This morning we left Colonia del Sacramento by ferry. We had seen the ferry the other day when we strolled around the little town and the boys were quit excited to go onboard. We had to wait a little while at the terminal before embarking but all went smooth…
The ferry ride is only 45 minutes crossing the River Plata to the other side. From a distant you could see the city of Buenos Aires which its tall buildings and port. It was impressive to see when coming from a little town like Colonia. Once we had gone through customs we managed to get a taxi. This took a while as they are officially not allowed to take more than 4 passengers. Being a family of 5 with luggage made it hard but after a few chats ( Spanish comes in handy at these moments), we were taking by a very friendly guy who loved Spanish music!! 🙂 He knew all the Spanish songs from the 80-ies and the boys were impressed and amused. It definitely made the drive to “our house to be” more pleasant.
On our way, I noticed the decay of some of the buildings and the taxi guy explained us how bad the economy is doing. People are suffering, the peso has depreciated 180% ! and lot’s of people struggle. It was true how you hardly noticed any christmas decorations or New Year announcements. He explained us that people don’t have the money to buy and so this year he imagined the city much quieter and in a way “triste”..
A real shame because Buenos Aires is known to be such a beautiful city, “The Paris of South America” , with a very European vibe. For soooo long I had been looking forward to spend time here and explore the city but I could tell from what I saw through the window of the car that it has lost its glory…
Tomorrow, we are planning to visit the “barrio of San Telmo”, the historical part, famous for it’s squares and tango. Today, we spent the rest of the day mostly at home. The house is gorgeous! I found it on Airbnb and it has a very nice energy. The owners have left everything for us to use. A great kitchen with all we need and a lovely patio for dinners. Around the corner there are lots of little shops and supermarkets and very cheap in comparison with Uruguay!
Let’s only hope that we will find an ATM machine to withdraw money. We are running low on cash and so far all our cards get rejected..Uff!!! Cross fingers tomorrow! X
The Five Gypsies 