Montevideo, Uruguay

I like Uruguay, but I find it increasingly difficult to explain why, yet I feel so at home here. Uruguay has but a mere handful of major tourist attractions, namely the capital Montevideo, the beaches on the Atlantic coast and the UNESCO World Heritage town of Colonia del Sacramento - the rest is cowboy country. It has, however, no deserts, no glaciers, no significant national parks or notable wildlife. I like it though. It is a small and easily managed place. Life moves at a slow pace. The people are friendly, helpful and genuinely interested in us. The food is great and every street smells like a perfectly executed barbecue (I might be a vegetarian without an interest in ever eating meat again, but that smell is pretty amazing). Montevideo is the nation´s capital and houses 1.3 million people, although it is hard to tell on the street - it is always quiet and there never seems to be a moment when all the shops are open, for there are always a few that are closed. It makes me wonder where everybody is, but you don´t hear me complain. For tourists there are a lot of museums to visit, considering how small the Ciudad Vieja (´Old City´) is. We´re not the museum-visiting kind, though, so we brought a city map and took ourselves on a little walking tour.

We saw some pretty old buildings...


Calle Juan Carlos Gómez

Some pretty leafy plazas...


Plaza Constitución

And some pretty fancy statues...


Rambla Bretaña

By the way: notice the wind in those palm trees. It´s like a fall storm has fallen upon Uruguay and it´s actually quite cold here at the moment.

There was really only one thing that we wanted to do in Montevideo and that is to eat noquis. Noquis is how the people in Uruguay spell gnocchi, which is, of course, the famous Italian dish of potato dumplings. It´s a tradition in Uruguay to eat noquis on the 29th of every month. Traditionally, at the end of the month, noquis was all the people could afford to eat. These days, people everywhere in Uruguay eat noquis on the 29th - for old times´ sake, I assume. You´ve got to love a people who turn an economic necessity into a monthly food fest. Sadly, though, we leave Uruguay tomorrow (on the 28th!) and won´t be able to participate in this wonderful tradition.



To compensate, Jochem has made me noquis every single day that we have been in Uruguay. Yesterday he prepared a particularly impressive number when he mixed butter with cream and chili - YUM!



It saddens me to say, then, that Montevideo is the only place thus far during this world trip that I have actually been afraid. This afternoon, during our walking tour (while following the walking tour´s instructions - I´m not one of those fools who aimlessly wanders off the beaten track!), I noticed that a couple of boys (hardly teenagers, really) had started following us into a quiet side street. This made me suspicious because of a story that Klaus (our new friend from Germany whom we met on the Navimag ferry and who is also travelling through South America) had told us, namely that he was also walking through the Ciudad Vieja, alone, and was suddenly attacked by a bunch of youngsters who stole his very expensive camera. I quickly gave my engagement ring and passport to Jochem for him to hide in his money belt, but I noticed that they were getting closer. I think there were about 3 or 4. I was starting to panic a little bit because I knew that we needed to get back to the main street but in order to get there we needed to walk through yet another little side street with those boys right behind us. Two older gentlemen had already warned us to keep walking and, basically, not look so lost with our map in the open (I told you that the people in Uruguay are friendly). I put the map in my purse and started walking pretty fast towards the road, where Jochem thought we would be safer, because it was busier than in those small streets. It took a kind of crazy crossing during rush hour on a 6-lane road before they gave up and we quickly walked back to our hostel just as the rain really started to come down. It makes me sad to leave my beloved Uruguay on such a sour note, but on the other hand it is a reminder that we´ll be travelling to poorer countries now and should probably be a little bit more careful.

Anyhow, most of our time in Montevideo was spent inside at our hostel Posada al Sur.



One of the reasons why we spent so much time inside is that it´s surprisingly cold and rainy here now. Another reason is that this hostel is one of the nicest places we´ve ever stayed at and that it´s therefore no punishment to stay inside. The main reason, however, is that we simply preferred it that way and I want to elaborate on that, because after nearly 7 months I think that I have finally come to accept my travelling ways, meaning that, sometimes, I prefer to do absolutely nothing. This might seem obvious to you, but you would not believe the amount of anxiety, guilt and stress I had to overcome concerning this particular issue, for who gives up everything to travel across the world to do... nothing? Yet, this is how I spent most of my time in Montevideo:



I have finally reached a stage where I at least TRY not to worry that this is somehow, to put it mildly, a huge waste of my time and money (ergo: crazy!), for I have come to realize that travelling is not the same thing as going on vacation (again, this might seem obvious to you). Sightseeing for 3 weeks is one thing, but when you´re away from home for almost a year, it´s very different. You try sightseeing every single day for 9 months and see how much you like it. Sometimes you just need to wear some baggy pants, put on some Top Chef and eat from a bowl on the couch. Of course, this ´hominess´ is exactly what you, the wild and free backpacker, do not have and should not want to have, since you gave up your home to be this wild and free backpacker, but that is exactly why sometimes you crave it with such intensity that you kind of start to play house in a hostel. At least, I do.

I´m also trying to overcome my preconceived ideas about what I, the traveller, should be doing (it´s a true testament to how much I value Lonely Planet publications that I think every thing they print is something I should be doing - should being the operative word). Do you want to hear the truth of it? I am simply not interested in art, or theater, or film, or music, or tango, or in going to bars, or in going to clubs. If I may, I would kind of like to spend the last few months of this world trip guilt-free doing nothing more than walking around, eating good food, reading the occasional book, looking at wedding websites, and going on wildlife excursions. And FIY: no, I do NOT like black coffee and I never have and probably never will. I like my coffee with a jug of warm full fat milk and some sugar. And just so you know: I´m going to stop drinking red wine too. I like white wine (preferably sauvignon blanc), rosé and sparkly wine.

In case you were in doubt, well yes, that was my internal monologue.

On to the next thing then, which would be a 20+ hour bus ride to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. We had initially planned to travel up the coast of southern Brazil, but we had forgotton about this little thing called Semana Santa, which basically means that since it´s Easter, everything is full (don´t you know?). Plus, whereas in Argentina there appears to be a bus leaving about every 5 minutes, in Uruguay busses leave only once a week. I guess that would be the downside of this otherwise beautifully tranquil society (adolescent muggers aside). We didn´t think it would be smart to stay in Uruguay for another 2 weeks just so that we could see the beaches of Brazil, so now we´re taking an earlier bus straight to Paraguay and we hope to explore Brazil from there. Sadly, it also means that I will be leaving Uruguay after less than a week. It´s really hard sometimes, you know, travelling? Nah, just kidding - it is AWESOME!

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!