180 Meals in South America

It’s been said that we travel on our stomachs.  We do enjoy food; we like cooking it and eating it, as well as reading and writing about it, and we love to eat local dishes when we’re traveling.  While David keeps track of what we eat, and where, in a written journal, we’ve found that pictures are much better at bringing back our memories of meals we’ve had.  On this trip, David vowed to take a picture of every single meal.  That lasted one full day before he forgot, and it wasn’t the last time, by any stretch.  However, he took pictures of most, and the ones we have are representative of the trip in general.  We also rated each picture, from 1 to 5 stars, based on how the contents tasted; not all the pretty dishes were tasty, and some of the ugly ones were fabulous.  It should be noted, however, that no ice cream or gelato is picture here. Ice cream, of course, will merit its own post.

The video above moves fairly quickly; if you want to see them at a slower pace, you can scroll through them here at your own pace. If you're curious about something we ate, leave us a comment and we'll explain what it was. Bon appetit!

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Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

While we were in Buenos Aires, we took a day trip across the Rio de la Plata river delta to Colonia del Sacramento, in Uruguay.  The immigration process was in stark contrast to entering Bolivia, and took under a minute, with officials from both countries sitting side by side at the same desk.  The ferry lulled us to sleep, so we don’t have much to say about it, other than ‘great nap.’  It was a huge ferry, and took under an hour to cross.  If you are ever in Buenos Aires, we highly recommend taking the fast ferry.  We talked with someone who had taken the slow ferry, and it was a rough, slow ride that left him stranded in Uruguay because it was too rough for that ferry to make the return trip.

Colonia is a very sleepy, old city.  It reminded us a little of New Orleans before noon, when people begin to think about waking up (only without the terrible odors).  The old part of Colonia doesn’t have a lot of things to “do” other than stroll through its cobblestone streets and take photos, have a long leisurely lunch at an outdoor patio table (try the chivitos—huge meat filled uruguayan sandwiches), and then maybe an ice cream cone after another wander down to the waterfront. It’s beautiful, it’s photogenic, and so very quiet. You can rent a scooter or a golf cart for the day, take a towel and your suit and go swimming (we did neither of those), or just wander.  We chose to wander.  Wander and have ice cream.

We chose to take the late ferry back to Buenos Aires, which meant that we spent 3 more hours in Colonia than we probably should have (it’s really small).  But as luck would have it, we met the most interesting gentleman while waiting for our return ferry, and talked with him about his imminent trip to Antarctica (finishing his bucket list and all 7 continents before his 50th birthday), and shared travel stories and recommendations from each of our travels. We recommended Iceland, he gave us tips on Asia. The sun set spectacularly, we crossed the rio in less time than it took to make a new friend, and we were back at our apartment in Buenos Aires just in time for bed.