Buenos Aires – the good air – did not start off so well for us. Happy to see a sunny sky and to walk out of the airport in a t-shirt, my big backpack got stolen during our ride into town! We were on a normal local bus, had put our big bags in the luggage area and set down right next to it. Apparently at one point when we didn’t look, a guy was blocking Mathijs‘ view of the bags and next time we saw them, mine was gone!! Big shock moment. It took me a while to understand and believe what had just happened and in a way I still find it unbelievable. We paid so much attention, but never thought anyone would be after our BIG backpacks… Shit. Our planned „easy relaxing and sightseeing time“ in Buenos Aires became a frustrating and exhausting shopping time, and before and after we had to deal with insurance. BA is not a good city for shopping. High import taxes make international brands very expensive and there are hardly any nice shops. But…I needed something at least, so I had to find something! We saw pretty much every acceptable women’s shop in central BA, but only very few sights in between…

I was not sad to leave BA after all this, and looking forward to a new country, a fresh start. We had chosen for the cheapest but longest way to travel to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay: waking up at 5 am, we took a taxi to the train station and a train to Tigre where we boarded the Cacciola ferry. The ferry ride was nice in the beginning, leading through some smaller channels. There were lots of wrecks of stranded boats here, kind of scenic but I also hoped we wouldn’t end up like this. Lol.

The ferry goes until the little town of Carmelo, where we had to wait for our connecting bus to Colonia del Sacramento. All in all, the day was filled with a lot of waiting, mainly at the two immigration points. It was chaotic and one of my least enjoyable border crossings! A long day…but at least we saved some money. Not sure I would do it again this way though.

In Colonia, we dropped our bags at our AirBnB and headed out to see the old center… some cute little streets, some old houses and green squares. It was nice, and what we really enjoyed was the sunny weather! The town itself didn’t wow us.

We also climbed up the old lighthouse, probably the no. 1 touristy thing to do. The views were not that amazing though, as the city is very green (which is nice), the vegetation covers the views of the old streets which you might otherwise have.

Next day, we took a bus further to Montevideo. Here, my main mission was to visit a big shopping center that has an H&M and buy as many of my missing clothes as possible! There were quite some nice shops actually, and the mission was successful. Now the main issue remains the stolen camping gear (sleeping bag, silk sleeping bag, sleeping mat, half of the tent, steripen) which seems impossible to find replacements for here… Oh well, we’ll have to see how we can deal with this!

On our 2nd day in Montevideo, we went out for some sightseeing, and more shopping. Montevideo doesn’t really have any famous sights, but it’s a cool, relaxed city. It’s also very green and I generally much preferred it over Buenos Aires.

Originally, our plan was then to travel to some Uruguayan beach towns – but we forgot about high season and once we checked, prices were too high for us. So we changed our itinerary and headed up to Salto, where we crossed the border into Argentina again – only for a night bus ride from Concordia to Posadas – from where we again crossed the border into Encarnación, Paraguay.