Inland Uruguay

Most of Uruguay is of course away from the beaches. The whole country, except the areas on the river and the coast, is flat with the highest point around 500m above sea level.

Driving there is certainly different from the coast. There are very few towns, not many people, and seemingly not a lot of action. Neither are all the roads good, but most are passable without too much effort. Distances are short, and to see some of the inland you have to make up your mind to wanting to do it, as there is not many attractions.

We visited one of the attractions, La Fortaleza de Santa Teresa, which was on our way leaving Punto del Diablo. This played a role in the war with Brazil resulting in the independence of Uruguay in 1825.

Seeing the inland of Uruguay, you realise it is beautiful and very fertile. Every inch of land is developed, either for crops or cattle, and the only diversion is trees in groups. Those trees are cultivated too, so it is really more of the same. There are two kinds of trees, pine and eucalyptus. All planted to be part of the forestry industry.

It is beautiful and monotonous. It makes you wonder why everything had to be cut down and all land cultivated. We have seen two individuals of wild animal: one deer and one hamster. In addition many birds of different kinds, all cute. There must be sea life in the Atlantic. But on land every animal is domestic, and plants cultivated. This results in very limited biodiversity, at least that's what you'd assume.

We stayed in two places on our way to celebrating Christmas. The first stop was Melo and the second Tacuarembó. They were similar, typical examples of what we have seen inland.

Now all we needed was one more place to spend Christmas. Uruguayans celebrate Christmas much like we are used to: with family over food and presents, starting late on Christmas Eve, and going for the whole of Christmas Day. Nothing much is open from the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and even some hotels are closed. We decided to go to San Gregorio de Polanco by the lake Rincón del Bonete. We worried about not being able to find accommodation so we booked in advance. A mistake as it turned out, and we left the hotel to look for something else. We found a cottage, basic but perfectly fine for a couple of nights. It was very warm, about +34C, and we spent the days doing not very much other than have some nice wine and simple food. The locals in the same ground did the proper thing, lit the fire and grilled meat, had salads and all the trimmings and you could tell they thought it was too hot for heavy food. There is a saying that in Argentina and Uruguay there are five food groups, the first four are beef and the fifth is pork.