Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Colonia Cleansing




A good friend of mine is rehabbing a home in Colonia and purchased a farm (chacra) in the outskirts of Colonia. He invited, me, Golden Lotus, and Midori (our lab) out for a visit in December.

The trip rocked. Of course, our visit coincided with a break in the month-long (at the time) drought. As we slept the rain rattled the corregated tin roof of the old farm house like an impossibly long drum-roll. The local farmers, and our lab, rejoiced, as it made the grass grow, and created a lot of mud for her to get filthy in. It was immediately obvious to everyone just how out of place our lab was in our apartment as she was a yellow ball of constant motion for the entire weekend.

To refresh everyone's memory, Colonia is on the south western corner of Uruguay, across the "river" from Buenos Aires.

Colonia is at once funky, fresh, hip, cool. It's the preferred spot (it seems) for the hippy, chilled out, artist, Cali-vibe culture that manages to make it down here. By virtue of its proximity to Buenos Aires, and it's being named a world heritage foundation site, the town seems to get by with having basically no industry whatsoever with the exception of tourism.

Oh, I'm sure that there are a couple of people trying to fish in the river or something...and like i mentioned, there is some farming and ranching as you move further away from town, but the ancient buildings and museums, restaurants, and aggressive restoration police keep the older buildings and funky vibe intact...and the influx of tourist money means no one has to be all that bothered with the less aesthetically pleasing aspects of commerce -- Montevideo seems to have most all of these.

I've included some pics below of our trip. Enjoy.






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