Colon Argentina

We took a long bus ride west from Montevideo across inland farm country to the Uruguay/Argentina border, and crossed the Uruguay river via taxi to the spa town of Colon.  Colon reminded me a bit of Florence, Oregon maybe 50 years ago...the main industry is summer vacationers from Argentina and Uruguay, who come for the miles of river swimming, fishing, the thermal hot springs in town, and the near by Parque El Palmar.  We went to the park mainly for bird watching....

But the big surprize were the carapinchos (or capybarras) we got to see...the largest member of the rodent species, in the guinea pig family....

and they were BIG! they can weigh up to 150 pounds....shy, slow moving guys....

We hiked along the river in the park, through willow and swampy areas, feeling like we were explorers in the jungle, when we came around a corner and found a photo shoot going on.......

We stayed for 4 days in Colon at the old original hotel of this city, Hosteria del Puerto and had a grand time.  We had a newly painted room full of antique furniture, with private bath, private balcony, big breakfast, all for 38 bucks a night (off season rate- everything goes way up in Dec/Jan/Feb).  The public hot springs pools (13 of them with different temps in each) were just down the road one direction, and the other direction led to the town plaza with lots of restaurants.....  Colon is only a three hour bus ride from Buenos Aires, and I plan to come back.

Paula wanted to take a boat ride to explore some of the islands in the middle of the Uruguay river, and we found a guy willing to take us for 2 dollars.....we thought that sounded awfully cheap for a nature tour...turned out he just took us to the biggest island and dumped us off- told us to wave this flag when we were ready to be picked up.....so we made our own tour on a trail through the jungle..

Your food shot for this week is from an outdoor lunch we had on the plaza in Colon........