After Buenos Aires our next destination to spend a few nights was Uruguay’s capital city of Montevideo, but instead of taking the ferry from Buenos Aires straight there we decided to go via the small town of Colonia Del Sacramento in western Uruguay.

This beautiful little town dates back to 17^th century when it was a Portuguese smuggling port designed to disrupt the Spanish base in Buenos Aires. It is a very picturesque place with the old town still having the remains of the original city gateway and what is claimed to be Uruguay’s oldest church the Ingesia Matriz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At its southwestern corner is Plaza Mayor which has a lighthouse dating back to 1857 which holds nice views across the bay, with its quaint cobbled streets and restaurants spilling out onto the terraces and pavements it was a really nice place to spend a couple of hours before catching the bus to Montevideo.

 

 

 

Now for the boring bit (logistics)
We visited the Buquebus office while we were at Puerto Madero one afternoon and purchased our one way ferry ticket to Colonia Del Sacramento. We opted for the slow ferry as it was half price but half the speed (3 hours in total). Once we arrived in Colonia we walked about 5 minutes to the bus terminal and purchased our onward bus ticket with COT to Montevideo for later that afternoon. We left our large backpacks at left luggage at the bus terminal and off we went with just our day packs.