JamieSue: Colonia Uruguay

This is my new friend Rebecca.

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She’s a hippie. She refutes this claim, but I have proof:

She wears Birkenstocks, eats vegan, hates zoos, and…she lives in Portland. Hippie. She thinks she’s hiding it, but it Buenos Aires when a person selling incense approached our table of four people, he went straight to her. See, everyone knows.

Rebecca and I travelled to Colonia, Uruguay. We left on Saturday morning and returned late Sunday night. We managed to have a few misadventures along the way. I lost my ticket to the boat in my luggage and had to step out of line while I dug for it. When we got to Uruguay, we got lost. Instantly. Rebecca started to lead us in one wrong direction then a woman asked US for directions and we got a peek at her map and I convinced Rebecca to go in another wrong direction…for more than an hour. We completely missed the quaint historic district we were aiming for. But, eventually we found it and we accepted a room in the first hostel we saw. Our most continuous misadventure involved the conversion of currency. I think it is fair to say that neither of us are stellar at math and having only recently gotten used to the 3 Argentinean pesos to 1 US dollar ratio, it was a shock to see a large pizza cost $200…we’ll just have to starve…oh wait, that’s $11 US dollars.

The historic district of Colonia was quaint and picturesque. Streets were frequently cobblestones-of-death with four inch gaps to the next stone. There were antique cars along the sidewalks, some just for looks, but also many still being driven. The buildings were plasters and pastels and really felt like a small colony – a colony of restaurants, bars, and shops for sweaters, tshirts, leather workings. It certainly wouldn’t be a self-sustaining colony. But, it was quite pretty.
We spent some time on the beach which was fairly rocky and natural. (Oh, and here can you see a picture of one of the infamous Buenos Aires bathing suits – see, I’m basically naked). The area around the town where the water met the cost was lined with rocks covered in lichen, trees, and green plants everywhere and because the water was filled with a light sediment it was brown which was a pretty contrast.

It was the first time I’ve travelled with someone I didn’t know (at the start) very well. It was very good in a new way for me. Had Rebecca not been there, my favorite part of the trip would have certainly been the time spent near the water. But Rebecca changed things. Instead, my favorite memories are: when she got the hiccups so badly as we were walking that every time she tried to talk she made a large squawking sound like a (hippie) bird. Of course, I captured this in both photo and video. We danced swing together at the hostel to some kind of latin influenced hip hoppy kind of music. Teasing her about her giant art stick – she bought a piece of art which she really loved. It was wrapped up like a long brown stick which she then had to carry with us. Once, when we stopped to take a picture, she put down the package, and we walked away. We walked. Took a nap. Had dinner. And then realized two hours later that the art stick was missing and we tore back to retrace our steps. Thankfully, no one had picked it up and she was reunited with her stick – which required me to take pictures of her hugging it.

I liked the pretty parts of Colonia. But, I also liked the less pretty parts. I’m interested in seeing the laundry on the line. The coca cola and fanta advertisements. The man with the giant speaker on the roof of his truck playing loud advertisements as he drove around the historic area where billboards aren’t allowed. The Argentine on the Busquebus boat who was wearing sunglasses, drinking through a straw from his coke cup, while texting on his cell phone in his low-rider style leaned back plush chair. I like to see the everyday. Where the rest of the world has mixed in with old-world Colonia. In one restaurant, they played bad 80’s music while we ate. Colonia is a tourist town – but it’s a tourist town for Argentines. Not for Americans. The bad 80s music and the Coke advertisements were for the Argentines, not for us. I find these contrasts really interesting because they feel to me more real than the cobblestone streets and the pastel buildings. I don’t mind that Coke has infiltrated Colonia because in order to have a past, there must first be a present. The very antique cars that I found so picturesque were once gaudy annoyances to the people who wanted the more “authentic” horse drawn carriages. The Coke advertisement that may today seem like an anachronism in the preserved town, may one day be a photo opportunity of antique signage. For me, the experience wouldn’t be real without the mix of all these infiltrations: the picturesque bride and groom coming up the cobblestone alley toward the ancient church, the 80s music blaring from the fancy white tableclothed restaurant, the kitschy “Colonia” pens which are covered in baked clay but are really just cheap ball point pens underneath, the sickly sappy Spanish language ballads played on the radio, the Mr. T graffiti and abandoned building, and the woman who, as we walked past her down an empty street hissed, “There are naked people down there.” Unfortunately, by the time we arrived where she was pointing the naked people were gone. Yes, you read that correctly – Mr. T graffiti and naked people. These are authentic too.

And Rebecca and her wacky organic-vegan ideals, the stupid laughing about the hiccups, the serious conversation about life desires, the dumb hippy nickname, and the dancing. It’s all authentic and it’s all a good time and that’s really all anybody can ask for. Colonia_165_resized