South America - Week 5

Don’t follow the lonely planet recommendations. That would be our recommendation for Uruguay. The journey between Tacuarembo and the coast was described as the best “off the beaten paths” journey so, although not the quickest way to get to where we wanted, it was the most direct way on the map so we decided to try it. From Salto, we found out on Sunday evening that there were only 3 buses per week to get to Tacuarembo. Luckily one was on Monday but unfortunately it was at 5 in the morning! So we arrived in Tacuarembo at about 9am, under 40 degrees heat with nothing to do but to wait for the next bus to Melo that was not leaving before 5.30pm. We spent the day walking around, watching the locals with their berets, leather belts, boots and horses. The town wasn’t pretty but there were some genuinely interesting characters to watch.

Locals in Tacuarembo:

We finally made it to Melo – another uninteresting town - at 9.30pm. For those of you who are lucky enough to have been to Mulhouse in France, well... most of these towns so far in Uruguay reminded me of it. Not really pretty, not much to do, but still not too unpleasant with their provincial atmosphere where time seems to have stopped many years ago. On the next day we took 3 more buses to Treinta-y-Tres, Chuy and eventually Punta del Diablo (total time 9 hours with connections). On that day, the weather took a bad turn and went from 40 degrees and sunny to heavy rain and 10 degrees! With this rain, we couldn’t see anything from the scenic bus journey described in the lonely planet.

Punta del Diablo:

So to summarise, we spent about 4 days travelling from Paraguay to the coast in Uruguay to end up not seeing much and being in a ghost town with bad weather where it seemed that there were more dogs than inhabitants. That being said, Punta Del Diablo was a nice place to relax for 2 nights despite the cold and the wind. In a few words, it is some kind of fishing-surfing village with beautiful beaches, small wooden cabins and dogs everywhere... Had it been sunny and warm, it would have been the perfect place to relax for a few days as we had planned but we decided to go to another fishing village, Cabo Polonio, further down the coast and speed up a bit towards Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital.

Punta del Diablo:

Cabo Polonio lies inside a national park where there was neither electricity nor running water and cars. There were only fishing cabins and very few people live there permanently. It was quite picturesque and – still without any signs of warmer weather –the main draw to this village was the sea lion / seals colony near the lighthouse.

Seals:

We stayed in a tiny 4-bed dorm with an English guy and a Belgian girl we had met a couple of hours before getting on the bus from Punta del Diablo. We stayed at Cabo Polonio hostel and we’d like to say to everyone reading this blog not to go there. The accommodation was basic, like anywhere else anyway in this village – so that is not the point - but the owner was dishonest and totally fake (an Argentinean who speaks French by the way).

Hostel:

We left the village with a bitter taste in our mouth after paying these extra 3 pounds (!) on the room rate and got on a bus to Montevideo with high expectations for the Friday and Saturday nights in this bigger city. Let’s say it now, Montevideo could be worse to the smaller towns we’ve been to earlier in Uruguay because it has all the inconvenience of big cities (street crime, poverty, dirtiness ...) and none of its advantages in terms of things to see and places to go out. The old town is okay with some remains of colonial occupation from the Spanish. We went for a run along the coast and it seemed that the suburbs 4-5 km away from the centre by the beach were a bit less run down and attracted quite a bit of crowd on Saturday evening. We are glad to be leaving tomorrow if we can, as we have spent most of our Saturday trying to find an ATM that works (and still haven’t) so we might be stuck here with 10US dollars until we manage to get some money out!!

Montevideo:

Hasta la vista...

Uruguay highlights:
Chivitos al Plato: 5000 calories on a plate that consists of a steak with melted cheese, bacon, mayonnaise, French fries, ketchup, potato salad, mayonnaise, 2 fried eggs, mayonnaise and some carrots and tomatoes to make it look healthy)

Chivitos al Plato:

Lowlights: Argentinean crook in Cabo Polonio, most towns, no ATM that works in Montevideo

Oh.. and just to remember that Uruguay is not Brazil: