I even have a present for you, the long overdue post about Uruguay, one of the highlights of our trip so far!
Our first destination was Montevideo, a city I basically liked from the very beginning. Which is strange, because it’s not necessarily the prettiest of places. Let me rephrase that: it’s a city for the second look. There’s a lot of ugly architecture around, but also tons of nice old colonial buildings. Add to that tree-lined streets (occasionally even with cobblestones) and roughly 22km of coast and you have a pretty neat mix. On top of that Uruguayans are lovely people, very relaxed, friendly, talkative and with the highest mate consumption in the world. What’s not to like? We also had some great CouchSurfing hosts, so we met lots of people and had quite an active social life.
After a week though we decided to leave the city behind for a bit, and headed to the Atlantic coast, more specifically Punta del Diablo, a charming little town of about 700 inhabitants. At least during low season, because once high season hits the places grows to over 20000 people. While some may like that, I’m definitely not one of them and having kilometers of beautiful beaches to ourselves was a great experience. It’s hard to describe the beauty of this place in words (and I haven’t uploaded our pictures yet), but it was very hard to leave Punta del Diablo. If you ever get a chance to go there, do it, especially during mid to late November, when the weather is already good but the place is not overrun by tourists yet.
From the coast we headed back for another weekend in Montevideo, before setting off to picturesque Colonia de Sacramento, another place that was hard to leave. True, it can get quite full of tourists, but somehow the town absorbs them well. Also a lot of them just come on day trips from Buenos Aires, which means they leave again in the late afternoon and the old town full of cobblestones, cute little colonial houses and the friendliest street dogs in the world is all yours again.
Uruguay, a love affair. And I can’t even tell you exactly why. Is it because the whole country looks like Hobbit Land? Or because the people are amazingly friendly and welcoming? Or because of the very relaxed rhythm of life? Probably all of the above, and a bit more that’s hard to put into words. I know this mail is somewhat shorter than the others and lacks detailed descriptions, but somehow I find it hard to write about Uruguay. It’s not a flashy country full of things to do and places to visit, but it’s beautiful nonetheless and I had a wonderful time there. Whenever someone mentions it, something in me just wants to go back there right away…
Anyway, I hope all of you are doing well, I’ll try to be faster with the post about the month we just spent in Argentina!