Hello everyone!
This is one of the recaps of a trip that Local Guides and Crowdsourcers of Buenos Aires quickly booked after Ger( @Mc_Germi ) invited us with news about promotional tickets 
. It then expanded to what it was: aninternational South American meet-up in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay 
.
It was7am when we who joined from Buenos Aires got to the ferry station to cross the RĂo de la Plata River to Colonia. Or most of us got there by around that time, expect for a team of three who had stayed up late partying or in bars the previous night, later would we find out many of us hadnât gotten the right amount of sleep and what itâs consequences can be, but I think it is a good representation of the South-American/Latino culture.
It was an hour-long trip starting at 8:30am, in which we quickly went to get seats all across the boat, and just as quickly left them to roam the Free Shop inside. We had said to meet at its entrance at 9am but were too excited and went in early.
In between, we drank some mates to wake up 
Find out what mate is in my post Mate: All about it
The trip ended quickly that way, and the Argentines 
taking the ferry [Adro ( @AdroGran ), Cami ( @CamilaPardo ), Ceci (@Cecilita), Cris ( @TheCrisSandoval ), Maxi ( @Maximilianozalazar ), Ger, Gus( @GA_1 ), Fran ( @TheFranco ), Mati ( @matigfv ), Pablo ( @pablosamela ) and me] landed and met with Teffi (@TeffiG) from Uruguay .
Clovis ( @CSouza ) from Brazil should have been there too, but unfortunately he got injured very close to the date. We hope to be able to meet him in person soon!
As soon as we got together, besides taking selfies, we started handing outnew pins of Argentina Local Guides, Team Mate, and Google Crowdsource Argentina for everyone, as well as stickers of all of them plus a special one of the meet-up, to put in our clothes that day.With pins and sticker on, no one had a chance to get lost 
- or if they did, it was easy to tell people what they were wearing.
â 
Now we were ready, and went to get ashort Walking Tour of a part of the city that started at 10:30am.
We went through the old Colonia Railway Station and took many group selfies with the sign, at the same time!! I donât think there is a photo with all of us looking at the same camera, but it was very fun.
We walked near the historic waterfront that includes cannons, and went through the famous Field Gate.
Now this is where things got interesting⊠Or different for some of us. Well, we all know people like us can take a long time to take photos, and especially in meet-ups like this one where we are also taking lots of photos of ourselves. So naturally, we lost the Tour Guide 
I donât even know where honestly, I was too distracted taking photos and it seems like that happened to most of the group too.
Once we realized we accepted our fate, and the way we dealt with it was just taking more photos. Like in the special little streets of Colonia we passed, like âLa**calle de los suspiros**â (The street of the moans), and hopefully someone elseâs recap will explain the two versions of why it has that name, but if they donât, feel free to ask me in the comments!
We also were a bit adventurous and left the road to get photos closer to the river, and even met some cute dogs.
Then, we received a text from the people who, miraculously, hadnât lost the guide 
They were at the church they said. âWhat church???â- we said. We continued walking until we saw an old city map painted on a wall, and we dove to it to find out where the church was. Apparently we were so out of it we forgot about the existence of Google Maps and just looked at the map that depicted the city in 1762.
We didnât find it in the old map, so we resorted to the new one and finally opened the app and looked for churches, and went to it whenwe found one close. We didnât find them inside though, and we ended up distracting ourselves with the beautiful surroundings and took more photos: Adro demanded a photo with a car. This time, we really did a professional session, with sustainable props! A couple of us, I believe Cris and Ger, started throwing fallen leaves to the air while I took photos. We took turns and nearly all left with their own postcard from Colonia.
As we did that, we had managed to reunite with the missing people, who also could get their own car photos, and it was 12:30pm, so lunch-time already! We did spend a lot of time in those photos with the car.
As a good Local Guide, Pablo had already searched for some places we could go so we followed him, as we looked at more options and stores in the street.
Yes, we got distracted again. This time, we entered a supermarket! The thing is that many of us also had a big mission that day: buy some products that we donât have in Argentina.
We were all interested in different souvenirs and things we wanted to get, but there were a group of us with a VERY important common objective:CruapĂĄn. What is it? A fusion of sandwich and croissant bread: DELICIOUS! Itâs all over social media right now and Argentines canât wait until it gets to our country. Unfortunately, this store didnât have it, but we did spend some time there and got other products.
And because we took some time, some people went ahead and got us a big table at the restaurant, not before joking that we should get there quickly because the kitchen was closing 
(it worked).
We got there, and all was good! The restaurant of the**Cosmopolitan Union Center** had diverse food, and even were able to get me a vegetarian pasta with filetto sauce that wasnât on the menu. Check my review by clicking here.
From the restaurant, we went to** Plaza de Toros** by bus, and it was a mix of people sleeping, and people wanting to play music and debating if it was right or not, and people drinking mateđ§ to avoid falling asleep (like me)
Playing Argentine music, we went to getguided tours of the renovated bullring, which is now a museum and itâs turning into a place for recitals or small but important events. I like that they had some accessible features like an elevator and accessible restrooms, but Iâm not sure how the accessible seats are, if they have those.
After taking some more group shots, we had a big choice to make:
- Take the bus back and visit museums near the historical city, which made sense in our tired state
- Walk to the Colonia sign near the riverside, and keep walking from there to the ferry station as it was getting late (it would take about 1 hour and 30 minutes total)
We seemed to really want the photo with the Colonia sign, as we chose the second option. We got there in 10 minutes, did our thing, and then continued the long walk.
We distracted ourselves once more once we saw a beautiful beach opening, and took some photos of us with special décor:
This is when we realized we were a bit behind our time schedule, in which we planned to be in the station at 7pm and it was almost 6pm already with most of the walk to do. The group divided itself in three based in how fast we walked:
- the always superfast and determined Gus
- the ones conscious of our lateness who really wanted to get CruapĂĄn, and for that they had to be faster and deviate to the big supermarket in the shopping center: Cami, Fran, Mati, Teffi and me.
- the ones that took their time to take photos/go to the restroom near the beach and/or didnât care that much for the CruapĂĄn (how??): Adro, Ceci, Ger, Maxi, Pablo
This is how the walk went for Team CruapĂĄn, guided by Teffi with Maps in hand of course.
It seemed like an endless horizon, but once we had the CruapĂĄn in mind, we unconsciously started to walk faster, with more motivation. After a few minutes someone pointed it out, and then whenever we started feeling tired and asking as frequently as Shrekâs donkey "Are we there yet?" one of us would say: âThink of the CruapĂĄnâ or âThink of the CruapĂĄn with melted cheese, with dulce de lecheâ, and even with all the walking uphill in the middle, we made it!!
We arrived at the shopping center, ran straight to the supermarket, and with Cami in front of us, who walked with the confidence of a person who shops there every week (Iâm thinking she studied the photos in Maps beforehand), and headed straight to the bread section: we knew when we heard an âItâs here!!â
We took all the stock they had on the shelf, and took yet more photos of us in this very happy moment.
It was a challenging road to get there, but even if we walked more kilometers than the rest of the group in our already tired state, we all left satisfied and happy that we literally âran the extra mileâ.
And that was it! We said goodbye, or rather a hopeful âsee you soonâ to Teffi, and got to the waiting area for the ferry to go back to Buenos Aires, and desperately went to get seats and tell the others that we accomplished our mission.
That was it for our time in the city of Colonia, but not for us, as we talked and played Uno as we waited to board, took more photos of course, and then finally many were able to take an hour long nap on the ride back.
In summary, for me it was a very nice day, very tiring or most of us needed to get more sleep, but an amazing day to share with these Local Guides and Crowdsourcers.
I look forward to more meetups as big as this one, which is already in the works 
, and meeting more contributors from other places as well!
You can check out the****photo album clicking here. Here are more fun photos, like of the little naps we had.
And if you want to read this from more perspectives and find out more things that happened,make sure to read other recaps from attendees! We all put #Sudamerica2023 in the title, so you can search for them in Connect that way, but you can also click here to get there quickly.
Thank you for reading! Let me know if you have any questions, and if you want to see even more, look out for content on my Instagram/TikTok, by the time you have read this I might have already posted more photos and a video compilation.
ya hago los pines eh! jajaja
Hay que pensarlos.
AhĂ con todos los pins obvio, ademĂĄs de todo el naranja posible