Montevideo food

We thought this hearty lentil casserole worth a mention. Full of veg and the odd bit of stringy beef, it was very tasty indeed and for Simon, was accompanied by a local black beer. The lentil casserole was a regular feature on many cafe/bar menus and in what is a relatively expensive city, it was a filling bargain at around £2.There are some good coffee/cake afternoon deals to be enjoyed in Montevideo. The slice of carrot cake in the foreground and the sponge cupcake with melted chocolate behind in this photo went down very nicely.

Montevideo

Artigas on his horse. The key figure of Uruguayan independence

We were back down to Uruguay for our last stop in South America, from where we caught our flight to Guatemala. A month ago was unseasonably sunny and warm in Uruguay, but this time around the winter chill had arrived and jackets, jumpers and a bobble hat were suitable attire of an evening. Just a jumper was not sufficient as it turned pretty nippy at dusk. In the main square, with one of the city's iconic buildings behind.

Montevideo reminded us of Spanish cities - the architecture, apartment living, plazas and there is a general European look to the place and many of the people. A notable difference however, is the regular sight of a rickety wooden horse-drawn cart loaded high with cardboard collected by people out of rubbish left out for collection. Here, like most of Latin America, there is a rich/poor divide and many people scratch together an existence.

We stayed in the historic part of the city, and near to the port. Montevideo is right at the mouth of a huge river estuary into the Atlantic. Out of the main centre, it has miles of beaches lined with desirable apartment blocks.

The historic centre was perfect to wander around, with several pedestrianised streets lined with some charming old shops with lovely facades, including traditional tailor shops, restaurants and the bookshop below.

We made no great efforts to see the sights, instead choosing a five mile wander along the waterfront through several parks and back through the town.

Uruguay has some lovely tiles dotted about on buildings and these in a park. They are mostly good quality French tiles imported when Montevideo was vying with Buenos Aires to be the fanciest city in South America.

A mighty fine tree we wandered past on a typical residential avenue in central Montevideo.

Montevideo doesn't capture all that is exciting about South America, but it was definitely a relaxing place to spend a day and a half before our flight.

The Uruguay-Brazil border avenue

This is the main avenue running through the small town of Chuy. The road separates Uruguay from Brazil. On the righthand side of the avenue, is Uruguay and everything is written in Spanish; on the left is Brazil and everything is written in Portuguese. We just got our passports stamped a couple of miles from the town on either side of the border. It was a very relaxed border crossing. We changed our money at the official rate with a nice man selling CDs on the street. 

Mate tea and thermos flasks

This is a common image in Argentina, Uruguay and the south of Brazil.  Nursing a thermos flask of hot water and sucking on a metal straw from a decorative cup full of herbs, adults of all ages are seen out and about. They are drinking mate tea. This is very much a do-it-yourself to your liking drink and you can't order it in cafes but there is a vast range of herb blends available in shops. It's amazing people don't need to wee all the time because they never stop drinking it - at bus stops, on the bus, wandering the streets etc.

Our only night in a dorm

Many people travel for months on end sleeping in dorm rooms in bunk beds with lots of other people every night. We can't imagine it - we would have probably been home within a few weeks had we had to stay in dorms. We have heard horror stories as follows: someone waking up in the middle of the night to find a stranger massaging them; a stolen camera; a stolen guidebook; bad wind; being awoken at 5am by spoilt British 18-year olds drinking and snorting drugs; people bringing back their conquests of the evening for further exploration. The list goes on. Everyone seems pretty cheerful about the state of affairs and presumably if you're travelling by yourself then there's also the appeal of meeting people easily.

We spent our first night in this dorm because we had spent 3 nights in a double room at the hostel and got a night in the dorm for free. It was hardly tough as we were the only people in there. Evenso, the room was dark and cramped and would have been hideous had it been full. We don't plan to repeat the experience. Maybe it's our age! Are we getting old?!

Simon's car blog

Approaching the back of this car as we walked through the streets of Colonia, I was absolutely stumped as to what it could be. Only when I walked round to the front did I make the amazing discovery that it was a Renault 4. A Renault 4 pick-up!It had no Renault badge, so I'm not sure if it's official, or a home-made effort, but either way, I found it rather charming.

Beaches glorious beaches

From Uruguay's capital, Montevideo, up to the Brazilian border, stretch miles and miles of gorgeous beaches. We had heard about this before we set off on our trip and so we were really looking forward to spending some time here.

High season is January and February, by May it should be chilly and wintry but this year it's still very dry and hot - not good for farmers but it worked out well us, as it's now out of season, so we had beautiful beaches virtually to ourselves in the sun. Punta del Diablo

We spent 5 nights relaxing by sandy beaches and splashing in the sea - 4 nights in a place called Punta del Diablo, which apparently has a fair population of surfers and travellers in January and February, and another night with a lovely, slightly drippy hippyish couple (very friendly but the 'spiritual' music we had to listen to nearly made us poorly) in a village called Valizas. Luciana and baby Safiro outside their very relaxing B&B home.

From Valizas we crossed a small estuary in a rowing boat and spent a lovely day walking along several miles of sand dunes and beaches with nobody else in sight.  We reached a tiny fishing village, Cabo Polonio, which is a popular hippy hangout in the summer but now is mainly shut up for winter. Fishing boats in Cabo Polonio

To get back to the main road from here we took a bumpy ride on top of an offroad truck across more beaches and sand dunes. We somehow missed our bus connection at the main road (the only one of the day) but it all worked out well when a kind man and his son gave us a lift in their van to the nearest town.  

The peninsular is called 'Devil's Point', probably due to how treacherous the sea is around here for ships. There are many shipwrecks, and the last notable boat to sink went down in the 1970s.

The beaches of Uruguay were exactly what we had hoped for: beautiful, relaxing, sunny, unspoilt and with endless stretches of golden sand all to ourselves.

Across the river to Uruguay

Our ferry in the port at Colonia.
We had to get up early for the first time in Buenos Aires the day we left to catch the ferry across the vast Rio Plata. We slept soundly for the 3 hours the ferry took to chug across the estuary and awoke to a much less hectic and populated place - Colonia de Sacramento.
View from the lighthouse.
This lovely old colonial town with fortress walls along the riverbanks was a relaxing place to spend a day and night. We wandered along its cobbled streets, climbed up its lighthouse and watched the sunset over a jetty. All very pleasant!
A vintage roofless car with a plant growing from withinA typical street in Colonia

We don´t know who he is but the bird is enjoying the perch.

Squinting in the sun at the top of the lighthouse.

Colonia is the oldest city in Uruguay and is located in an important strategic location at the mouth of the Rio Plata. Its fortress walls are testimony to its history of attempting to defend itself against invasion. Colonia moved between Portuguese and Spanish hands nine times over the 17th to 19th centuries, then it spent a few years under Brazilian rule before finally being declared a part of Uruguay in 1828.