chivito.

The chivito sandwich is basically a sandwich made from sliced bread, burger baps or a baguette which contains salad (lettuce and tomato), ham, a fillet of beef, bacon, cheese and a fried egg. This gut bomb really does the trick, so we ordered one and a gnocchi dish as a back up! Wow, we were stuffed, and very happy – Drugstore is a great place to eat. Top this off with some great advice from a friendly fellow patron from Argentina and some live local melodic guitar music and we had the perfect lunch.

We headed back to our nice bed and breakfast that night and relaxed. The next day, on the 12th July, we had to move to an HI hostel, and then decided to grab a bus and visit the next neighborhood North of Colonia, called Real de San Carlos. We jumped off at the Igelsia San Benito, an extremely old chapel that is dedicated to San Benito de Palermo, a freed slave who became a Franciscan monk.

After the church we walked a few kilometers up the road to go see the only museum of the ‘museum experience’ ticket which is outside of Colonia’s old town: the Museu Paleontologico.

This museum was the hidden gem of Colonia. An extremely knowledgeable museum guide was a wealth of information, particularly about the megafauna in the region. I wrote a little about the glyptodons in my previous post from Montevideo, but here we learnt even more.

There were four large glyptodon fossils in the museum – they all really stand out, as they look like small car-sized armadillos. We were told that they were all found in the region, although these animals lived all over South America. They had survived for millions of years – although they are definitively mammals, and not dinosaurs – until about 10,000 years ago. A mixture of global warming and interactions with humans probably caused them to go extinct. There were different types of glyptodon, the largest of which is Douedicurus, at about 4 meters long. This one could weigh up to almost 2000Kg, and many paleobiologists believe it had spikes or bony knobs on the end of its tail, for defense, as the fossil record indicates indentations in the end of the tail bone. Our guide showed us one such tail bone, and advised there is arguments about whether it did have spikes or not, as the spikes are made of hair (much like a rhino horn), and therefore is not fossilized.

One interesting thing we learnt was how the archeologists of the past used to use cement to restore the fossils. This is totally frowned upon today – they use a replaceable plastic which is of a different color to the fossil so that people can see the fossil proper, rather than an archeologist’s interpretation. The one’s here all had cement restoration integrated with the fossil.

The glyptodon was a herbivore, and the size of the armor shell casing was very impressive, but you could tell that these big creatures probably moved very slowly, and so where no match for hunting humans. One fossil shell even had a sabre-tooth tiger bite mark on it. These hunters all migrated from the North American continent with the humans, and probably contributed to some of the South American extinctions too.

The other interesting fossil group they had were those of the giant sloths. These ground mammals existed around the same time as the glyptodon, but were much larger. They had been around longer than the glyptodon though; approximately 40 million years, until about 3 million years ago when they started to increase in size to about 6 meters long and up to 4 tones in weight! There are different types of the giant sloth, too. The museum did not have a full fossil record of one, but we saw a huge left femur of a Lestodon, and an even bigger right femur of the biggest of the species, Megatherium. Most scientists now believe the giant sloth was a herbivore, although its fossil footprints have shown it could walk as a biped: a terrifying sight no doubt!

There were many other cool fossils in the museum too, well worth a visit. Lots of teeth, molars, jaws, and other assorted bones. They had an old piranha there, and also Mastodon teeth – a relative of the elephant, which also went extinct at the same time as the other megafauna (the end of the Pleistocene epoch).

A recent scientific study has postulated that the megafauna extinctions around this period could be the cause of the lack of soil fertility we encountered in the Amazon basin. Once these huge mammals had left the food chain, the phosphorus levels in the soil dropped, as it was no longer deposited by the huge mammals’ skeletons. This has left the good soil in the Amazon to be restricted to the top layers only, making it extremely fragile to flash floods, cattle grazing and slash and burn. The trees in the Amazon are also pretty fragile as their roots no longer run deep. They run outwards to stay in the good soil, making them not very well anchored.

We wish we could have taken pictures in the museum, as maybe it would help to attract visitors there. Alas, they do not allow it.

Over the road from the museum was a sort of Pirate World attraction. It was kind of expensive for what it looked like though, so we gave it a big miss.

The area of Real de San Carlos is named after Charles III of Spain, and was developed by an Argentine as a touristic center. Nowadays it is rundown, and under-developed. A bull ring, which was used briefly before Uruguay quite rightly banned bull-fighting in 1912, was built, as was a hotel and racecourse.

The bull ring is even inaccessible now for visits or tours, as it is in danger of collapse. We went across the road and went into the railway museum. They show people around the museum in groups as part of a tour, but we did not understand this at first, so the rude lady working there became angry and we were all annoyed at each other. This made for a whirlwind visit, and we did not learn much, except that the railways were built by the Brits, and then, when they were in near total collapse, we sold them to the Uruguayans for a ridiculous amount of money (Gordon Brown’s ancestors must be Uruguayan), during the nationalistic craze of regional governments buying up all foreign investments and pushing the foreigners out. Not having the expertise or money to do anything with the railways, there are now no trains in Uruguay, except for some cargo trains. Hence the museum.

They did have a nice restaurant there now made from one of the old restaurant carriages, but it was totally overpriced so we gave it a miss. Other than a few pictures and the Paleontology Museum, this area is not really a must see for backpackers.

We headed back into town to go see the museums in the old town that were closed the day before.

Our first stop once we found the right place to go (after getting off the bus too early), was the ATM – but there was a massive queue of Argentinians waiting so we gave up and carried on to the Museu Indigena, or Natives Museum. Almost exclusively having been donated by Roberto Banchero, this museum was much better than the one or two roomed museums we had seen the day before. This one had many weapons, hunting and fishing equipment used by the native Charruas Indians who populated the area before the arrival of the white man. I managed to get a few snaps off, but they were still maintaining the ridiculous no photograph policy.

The tile museum was next (Museu del Azulejo) – the Portuguese love their ceramic tiles, and Colonia had a collection from when it was Portuguese, including French, Catalan and the first Uruguayan tiles from 1840. However, this one room museum was closed, but you could see the museum in totality from through the front door, and we got better photos of it when it was closed than we would have if it was open!

Our last stop in Colonia’s old town was the first museum we went to in order to buy the tickets: the Museu y Archivo Historico Regional which was now open for business. All of the display are on the second floor of this 18th Century building. The building has the original beams, lintels and most of the floors too. This one was also a little more interesting as they had a lot of colorful banners from colonial times, and a whole room of taxidermy.

They also had watercolor paintings and all of the archived documents in numerous languages relating to Colonia and it’s conception and affairs through history.

We walked up to the bus station once we were happy we had seen everything in Colonia, and decided (as it was still early afternoon), to try and get the bus to Granja Colonia y Museo Arenas de las Colecciones (Colonia Farm and Collection Museum).

We were lucky a there was a bus leaving for Riachuelo in 10 minutes that had a stop outside the farm on the way. After about an hour we were off the bus and walking up the hill to the farm. We were not 100% sure we were in the right place to start with as signage is not their strength. However, we went inside a door and were greeted with a room completely covered in key chains! Not just hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of key chains. This was obviously going to be a Francesca special – the weirdest possible museum in the middle of nowhere.

A Spanish lady came to give us the welcome talk, but soon realized we were a lost cause and went to fetch an English speaker. When people speak slowly, we can normally catch their drift, but some people do not seem to have the skill of talking simply and slowly. It’s as if they do not really understand that you cannot speak their language. I am definitely going to make more of an effort with any non-English speakers when we get back home!

The next guy could speak English fine, and told us they actually get many visitors from all over the world. The owner, a crazy guy called Eduardo Arenas started collecting pencils when he was at school. They gave him his first pencil and he asked for another one to write with as he wanted to start the biggest collection in the world. The teacher decided to play along and since then the collections have garnered 5 Guinness World Records, and is the largest in the world with over 14,000 black lead pencils. We saw his fist pencil, and we were also challenged to find any two of the same pencil or key chain or anything (beer cans, ashtrays, and more). These unique items were mostly collected by the owner himself, but now the collection continues to expand year on year as tourists return home and send stuff to the museum to help out! Crazy. There were also some very large pencils here – about a meter long! Weird. Weird and crazy, but interesting nevertheless, and very unique.

We also saw the first keychain that was collected by Sr. Arenas in 1955. So the collection is also pretty old. It is currently the second largest key chain collection in the world.

Photos of the owner being shown around a pencil factory were also included, and we were able to see the process of how they make pencils. Basically, they take a block of wood, add grooves in it which they fill with the lead of the pencil. These are then joined to another block of wood that forms the other half of the pencil like a sandwich. The block full of pencils is then shaped so that they look like pencils. Easy when you know how.

We also saw a perfume bottle collection, and low and behold we found Francesca’s perfume, Alien – the one I got her for Christmas in it!

The final part of the museum was the gift shop, with a twist. The farm makes their own produce, including different jams (or jellies for you Americans) which we spent 10 minutes trying out – we had had no lunch. We decided upon getting some dulche de leche, which is basically caramelized sweetened milk. The Brazilians say they invented dulche de leche, but the Uruguayans and Argentines also stake a claim. There is also a story  of how it was actually Napoleon’s armies who invented it in the field. Who knows? Either way, it is delicious so we got a good jar of it from the farm.

We left the farm and were told the bus should stop outside the farm, and we just had to flag it down. We saw the bus coming, and we flagged it down, but because the asshole driver was speeding, he just flashed his lights and drove past. I was so angry! The next bus was not for more than an hour. We eventually managed to hitchhike with a couple of guys who dropped us off back in Real de San Carlos where we got the local bus back from.

We stayed for another few days in Colonia – we were supposed to catch up with our blog but we spent the days trying to plan our next trip which was a logistical pain in the ass which Francesca will blog about next time.

Colonia was definitely fun, and worth a trip if in Uruguay and you like your history.