12 Days in Uruguay

Saturday 27th of September -Friday 10th of October

Some things about Uruguay

Uruguay is a small country, boxed in between 2 big countries: Brazil and Argentina. It has only 3.5 million inhabitants.

There is no indigenous population.

Cost of living isn’t cheap but people are friendly and humble, and tend to help each other and make a plan.

It’s 1 of the 3 countries that know about barbecue (the other 2 are South Africa and Argentina (no offense readers!)). And they play rugby.

Punto del diablo

4 days

We were picked up at the bus station by the owner Jose in a dusty car that was falling apart (he didn’t buy a new one because cars and fuel are very expensive in Uruguay). We would be staying at an Air bnb called “5 brujas”, meaning “the five Witches”. The owners were a couple named Jose and Valeria and I immediately noticed they had two very sweet energetic dogs named Cookie (my favorite and my bff) and Lola (I think). Jose explained to us that Lola is 9 years old. She is sweet and relaxed, and the type of dog he’s always had as it is a typical Uruguayan race. Cookie is 2 years old and very different, from a very energetic race. Too much energy for Jose, he said 😜🥵.

We were staying in a little cabin. Jose had built everything, and there was interesting decoration. I had my own room, and mom and dad were upstairs in the attic bedroom. But the most important thing: it had a barbecue.

Once we were unpacked, we went off for a walk to the beach and the village.

Punta del Diabolo is a wild west style little town with sandy streets and little bars everywhere. Mom and Dad kept saying how it reminded them of the small coastal towns and villages in the Western Cape, with similar plants and little houses. Dad even looked it up and discovered that Punta de Diabolo is one degree further south than the lowest point of Africa.

As we walked we noticed that a lot of the shops and restaurants only opened during the holiday seasons and most of the houses looked empty.

Every house is different, except for the fact that they all have barbecues 😀. It also looked like the closer to the beach the bigger the house.

It was nice to have a break from big cities and crowded places. Like having a breath of fresh air.

The next day the owner gave us an electric Mopet to get around and me and dad went shopping on it! It was a lot of fun!

“Get your motor runnin’,

Head out on the dust track(highway)

Looking for adventure

In whatever comes our way” 🎶🎶

-Born to be wild, Steppenwolf

We had a barbecue as well (when dad booked the cabin he noticed the barbecue and he had been looking forward to for weeks to use it). We barbecued a long sausage and steak 🤤🤤.

The next morning we had another fire to warm up. We spent most of the days relaxing and walking around a bit, it was nice to have some peace and ‘quiet’.

On the day we left I woke up with a raw throat which probably came from the border bus with all the coughing and sneezing…😮‍💨🤧, but I was soon distracted with packing my bag and playing with Cookie. I would often play football with Cookie.

No one’s looking! We can Sneek in and ‘clean the dishes’🐶🐶

The owner also gave me one of their ‘5 Brujas’ cups, saying that I’m a little witch which is strange because mom is ‘Winnie the Witch‘.

Then we hopped on the bus to Montevideo. Guess who was the ticket seller?🐱🐾 Apart from that, nothing special happened except dad was hungry/bored as usual 🙄. And seeing that I now carry the food for the bus in my bag, it can be annoying 🙄.

Montevideo

1 week

The Uruguayan capital city was definitely different from the Brazilian cities. It’s very flat compared to the Brazilian skyline, but it has broad avenues, impressive buildings, pink jacarandas and palm trees.

Some of the palm trees look quite sad. We later found out it was due to a beetle infestation. The beetles eat the core of the palms.

Everyone uses the buses to get around here, including us😉.

We got in contact with Erika’s (our boat neighbour) cousin, Helga, who kindly offered to give us a walking tour of the Pocitos area. This was fun and yummy. She introduced us to mate and explained how this hot drink is best shared with friends. We had been seeing lots of mate cups and different packets and types of yerba mate on the markets. But in Uruguay we started to see almost every one carrying around their mate cup and thermos flask in bags but also in special wooden carry trays.

Helga also brought us bizcochos. These are pastries in different shapes. Some are sweet others are salty, but all the ones we tasted were great.

We started at the Batlle Park and the Centenario football stadium (100 years old, hosted the first soccer world cup). We walked along the Ramblas to the Lighthouse.

And from there we walked onwards and even managed to catch the sunset at the most Southern point of Uruguay. Helga is a famous painter and we were very happy to meet her.

When we got back no one felt like cooking so we got a big empanada each at Bar Rover. The next day the internet was down for the entire area so we went back to Bar Rover and had another empanada so we could connect to their internet. I did a little bit of school and mom spoke to a client.

Meanwhile my Brazilian bus bugs were multiplying. My raw throat had developed into a really bad snot nose, like every 5 minutes I blew out gallons of snot. Then I passed on the bugs to mom! And later to dad!!

On Saturday it was great weather and we walked around in the Ciudad Vieja, from the port to the port market and around all the streets.

We saw lots of nice art works and we also saw adorable homemade wool sheep, as well as huge churrascos.

There were lots of Musicians and street artists trying to get a couple of pesos.

We were lucky to be visiting during the Heritage Days. It was festive on the streets and a lot of museums and big buildings were open to the public. There was a long queue at the Palacio Judicial, so we did not even try to go.

I needed a break (I was getting woozy and tired) so we sat down at a street beer vendor thing, and I napped a little. When mom and dad finished their beers we continued onwards were we got to an antiques market and dad saw some old Uruguayan number plates (he’s been collecting them for the house’s kitchen) and when he found one he liked he bought it from the old lady.

We walked around a while but then I started getting tired again so we sat in a park close to Plaza Independencia and while dad was getting beer I slept in mom’s lap. I managed to get a good rest until I was woken up by 2 guys who decided they had to sit near us with their mate and loud music 😡.

Then we all needed to go to the bathroom, but there were only a few toilet stalls so we had to wait in line. Then we saw there was a show going on. A guy was dancing the tango with his lady puppet but it looked so realistic! It was really cool! But it looked almost like their relationship was more than a man and his puppet 😏 🥰.

Then we went across the street to this enormous building because I was wondering what it was. It turned out it was the Palacio Salvo, built in 1920 for 3 brothers, 105m tall, the tallest building in Montevideo.

Meanwhile the vibe was building. It looked like the streets in that area would get busy that night.

The next day I wasn’t feeling great at all and it was gray and a little rainy. When it stopped raining for a while we went to the market/ feria Tristan Narvaja, where we found the same old lady who sold us the number plate! There were lots of fresh produce stalls, books and random items. There were also 2 drummers, walking with the wrath of the Panamanian marching band, trying to make some money (and drumming my snot out of my head). I was tempted to give them some coins just to shut them down!

Along the way we noticed someone selling freshly squeezed orange juice for cheap. So dad got some for me, which helped me get rid of the horrid taste in my mouth. Then mom and dad wanted beer so we went to this old style pub with a whole bunch of junk piled around, it was really pretty. And then guess who we saw hanging around our window sharing a box of wine. Those d***ed drummers!!

After that we walked around a bit more. But it was obvious I wasn’t going to last long. So we went home.

On Monday it was freezing outside and the Air bnb owner offered to take us out for a drive, along the other side of the coast and some parts we hadn’t seen. He showed us a couple of things and gave us a history lecture 🙄.

On Tuesday I went on the bus with dad to do dinner and bus shopping while mom had appointments.

Colonia del Sacramento

2 days

On the bus me and mom had the unfortunate chance to sit in front of a seat area holding 3 kids who were messing around. They were uncomfortable with the 3 of them on 2 seats, so they were pushing and kicking and we felt most of it on our backs 😖😠, I wanted to murder them! In the end we moved forward one seat and then they spread out onto our seats as well and started kicking in mom’s back again. So mom asked the mother to move them back and we got 15 minutes of peace, until the owner of the seats we were sitting on boarded and we had to move back to hell.

When we arrived in Colonia we decided to rent a golf cart to see more of this little town. We basically had only one day to explore and a lot of the streets looked like cobble stone (difficult for mom’s foot). We dropped our bags at a candy store in the bus station and drove around in the golf cart for 2 hours.

Colonia de Sacramento is a Unesco Heritage site. It was founded by the Portuguese way back in the 17th century (1680) and changed hands a couple of times between the Spanish and Portuguese. This is Uruguay’s oldest city.

We saw a lot of the little town like an old fort, lighthouse, cathedral, governor’s house, we also saw lots of old brick buildings and small museums. It has very nice streets with big trees. I even saw oranges growing on the trees.

We also found Dr Seuss’s car casually parked in front of a house and we saw an old Train station long in disuse.

Afterwards we went to our little house. We soon discovered that the neighborhood had lots of dogs so a constant barking and one side of the house had a fake wall. I also discovered that in the neighbor’s yard lived a horse! The plus point was that there was a barbecue. The next day we didn’t do much but work and school and me and dad went hunting for wood for a barbecue that night. We ate steak strips 🤤🤤. After braaing we warmed our backs against the wall and our fronts were being roasted over the fire 🫠.

Arff woof woof Neeeeeiiiigghhh Snort. Anyways that’s it for Uruguay!

Ferry to Buenos Aires

The next day we got up early and packed the last things and took a taxi to the Ferry. At the ferry station we saw a huge sports kids team waiting for their ferry. There must have been more than 20 of them! And more kept arriving. Then we found out they were on the same ferry as us! Mom and dad connected their phones to the internet and at some point the internet slowed down considerably and when I looked across the room I saw everyone of those kids on the team was on their phones (probably playing video games). When we got our seats me and mom went looking for a place to go outside for pictures because our window was dirty. Along the way we walked through the shops and saw that it cost 8 dollars for a chocolate bar! And not even the fancy brands! I also noticed they were selling Legos on a ferry?! We saw all the kids from the team shopping for unhealthy snacks (spending all the parents money). They’re all going to be fatties by the time they reach their destination.

See you on the other side of the border!