Some little-known fun facts about Uruguay that tickled our fancy: Uruguay was the first country in the world to legalise the sale of marijuana, which is widely and freely available – there are a few ‘head shops’ in Colonia and many cafes offering weed like it was a cup of tea Uruguay has no official…
Author: paulandanthony
We're recently early retired from long and exhausting careers in Brand Design Strategy and TV Producing / Writing. After two long years of being trapped by COVID in our home town of Sydney Australia, we're ready to unfurl our wings and fly off on new adventures that will take us first up to Far North Queensland then the UK and Mexico - revisiting favourite places we haven't been to in over 30 years. Now living in Far North Queensland, Australia.
A world away in Uruguay
Just 52k’s across the wide brown Río de la Plata lies the UNESCO World Heritage listed Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It takes just one hour to cross on the huge Colonia Express catamaran (you can take your car) but you might as well have stepped back in time, possibly hundreds of years, as the…
Tranquillity in the Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays
We caught a crowded mid-morning Subte over to Palermo, emerging into summer heat and humidity with the Jardín Botánico right in front of us. On this surprisingly hot day, the lushness and coolness of this 19thCentury botanical garden were quite astounding and welcome, a total contrast to the frenetic pace of the urban jungle that…
Living the Vida Boca
We spent the morning in the colourful barrio of La Boca. Unfortunately, this place has become tourist-central (read # Tango) since our last visit eight years ago. What was then a relatively quiet, albeit thriving, working-class suburb, has become a mass tourist mecca, well, certainly around the colour-saturated El Caminito, a small street of brightly…
High Flying Adored
It was my birthday today and what better place to while away a reflective afternoon than a cemetery, though not just any old cemetery, the Cementerio de la Recoleta, ‘The City of the Dead’ of Buenos Aires. This place is quite marvellous in its ageing decrepitude, piles and piles (some literally piled on top of…
Sunday in the park with Ants
We had a wonderful Sunday morning walk across Puerto Madero and over to the Parque Natural y Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur – bit of a mouthful, but a wonderful green wetland space on the shore of the Rio Plata. That’s Uruguay somewhere over there, our destination for later this week. Spring has well and truly…
And then there were three….
Our dear friend Claudia has joined us in Buenos Aires for a couple of weeks. We’ve been somewhat starved of company since July so we weren’t sure how we’d cope – would we swamp her, would we kill her….? But no, it’s just nice to have company and show madam around this wonderful, intoxicating city…
Wide streets and drunken sticks
Avenida 9 de Julio is the widest street in the world at 460 feet, with 18 lanes of traffic. It’s impossible to get a sense of just how enormous this thoroughfare is without being high up on some hotel or apartment roof-terrace or perhaps even in a helicopter – working on the latter. The sidewalks…
La Vuelta del Malón (The Return of the Indian Raid)
‘The Return of the Indian Raid’ by Argentinian artist Ángel della Valle is wide and majestical in its scale and presence in a room at the Bellas Artes Museum in Recoleta. We went looking for Argentine masters and this pretty much fits the bill as Argentina’s ‘first genuinely national work of art’ – specifically painted…
Travels With My Ant 