Kerry from Derry

Time for a new country and a break from the city and to hit the beach - yippee! And this time not a conventional beach, the beach here is on the riverbank not the ocean. It seems kind of strange to think that people would want to go swimming in what essentially looks like a brown dirty huge river (its the silt that gives it the colour). And the destination - what the locals simply call Colonia (in Uruguay). It´s a short 3 hr ferry ride across to Colonia from Buenos Aires or if you are willing to splash out the extra money you can take the fast ferry and be there in just over an hour.

For me this trip was going to be extra special - it meant that I got to stay in a hotel for 2 nights! Yes - that´s right - a hotel! And I only had to share the room with 1 other person rather than the usual 6 to 8 others.....and it had 2 swimming pools, luxury or what?

Colonia itself is a charming little town with a rather tumultulous history. Colonia was founded in 1680 by the Portuguese and has served as a port for contraband for years. Now Colonia is a quiet resort town that is cultural jewel and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995. It was fought over for centuries by the Spanish and Portuguese and later the British, but the spanish won the day when Uruguay was declared independent from Brazil in 1828. So now you know!

So what is there to do? The truth is not a lot - there´s a few musuems covering the local history as well as a smattering of restaurants and the obligatory tourist shops but that´s about it. The charm of the place is the old style architecture with both Portuguese and Spanish influences and the cobbled streets running throughout the old town - and for me it was the nearly complete lack of traffic and the silent chilled atmostphere - that´s not to say that we didn´t try to find somewhere to have a bit of a big night, we did - there just wasn´t anything happening! We did however have an amusing conversation with an Italian guy whilst having dinner with me acting as translator - hard work it has to be said when spanish wasn´t completely natural to either of us and Lena and Shilpa not having a clue! I think I did ok though - and we did manage to shake him off later due to him being a little bit wierd and having the worst mullet I´ve seen in a long time! Still - not a bad little diversion.

The rest of the time was spent relaxing by the pool and attempting not to get too sunburnt and that aim was pretty well achieved. This was the first time since I started out nearly a year and a half ago that it felt like a resort holiday and I have to say it wasn´t that unpleasant!

All too soon it was back to BsAs and a couple of days later to say goodbye to the girls as they headed back to London - and time for me to decide on the next destination and get moving before the party atmosphere of BsAs sucked me in again. It was great having people from back over the water to visit and to live a relatively normal life for a few days - hope I get to experience it again before I have to head back and grow up. Just in case you didn´t get that - that´s an open invitation for any of you to get off your asses and come visit. I should be in Australia around the beginning of April!