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South america. The final continent on this journey. We are now still in Uruguay, and tomorrow we´ll be flying back to
Argentina for a couple of days before we continue our journey to Peru. Uruguay was a very spur-of-the-moment idea,
it wasn´t originally our plan to come here. But since travelling around Argentina turned out to be a bit too overwhelming
with only two weeks to spare, and two weeks still beeing too much time to spend in Buenos Aires, we decided to fly to
Uruguay and spend a week here. Starting out in the capitol, Montevideo, a surpricingly well-developed city,
with equally surpricingly well-developed prices. Surrounded by beautiful architechtory, Montevideo is a city
combining old and modern. This is very well displayed on the main square "placa independencia", where old colonial-style buildings
stand side by side with huge 60´s communist style ghetto-buildings and ultra modern glass-facade office buildings.
The first night we spent in a lovely old building in a hostel-like place, where we got a worn-down tiny room with 4 single
beds and nothing more. Very spartanious and also a bit claustrophobic.
The next day after check-out, we took our backpacks and walked around the city in search of other accomodation.
We found a charming little hotel in the middle of city centre in the old city where we could get a large two-story room with a terrace
overlooking the pedestrian street for almost the same price as we´d paid for the s***ty dorm room the night before.
It made no sense. But the next two nights we stayed here, sightseeing in Montevideo, visiting a huge market just outside of
town where they sold everytning from puppies (heartbreaking) to old books, fruit, antiques and clothing. And a lot of
stuff that was in-style for about 20 years ago when I was a kid - like anyone remember those huge brick-sized nintendo games?
Or the neon orange Levis´ jeans that were a must-have for a (luckily) short period of time?
Well anyway, they literally had everything for sale at this market , there apparently was nothing too old or damaged
to be sold. So a couple of hours was easily spent strolling around the huge area, with endless blocks filled with booths
and blankets on the streets.
Afterwords we sat down for a drink at a very local tiny bar, just listening to the locals chatter and watching people
go by with the maté cups and thermocans (maté is a kind of tea that just about everyone here drinks and carries
around them everywhere they go. Without exhaturating - about every third person you walk by on the street is carrying a
maté cup).
On sunday we also visited the pier in the city. It was filled with local families out fishing. That day there was also a
cruise ship in town, so all the stores and cafés around the harbour that normally would´ve been closed, were open.
So we stralled around the harbour place alongside all the cruise-ship visitors.
Leon, who´s gotten the hang of shopping, knows that he can´t by all the stuff he wants in the stores, so he´s running around
asking all the stores : "do you have a homepage? " :-)
After three days in Montevideo, we decided it was time to move on and see more of the country.
We ended up renting a car again, since it´s the by far easiest and most time-efficient way of getting around in theese
countries and seeing as much as possible in the short time that we have. Unfortunately there is no railway system,
so the only way around is by bus or plane. Bus takes a long time and has to be scheduled, and travelling by plane is expencive,
plus you don´t get to see anything on the way to your destination.
We drove off to one of the few recommended places - Punta del Este. We´d heard that this was where the rich uruguayans, and
mainly Argentinos spent their holidays to enjoy the prettiest beaches in the country. Since it is summer holiday now,
we feared the worst. Unfortunately it was all we´d feared it would be - and more.
The place was packed with tourists, filled with resort after resort side by side on the huge beach boulevard.
There were all the usual rich tourist traps - the casinoes, the Louis Vuitton-stores,the timeshare appartments, the GAP for kids boutiques, jewelry,
flashy cafés with the fake-tan´s sitting out seeing and mainly wanting to be seen, and so on.
With everything ofcourse beeing highly overprized.
This was costa del sol, cannes, ibiza, you name it, all over again. It appeals to some - but I´m just appauled.
Well, now we were here, so we booked a room in one of the more reasonnably overprized hotels. We took a walk around town
and ended up at the beach, which truly was really nice and pretty, too bad the weather was bad. It was chilly and windy,
and the waves were high, so noone felt like having a swim.
So, we overnighted, and in the morning we checked out and drove away from this holiday-hell city, that we for sure
will not be visiting again. Now on the road, we were driving towards a town on the other side of Montevideo,
called Colonia del sacramento. We took the scenic road by the sea, and passed a lot of small towns, one of which we stopped for a picnic
by the beach at lunchtime. Not long after, it was late afternoon and we were still over 200 km from Colonia, when we passed
a sign advertising for a restaurant and rooms available at a farm. So we turned off the road and took the dirtroad to
this away-from-it-all farmhouse, where we asked if we could stay.
This was no problem, we were told, and we would also be the only guests. We were shown to a nice, big room, and after unpacking
the car, we were asked at what time we´d like our dinner. The cook would come and prepare our meal at the tiny
restaurant beside our room, and there were two dishes we could choose from - no more, no less. At six o´clock the cows
would be milked, so we were welcome to come and watch. On the farm there was also a bigger lunch restaurant open to the public
between 12 and 20, so there were some visitors besides us when we arrived. we walked around the very neat and well-kept
farm area. There were cows, small calves, horses, ducks, chicken, rabbits, sheep , turkeys and other animals, a huge
playground area, a pool with a great view over the uruguayan pampas and the grassing sheep, old tractors and horse-carriages
to play with, and so on. And it was peacful and quiet. Perfect to unwind, with no wi-fi, and nothing but grand views
over the green pampas. Just perfect. For the kids, this was paradise. They were feeding the calves, petting the sheep
and playing farmer on all the machinery. They watched the cows beeing driven in and getting milked, and they got to
bottle-feed the calves with milk.
We also got to encounter the hugest spider we´ve met so far, a tarantula in the wild. Apparantly this particular kind
isn´t poisenous. But frankly, I´d still panic a bit if finding this on my pillow - and I´m not afraid of spiders....
For dinner we were presented with a delicious three-course meal, with everything home-made, even the butter for the bread.
Fabulous home-cooked meal in a simply adorable athmosphere. After a good nights sleep, we awoke to another delicious meal,
and got to meet the owners of the farm. A sweet couple, both of them veterinarians. Turned out he had studied in London,
and she in...Copenhagen.....small,small world.
We decided that this was a place we´d like to come back to, so we planned to drive to Colonia, stay one night there, and then
drive back here for the last night before returning to Argentina. So we booked ahead to come back the day after.
After soaking in the stillness, and the kids having a short ride on the ponies, we drove off to Colonia.
Making a pit-stop for lunch at a small village, we arrived in Colonia at six o´clock. We´ve managed to adapt quickly to
the south american way of life. They don´t normally eat dinner before ten o´clock in the evening. This automatically means
going to bed late, waking up late, and sometimes even a siesta in the middle of the day :-).
Somehow this seems to come naturally to me :-)
Arriving in Colonia, we quickly booked in to a hotel just outside town, where the prices are usually a bit lower then in
the centre. Doesn´t really matter that it´s outside the city when we have a car. We then drove into town. a beautiful old city,
marble stoned streets, pretty portside, and grand old colonial buildings and churches compeeting with the ruins of the old
city forts and cosy cafés and small restaurants. Some of the city, a bit surpricingly, reminded me of Naantali - my birhtown in Finland.
Proves you don´t have to go far to find beauty and quality :-).
It didn´t take us more than a couple of hours to walk through the sights of Colonia.
There were also a lot of museums and churches we could have visited - but quite frankly - I think we´ve had our fair share of
museums and churches for a while. I think we´ve reached a point where we just like to wonder around,
smelling, listening, watching and sensing the people and surroundings.
Right now, to me, a church is a church, and a museum is a museum - they can be big, pretty, informative, grand and beautiful, but seeing too
many will make them all melt together anyway - at least to people like us who only have average knowledge of history.
Anyway - the day after - we left Colonia and drove the long way back to the ranch.
We were warmly welcomed, and the kids ran off immediatly to greet the new baby-calf that had been born the same morning.
Later one of the gaucho´s working on the farm, signaled for us to come along on a horse-ride.
So there we went - the four gringos horseback-riding on the Uruguayan pampas. Not an everyday experience - and despite Patrick´s
aching buttocks afterwords - a definetly memorable ride :-).
This was our Uruguayan adventure - I´m glad we managed to squeeze it in.
Now it´s back to the steaks and redwine in Argentina.
No doubt, south america will be a grand and different experience. It´s also turning out to be quite overwhelming, with so much
variaty even within the borders of the different countries, we can see we´ll only be able to take a small peak at what
lies within. The downside of south america, is the crime rate. It´s far from the buddhist ways of most of Asia,
where you, with the use of common sence ofcourse, feel completly safe everywhere, and would trust most people even with your
belongings.And where it is possible to leave a fancy camera at a busy restaurant, come back half an hour later only to find it still lying on the table.
Or to forget your wallet in a cab, and having the cab driver search for you, finding you the next day and returning the wallet with everything still in it.
this is not likely to happen in south america.
Here, you´re on guard all the time. I wear my small backpack on the frontside when walking on the streets, and guard my belongings like a hawk.
You don´t leave anything in the car when you park it,the locals even advice you to remove the front of the car radio.
And you check which neighbourhoods are ok, and which are a no-go before you enter. You also check the restaurant bills,
cause´ they´ll cheat you in a blink of an eye, and the taximeters are often "adjusted" by the driver, so they´ll run faster
then normally.
With all this said - it might sound like a horrible place with criminals luring on every streetcorner. It´s not quite as
bad as it might sound. But you do have to be cautious of your belongings. Violence - especially towards tourists - is very low -
but petty-theft and robberies are unfortunatly very common.
People are generally speaking not very friendly. They aren´t very smiling or helpful, especially when comparing to
asians or people from the pacific islands - completely different mentality. It´ll be exciting to see if this will be
different in places like equador, peru and chile. I kind of hope so.
But still, Uruguay has been so much more, it´s been a grand experience, beautiful nature, architecture and culture.
I´m glad though, that Patrick speaks spanish , cause´most places here, you can forget all about your english grammar,
they won´t understand you anyway.
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