Colonia del Sacramento

Gosh, what a cool place!  Originally founded by the Portugese to spy on the Spaniards in Buenos Aires and later converted to a haven for smugglers and pirates sneaking goods into Argentina, this place is littered with historical wonders.  The original city walls and drawbridge have been restored beautifully and some of the original strucures still exist.  There are old rusty cannons scattered like red logs all over the place and the streets are almost all cobblestone.  There are huge old trees all over the place and hidden courtyards everywhere that are just waiing to be restored.  The heavy touris season of January and February had ended so the town had a wonderful laid-back feel.  We spent our first night checking out the plethera of restaurants and had a great meal in one with a live jazz band.  Well, it was just two guys, one singing and one on the piano, but it was still cool! On our full day here we rented a scooter!!!  So much fun I can barely stand it.  I was really nervous at first, having never ridden a motorcycle or scooter before and was plagued with visions of crashing and ending our Honeymoon prematurely.  I imagined a pair of broken legs for both of us and then being on the butt-end of endless stories at all family gatherings for the rest of our lives, but fortunaely we avoided anything like that.  It was so much fun to cruise up and down all the roads lining the beaches north of town.  It felt really great to be so mobile after two months of walking everywhere.  We spent the day beach hopping and cruising and taking lots of picures of the historical section of the town.  We had so much fun.  We met a nice gal from England and her friend from New Zealand who had been travelling for fourteen months in Souh America!  He had some great stories from nearly every place on the continent.  We all ate together at a great river-side restaurant which had night blooming jasmine flowers surrounding it and a great view of the town lights reflecting off the river.  If it weren´t for the pesky mosquitoes it would have been a perfect place.  We are heading to Montevideo next and are looking forward to being in a big city for the first time since Lima.  Talk to you then!