Punta del Este, Montevideo y Colonia de Uruguay, 7- 13 de Febrero

URUGUAY!

Aeropuerto de Montevideo. No not Calatrava, my new favourite Uruguayan Architect Rafael Viñoly!

We had a brilliant flight from Foz to our 9th and FINAL country of the Adventure. We don't mind the odd over-nighter but it always nice to substitute a good 30 hours of bus travel for 2 on a plane!

Uruguay also marked meeting up with old family friends of the Mitchells, the Bertis.
From Montevideo Clare and I headed 2 hours up the coast to Punta del Este to meet up with Simon + Juanita, their daughter Claudia and her two cute kids (Josephina & Pedro) - all whom were on their summer holiday together.  
We had a great relaxing few days at the beach, and the Bertis kindly showed us around a few of the sights, including a sort of animal petting farm where Dulce de Leche is made.


Our favourite South American family - The Berti's.

Sweet as! Dulce de Leche (lit. Sweet of milk) - the delectable and deliciously ugly spread that hails a religous following in Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.
 Here, Josephina is showing us how its done.
Clare and I only just managed to finish our panqueque. We now have the Berti's secret recipe adapted for NZ!

Whilst we were there, as luck would have it, the animal farm just happened to be hosting
Señorita Latin America! Unfortunately the models were not available for petting like the animals....

Clare on the swing with little Pedro, trying to shake off the energy overload from our Dulce consumption prior.

 

Punta del Este, Playa Mansa.
Uruguay and in particular Punta del Este is a hugely popular holiday destination for Argentinians - Buenos Aires only 5 hours or so away.



Over-exposed under-exposure. Hey Hey! The smugglers had to come out for what will, sadly, probably be their last time..!

Beach time and Mate (maa-tay for those anglo saxons out there).

Pedro having some chill-out time between energy bursts!

A spot of sand sculpture and dam-construction with Josephina.

 

Bonita Josephina!



The hand sculpture at Playa Brava.



...the middle finger.



MONTEVIDEO

Plaza Independencia

They say Montevideo is like a miniature Buenos Aires (BA being a stones throw across Rio de la Plata), and on arrival we thought much the same. Broad tree lined avenues, a lot of parks and plazas named after Spanish libertadors, and fantastic crumbling early-20th century architecture built during the beef boom! After further exploration by foot (shopping for wedding attire) we found the capital to be a pretty relaxed and slow-paced metropolis.


Mucho de air-con? Often on a hot day Clare and I have been rained on by these bad boys conveniently located above footpaths. Here you can see the condensor units seamlessly integrated with glass curtain-wall construction! 



Romantic roof-top dining at our hostel.

 

Mercado del Puerto!

This brilliant market serves host to back to back Parillada's - BBQ restaurants where you sit around a bar watching the chef grill your selected cut/s of meat over FIRE, ohhh! Certainly the place to go for a hot date, but not with your vegetarian girlfriend!! We went on a Saturday afternoon and the place was humming.



Mucho cerveza, Mucho carne - perfecto!


COLONIA DEL SACRAMENTO

Colonia, seen from the lighthouse.

From Montevideo we jumped on our last short bus ride to Colonia del Sacramento - the closest town and point from which we caught the ferry across the river to Buenos Aires: the nodal point of our 'figure 8' route around South America and ofcourse our place of final departure!

Another fantastic colonial gem, we spent a day wandering around the historical centre.


Up early the next morning, we were on the 5.30am ferry across to Buenos Aires for the final 2 days our adventure and last quick fix of carne, vino y tango!