For the permatourist, Argentina is a rather easy place to live. While you're not supposed to work, your only real requirement is that you step outside Argentina every 3 months with no limit to how long you can do this.

The popular choice for a border run is Colonia del Sacramento because it's an hour ferry ride across the Rio de la Plata.  There are three ferry lines that make this trip. Buquebus is the largest, most expensive and has the nicest most modern boats.   The alternatives are Colonia Express and Seacat, which are both much cheaper (50%+ in most cases) using renovated boats.  If you are making this trip, I put some additional information at the bottom of this post.


Colonia is a historic Portuguese City dating back to 1680.  Its a quaint town where you can walk up the 112 steps to the top of the lighthouse, walk down the docks or head to the beach.  The beaches are sandy but because it is technically on a freshwater river (30 miles wide), its hard to find a section deeper then 4 feet without walking really far out.



For lunch, we skipped all the usual restaurants and found a really busy street vendor at Lavalleja and Rivadavia.  I had a traditional Uruguayan sandwich called a chivito.  It's a flank steak sandwich with ham, fried egg, bacon and mozzarella (plus too many condiments to list). Elizabeth had a hot dog wrapped in bacon covered in mozzarella.  Both were delicious.



IN CASE YOU ARE USING SEACAT OR COLONIA EXPRESS
Here is some additional information about the SeaCat and Colonia Express terminals.  Since these two alternatives are fairly new there isn't a lot of online information about them and their own websites don't do a good job either. Both allow tickets to be purchased online and use the exact same terminal on the Uruguayan side.  You only difference will be your boat and which terminal you will use on the Argetinian side. 

-SeaCat is actually owned by Buquebus and uses the main Buquebus terminal (yes the really nice one).  Strangely while in the Buquebus terminal we never once saw the word SeaCat on anything (I assume they don't want others to know of a low cost carrier in the same terminal).  In fact, our 1st leg from BA to Colonia was on a Buquebus boat, which caused a ton confusion for people like us lining up to board a "competitor's" boat. Our return leg was one the smaller SeaCat boats.

-Colonia Express leaves from their own terminal in La Boca at the South Dock (south of Puerta Madero).  They have a map on their website showing the location.  Since it is in La Boca, you will need to take a bus or taxi directly to it.  This post says the 130 is the bus you will want.