The ferry ride froom Buenos Aires to Uruguay was smooth along the river Paraná delta.
Montevideo
After it was only a three hour ride to Montevideo where our friend Karolina was waiting for us in the bus station. She took us to Horacios place where we could sleep but we did not know that it was also his birthday party that day so we arrived to an apartment full of partying people. Well, we went to sleep at 8am… It was a good party so the next day we slept a lot.
Next afternoon we had late lunch at some random place nearby and walked for a while through the city. One street was crowded with people sipping on their matés by the side of the road. We thought there must have been something happening and there was - an Uruguayan street march. There was lots on groups marching with a flagman in the front dancers in the middle and lots of drummers at the back, every group had different style and it was really beautiful!
Then we walked around the river and the city centre. It is interesting as they don’t care at all what building you build next to others so there are churches surrounded by office buildings and so on..
On the way back to Horacios place we decided to make czech bramboraky, so we bought 2kgs of potatoes and went home. It took us a really long time to make them, we were eating them while cooking.. When they were ready, we were no longer hungry. So we just watched a movie and went to sleep.
Beaches and Earthship
The next day Karolina took us to see an Earthship she helped to build last year. Building materials use recycling as much as possible - old glasses, cans, tires.. It is 100% sustainable and energetically independent. It draws electricity from the sun, rainwater is captured in huge water tanks, purified to get tap and drinking water. Dirty water is treated again and used to water the plants, among which are bananas, papaya, tomatoes… And the house is built so that it remains tempered around 20°C all year round. Amazing to see this live!
We spent the night on a beach drinking wine, talking and playing cards :)
The next day we said bye to Karol and started hitchhiking to San Rafael.
Hitching through the countryside
We were told hitching in Uruguay was easy and it really was! We were taken first by circusmen, wonderful people who were just having an annual happening where all circusmen from Uruguay come.
From Montevideo, hitching was quite difficult until we got to the toll gate just outside the city. We were taken by a bus driver, young lady and a car rental employee all the way to the junction between road 1 (coastal road) and road 2 that goes up to the border with Argentina. Everything about Uruguay is small, the country’s most important road only has one lane. The land is well maintained when compared to other South American countries.
There are 4x more cows than people in the country. Agriculture is important to the country’s economy, they export nearly all the beef produce.
Next, we were taken by farmers, were offered biscuits, which was really nice.
We got to a really small town after the sunset and went to a local comedor to taste the local cuisine. It turns out their national dish is schnitzel (Milanese) that they prepare in many ways. Plus the cook decided what type I was having so Kuba received a massive Milanese burger, really tasty. I got eggs and fries with table wine on ice. We camped by the side road, which had well cut grass, much better than most campsites.
The next morning, we hitched to the next village, we had breakfast at the bakery and then waited for long without anyone picking us up. So we decided to walk. We got lucky because a farmer, Daniel, stopped and took us all the way to the border.
