Colonia--museums and stuff

Yesterday I did the museum thing. Thee must be half a dozen or more museums in Colonia. When you walk into the first one, you have the option of paying $1.10 and this pass is good for all the museums. Unlike the museums in Buenos Aires, these here seem to be well run, open frequently, and are staffed with what seems to me to be enthusiastic volunteers. I was the only patron for about 20 minutes at the first musem and the 3 ladies were gushing all over me, anxious to point out everything. Needless to say, the presentations are not exactly state of the art; there´s no video, Walkman CD players, etc. Just old photos, pieces of art, furniture and lots of writing attempting to describe everything.

Many of the port cities of Latin America were beseiged by the Spanish, the English, the Portuguese for 2 to 3 centuries. Colonia changed hands several times. There is still much of the old bulwarks and buildings still standing. So much so that the UN has declared Colonia a World Heritage Site. It is the oldest city in Uruguay. Many of the old fort-type embattlements have been made into museums or tourist junk shops....er, excuse me, native crafts shops. The operative language is Spanish; American tourists are few and far between.

There are numerous transportation rental companies. I deliberately use the word "transportation", since the vehicles they rent seem to be: bicycles, motorized bicycles, Vespas, golf carts, and dune buggies. The going price seems to be about $10 a day for a Vespa. I would have no hesitation renting something like that here. The people drive slowly and sanely. They actually STOP for pedestrians, something which is otherwise unheard of in Latin America. There is frequently a parade of scooters on the right side of the street. And traffic is light to non-existent. Definitely not like Buenos Aires or Venezuela!! The manager of my hotel said that in Uruguay there are an equal number of registered motos as cars.

I saw signs indicating a Carneval Fiesta on a blocked off street. Usually when we think of Carneval we think of thousands of people going crazy in Rio. However, there seem to be similar, if much smaller in scale, party-type things going on in Uruguay and Argentina. I got there about 10 o´clock at night. There were lots of families and the biggest party animals were the kids. They were all dressed up in costume just like Americans do for halloween. The adults weren´t. It seemed to me that most of the boys were Zorro and the girls were pink princesses. How do kids at that early age seem to come to an international agreement re-choice of costume?? There was a DJ playing music. All in all, it was quite tame...and maybe for that reason very typically Uruguayan...family oriented and a good time for all.

Next stop, Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay!