Currently Uruguay possesses but a single WHS : at Colonia Del Sacramento on the banks of the River Plate. In summer 1999 we were journeying from Buenos Aires to Iguassu and didn’t want to miss such a close new (for us) country with another WHS so took an indirect route by hydrofoil across the Plate. The next day we continued by bus through the rolling pastures of Uruguay via Fray Bentos (not then even on Uruguay's T List) to cross back into Argentina at the Salto-Concordia frontier.

On arriving at Colonia the vast majority of hydrofoil passengers jumped onto waiting busses and continued to Montevideo. We found ourselves in a small town with plenty of hotels and restaurants and obviously heavily dependent on serving Porteno tourists - so many indeed that we had problems finding an unbooked room.

The town is pleasant enough with a number of cobbled streets bounded by low houses in colonial style together with a few ruins in the form of town walls/gates overlooking the River Plate (it is said that the lighthouse is the only “high building” -photo). The town is supposed to reflect in its layout and architecture its origins as the most southerly Portuguese colonial settlement but I can’t say that this aspect was particularly noticeable to us. It was originally founded in 1680 and changed hands a few times before its final incorporation into the Spanish empire in 1777.

It was a pleasant stop-over but whether the town really justifies inscription is another matter. I personally wasn’t aware of the extent to which the Portuguese attempted to activate the Treaty of Tordesillas and grasp land that far south. I guess to Uruguayans the place has a far greater importance than to us Anglo Saxons relatively ignorant of Latin American history! As the location where a part of the physical and cultural boundary between the 2 Iberian colonial powers was worked out I suppose it has a historical significance which should be recognised.