Fray Bentos Day 230 06/05/2015

Most people visit Colonia on a day trip from Buenos Aires. We've probably stayed a little bit too long for what there is to do here but it's been nice to slow the pace down a little bit. We had another leisurely breakfast at the hotel before packing up our things. Our next destination was Fray Bentos, north along the Rio Uruguay from Colonia. The bus didn't leave until 1430 so we went back to the tourist information office to see the promotional film on Uruguay that Veronica had told us about (we did go yesterday but they only show it up until 1300 on Monday and Tuesday). It was a nicely made film of primarily beaches and cows! We filled in the time with coffee at a lovely little cafe and lunch by Plaza Mayor before picking up our bags and walking to the bus station. The journey was around 150km and took 4 hours despite the roads being good. We soon realised why as we stopped frequently to pick up/drop off passengers and parcels. At one point we even morphed into the local school bus! We travelled through green agricultural land, passing small towns far off the tourist trail. Most people apparently come to Uruguay for it's wild surf beaches on the east coast and of course to visit Colonia. There's little other tourism here despite being small and easy to get around. Only 3.5m people live in Uruguay, over a third of them in Montevideo and the land area is only 176k sq km. It has been and probably still is a buffer zone between Brazil and Argentina. We arrived in Fray Bentos just as the sun was going down and walked the short distance from the bus terminal to our hotel, the Gran Hotel Fray Bentos (although it's not very grand, more like the Crossroads Motel!) on the bank of the Rio Uruguay. The streets were buzzing with supporters of the various political parties playing lots of music and generally have a good time. It almost had a carnival feel to the place. We didn't pass any restaurants or cafes on  route so decided to eat at the hotel and had an OK meal. Simon even managed to get some vegetables in his Thai Chicken curry (which was more of a Chinese stir fry)!