Uruguay - An hour ferry ride across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires, we arrived in the old colonial town of Colonia del Sacramento. It is an amazing city over looking the river, with crumbling Portuguese and Spanish buildings, walking along old cobblestone streets and even passing some old cars used as flower pots. It was a real stepping back in time moment but it was one of the highlights of our trip. We had a fantastic lunch with wine at a funky little cafe overlooking the water, which was a very relaxing and peaceful experience which you don't get in the big cities.
From Colonia we headed south to Montevideo, the capital. The bus ride was quite scenic, with green fields along the way and the cows enjoying the winter sun. Montevideo did not have many attractions apart from crumbling colonial architecture, a massive oddly (but beautiful) shaped building in the main square, the view across the water and the horse and carts in the main street which really set this city back a century or two. Uruguay was a nice break from the hustle and bustle of Argentina, which we soon returned to before embarking on a 24 hour bus ride to Brazil...
The bus ride itself was one of the most adventurous to date. It involved three men who seemed to be planning to rob the bus, one of the men starting to flip out and turn psychotic, and several heavily armed Brazilian policemen storming the bus, doing thorough searches of the bus and hauling the men off board in handcuffs (before letting them back on shortly after). And we slept through the entire debacle. Did not even know there were men standing with semi automatic rifles next to our heads. It had to happen on our very last South American bus ride...
We had an awkward transition from Spanish to Portuguese (Obrigado instead of Gracias and the rest!) as we ventured to our last stop in South America, Rio De Janiero. The world famous city for amazing beaches, good weather, Jesus on the hill (Christ the Redeemer) and the beautiful people (and yes, they are beautiful), Rio definitely lived up to its image. It was again one of these truly world cities, like Buenos Aires but the people living to a much faster beat. In Rio we met up with an Irish girl and we spent a bit of time exploring the suburbs of Ipanema (we we stayed) and the famous Copacabana beaches. We also did a city tour, slightly past a favela (basically shanty towns on the side of a hill), onto the beach to see the hang gliders land and up into the rain forest mountain where the statue of Jesus looks over the city and the Atlantic ocean.
Annoyingly, as we were leaving the country, our ATM card was skimmed and we had over $700 taken from us is a flash. From what we hear, it's hard to leave the country without at least one robbery! Happily it wasn't a traumatic event and our bank returned the money a couple of weeks later.
Our time in South America was truly amazing. We loved every minute of it and would not have changed this time for anything else. This wonderful continent will be missed by us and one day we do hope to see its colourful culture in action again. With South America behind, we still have one more destination in our Latin American journey - Cuba.