Uruguay – home away from home

It´s late. I appologise. Slow internet and trekking are to blame. To make up for it there are 2 – 3 blog updates. Not sure if that´s a blessing. Happy reading and start of term!

23rd March to 29th March 2014. Cabo Polonio, Montevideo and Colonia del Sacremento, Uruguay.

Uruguay fast facts:

Population: 3.3 million, around 1.5 million live in Montevideo.

Geography: At 176,000 km squared it is the second smallest country in South America, after Suriname, and is two-thirds the size of New Zealand. It borders Brazil to the north-east and Argentina to the west. To the east and south is the Atlantic and the vast Rio de la Plata, a wide delta originating from the Paraná river. If New Zealand was to have a South American equivalent, Uruguay would be my pick. It has a very similar population, climate and geography to the North Island (excluding our volcanoes). The countryside has fields of cows – Uruguay boasts the world’s highest cow to people ratio – and the windy coast has pleasant beaches and rough headlands colonised by sea lions.

We arrived in Chuy, Uruguay at 4 am in the morning after a night bus from Porto Alegre, Brazil. Our target was Cabo Polonio, a tiny beach town to the south. We waited in the cold in Chuy for things to open. While we were there we watched the sunrise with Chui, Brazil on the left and Chuy, Uruguay on the right on a street that nearly runs east-west on nearly the autumn equinox…

We finally made it to Cabo Polonio by the afternoon after three more buses and a gnarly 4×4 ride; you have only three options to reach the village over 7 km of sand dunes; walk, horse, or this 4×4!

Cabo Polonio has 60 permanent residents, but it can swell to 2000 people there during summer days (mostly day trippers). Late March was a perfect time for us to visit, the Atlantic was just warm enough to swim and there weren’t many people around. In fact, we were the only three people in our hostel for three nights. There isn’t much to do in “Cabo”; we unwound with reading, walking, and we even had time to go running for the first time since we left New Zealand! With no electricity (our hostel had a few solar panels for some evening lights, and a small 1 kW diesel generator for pumping water out of the bore), and with views like this, televisions are useful only as decorations.

The lighthouse is the landmark of Cabo Polonio (see it on the left). The coast is famous for shipwrecks, so it is still in use today. 

Actually, who needs streetlights when you don’t have streets!

Cabo has two beaches separated by a rocky headland with the lighthouse. Around this rocky headland we saw many sea lions (in spanish they are called lobos marinos – “sea wolves”). We watched a few sunsets over Playa Sur, during which we saw surfers and a pod of fun loving dolphins – it was pretty magical.

 

We bused to Montevideo and spent two nights exploring the city. The best area for tourists to visit is Ciudad Vieja (Old Town). Most buildings are stone and are very ornate, including Palacio Salvo, below. Palacio Salvo was finished in 1928 and at 100m it was the tallest building in South America for a time. Its architect, Mario Palanti, also designed its sister building Palacio Barolo in Buenos Aires and both are based on the book Divine Comedy by Dante.

We enjoyed a typical Uruguayan meal at an indoor market near the port – massive pieces of barbecued meat.

The last place we visited in Uruguay was the pleasant old town of Colonia del Sacremento for one night (population 27,000; the next biggest “city” in Uruguay after Montevideo has only 100,000 people). This was the first place in Uruguay to be formerly settled in around 1680 (there were only a few scattered indigenous people in the country beforehand) and many old stone buildings remain.

And one cannot talk about Uruguay without mentioning Artigas. He is one of their national heroes and many of the main streets and plazas bear his name – not to mention a statue of him every few hundred meters! He led a successful revolution against Spanish forces in 1811 in the Battle of Las Piedras which ultimately led to Uruguay’s independence.

That’s it from our week in Uruguay (we’ll have to return some day!). Next up we are taking a small boat trip back into Argentina to visit Buenos Aires.

Here’s a sunset from Cabo Polonio, Chao!