Day 5 - Argentina 2025: Uruguay

I have to be at the ferry terminal at 7 am, so I woke up at 4h29 to give myself plenty of time to get there. At exactly 4h30 (yes, 4:30 am) my phone pinged with a new email message. It was Aerolineas Argentinas (AR), letting me know that they had changed my flight to Bariloche, tomorrow morning, to depart from the international airport (30 kilometers away) and departure was at 4h30! I was stunned. What do you do on Sunday at the wee hours of the day, when some stupid AI algorithm screws you up? I went to the AR website to change the flight, but of course the website was not working. Then I went to Expedia and got into a chat with an agent (or another AI), who after asking many questions decided it had to call AR, only to find out they don't work on Sundays. So now AR has joined Volaris in my shit list of lousy airlines. I ended buying a new flight, and I better be at the national airport (which is within the city) early to get a boarding pass and pointlessly fight for a refund on the original flight. Grrr!

Buenos Aires has a limited metro service, which is unfortunate, but has a vast bus network, which I am now quite adept at using. There are no published schedules or route maps, but most of the drivers are helpful at directing you this way or that, and you rarely have to wait for more than 15 minutes to catch your bus. Of course, you are taking your life in your hands because most drivers are daredevils, and sitting in front is both a prime sightseeing opportunity and a thrill ride. In any case, I made it to the ferry terminal on time, and two hours later I was on my way to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, which is across the enormous width of the Río de la Plata from Buenos Aires.

Colonia del Sacramento was a Portuguese settlement going back to the times of the Tratado de Tordecillas, when the Pope divided the world into a Spanish half that included most of the Americas (except for Brazil and most of Uruguay), and a Portuguese half that included Africa and India, as well as the bulge of Brazil. Colonia del (Santísimo) Sacramento was thus at the edge of the two halves, and was a place of struggle that changed hands between the Portuguese and the Spanish many times, until Queen Mary I from Portugal decided that it was a useless "gibraltar" or knoll of granite not worth spilling blood over, and gave it to the Spaniards. It is a quaint little town, with an old historic center, lots of tourist shops, and a handsome riverside boulevard and beach that attracts many locals and tourists. I cannot claim to have really seen Uruguay because I was there just for the day, and on foot, but collected enough of the lore of the region. For example, this part of Uruguay grows grapes and olives, and is proud of their grape variety (tannat), which yields a tasty wine rich in anti-oxidants that is consumed by the adults and children alike as a fortifying tonic, one spoonful in the morning and one in the afternoon. It must be effective in maintaining good health, because this region boasts the largest number of centenarians anywhere on Earth. Just last year five people celebrated their 110th birthday!

The crossing back to Buenos Aires was uneventful, but this time I put a lot more attention to the colors of the river. The water is laden with silt and sand, so the base color is brown, but here and there one finds emerald patches of vegetation, probably rising from shallow banks. For all it is wide, the Río de la Plata is not very deep (at an average of 4 meters deep). I thought perhaps it had a deep channel carved across the continental shelf, but looking at Google Earth the continental shelf seems to be wide and featureless. The heavy load of sand and silt reflects the abundance of Pleistocene loess deposits on the banks of the estuary (most notably the low hills where the city of Buenos Aires has developed--incidentally, the city proper has 3 million people, but the mancha urbana extends to a population of 13 million).

Well, it is time to go fight with AR. Hopefully I will have good news on my next communication, from the city of Bariloche.