Colónia del Sacramento → Buenos Aires (Recoleta - 1)

Colónia del Sacramento → Buenos Aires (Recoleta - 1)

Date: Tuesday, March 2, 2027 · Distance: ~43 mi · Driving time: ~0m (excluding stops) · Open in Google Maps

Road surfaces
Water · 32 mi · 74%
Hiking · 6 mi · 14%
Asphalt · 5 mi · 11%

The crossing from Uruguay to Argentina takes just over an hour, but the distance between the two countries feels both shorter and greater than that. Colónia del Sacramento sends you off from a peninsula of colonial cobblestones; Buenos Aires receives you into a metropolis of nine million people and a century's worth of grief, grandeur, and literary ambition. The day is organized around walking — through a city of the dead, past a flower made of steel, through a garden that doubles as a fragment of the Belle Époque, and into a neighborhood that renamed itself after a writer.

The Crossing

The day begins with an early departure from Colónia del Sacramento, winding through the old town toward the Terminal Fluviomarítima Colonia on the waterfront — arriving by 8:30 am to check in for the 10:00 am sailing. Customs clearance happens at this end of the crossing — you exit Uruguay and enter Argentina simultaneously, collecting two passport stamps for a single ferry ride. The Colonia Express service crosses the Río de la Plata in approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, a broad brown estuary so wide that the far shore remains invisible until the skyscrapers of Buenos Aires finally rise out of the haze.

The ferry arrives at the Colonia Express terminal in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires, around 11:15 am. The terminal sits along the Dársena Norte, a short walk from the grid of Microcentro. From here the route heads northwest, skirting the edge of the port before turning inland through Retiro and up toward Recoleta along Avenida Entre Ríos and Avenida Santa Fe. The car goes to the accommodation and stays there — the rest of the day is on foot.

Recoleta

The neighborhood is the closest Buenos Aires gets to the idea of Paris that preoccupied the city's aristocracy at the turn of the 20th century — broad tree-lined avenues, ornate residential buildings, European-inflected café culture, and the studied air of inherited wealth. It is also home to one of the strangest and most compelling attractions in South America.

The Cementerio de la Recoleta is a ten-minute walk from the accommodation. What began in 1822 as the converted garden of a Recollect convent — its layout designed by the same French engineer, Próspero Catelin, who drafted the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral — has become over two centuries a compressed city of the dead covering five and a half hectares. Nearly 4,700 above-ground mausoleums line narrow alleys in styles ranging from Greek Revival and Baroque to Art Nouveau and Neo-Gothic, their marble and bronze imported from Paris and Milan at the height of Argentine prosperity. Over 90 have been declared National Historical Monuments. The effect is something between a museum, an outdoor gallery, and a neighborhood where the residents have simply been very quiet for a very long time.

The most visited tomb is the one most easily overlooked: a modest black granite mausoleum marked "Familia Duarte" in Section 12, roughly 150 metres from the main entrance. This is where Eva Perón finally rests, after one of the more extraordinary posthumous trajectories in modern history. She died of cancer in 1952 at 33, was embalmed and displayed in her former office, disappeared for sixteen years after a military coup, resurfaced in Spain at Juan Perón's dining table, and was returned to Argentina in 1974. Fresh flowers appear at the vault almost daily. The cemetery is free to enter; maps are available at the entrance, which is necessary given the labyrinthine layout.

From the cemetery, a short walk toward the river brings you to the Floralis Genérica, a 20-meter aluminum and stainless steel flower standing in the Plaza de las Naciones Unidas at the edge of Recoleta. Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano designed it and donated it to the city in 2002 — the first public sculpture in Buenos Aires controlled by hydraulics and photoelectric sensors. Its six petals open each morning at 8:00 am and close at midnight, closing earlier in winter or in high winds; on four national holidays each year they remain open all night. Catalano described it as "a synthesis of all the flowers and a hope reborn every day." It is best seen from the surrounding lawn, where the water reflection doubles the structure.

Palermo

From the Floralis Genérica, the route heads west toward Palermo — a good stretch of walking through Recoleta's residential streets with plenty of cafés and restaurants along the way for lunch. The day continues into Palermo at the Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays. The botanical garden was the life's project of a French-Argentine landscape architect who came to Buenos Aires in 1889 and proceeded to reshape the city's green spaces over the following quarter century. Thays proposed the garden in 1892 on land that had served as both a colonial gunpowder depot and, later, the headquarters of the National Agriculture Department; the seven-hectare site was inaugurated in 1898 and named officially in his honor in 1937, and declared a National Historic Monument in 1996. Today it holds some 6,000 tree and plant species organized by region — Roman, French, and Oriental sections each carry a different visual logic — along with more than 30 sculptures and five greenhouses, including a cast-iron Art Nouveau structure that won an award at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition. Thays also lived on the grounds during his tenure as director of the city's parks and walks; his English-style brick mansion near the main entrance now serves as the visitor center.

From the botanical garden, the afternoon opens into the streets of Palermo Viejo. The neighborhood rewards wandering: low houses converted into boutiques and cafés, murals in the side streets, the occasional old parrilla or social club holding its ground amid the gentrification. The destination is the Plazoleta Julio Cortázar — officially named for the Argentine writer who set several of his short stories in this neighborhood, including "Simulacros," and who lived here for years. The renaming came in 1994, though virtually everyone still calls it by its old name, Plaza Serrano. It sits at the intersection of calles Honduras and Serrano (now also mapped as Borges), and is the de facto center of Palermo Soho: a circular plaza ringed with brightly painted cafés and boutiques. On weekends an artisan fair runs from mid-morning into the afternoon. It is as good a place as any to sit, drink coffee, and let the pace of the city come to you before dinner.

Dinner and Arrival: Recoleta

Palermo is one of the better places to eat in Buenos Aires — the density of restaurants along and around calles Honduras, Costa Rica, and Thames means there is no shortage of options within a short walk of the plaza, from traditional parrillas to more contemporary porteño cooking. After dinner, the walk back east to Recoleta is manageable, or an Uber if the day has caught up with you.