First lady tours Uruguay UNESCO site

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - While President Bush did the talking, the first lady did the walking. Laura Bush played tourist Saturday on a foot tour of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the ruins of a 17th century Portuguese fort with a view of the broad River Plate and Argentina on the opposite bank.

As her husband met with Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez at a nearby countryside retreat, the first lady strolled in a violet-colored pantsuit down quaint cobblestone streets of the old town of Colonia de Sacramento.

Uruguay's first lady, Maria Auxiliadora Delgado, escorted her. They both smiled as tourists and residents applauded them. Three women and a young boy held up flags of the United States and Uruguay on the 40-minute walk.

"We admire the United States," said Graciela Muttes, an Uruguayan who proudly clutched an American flag, unlike demonstrators who burned such flags in protest against Bush's trip elsewhere. "Despite what you hear, we want to show that we are not all violent and don't go around with faces masked, throwing stones."

Muttes was alluding to anti-Bush protests in the capital, Montevideo, that were mostly peaceful but noisy Friday night. Some hooded demonstrators on the fringes of a 5,000-strong peaceful march shattered shop windows and burned tires in the capital, hours before Bush and the first lady arrived from Brazil, the first stop on Bush's five-nation tour.

A huddle of ochre-colored and stone-built buildings, the Colonia historical district set alongside the ruined ramparts here is a famous tourist draw, attracting daily busloads of tourists.

Laura Bush also visited a lighthouse and souvenir shop as a tour guide and translator accompanied her.

Founded by the Portuguese in 1680, Colonia was eventually lost to Spanish colonizers. So antiquated it seems time has stopped, the place was declared a UNESCO site 11 years ago.

After finishing the tour, the two first ladies returned to a presidential retreat house at nearby Anchorena Park, where their husbands, both tieless and casual, were wrapping up talks and planned an "asado" — a barbecue of roasted lamb from Uruguay's famous ranchlands.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070310/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_first_lady_s_walk [link]