We floated across the mouth of the Uruguay River towards Montevideo genuinely excited to be visiting a new country for the first time in two months. How different would it be? How would Montevideo compare to Buenos Aires? What would the Uruguayans be like?
The answers, as it turned out, were variously: not very; less favourably; quieter, boring, even.
The rapid arrival of an enormous electrical storm and the exploitative price of a pretty dreadful hostel in the capital perhaps coloured our view a little, but the fact remains: there is a good reason people bang on about BA and rarely mention its northerly cousin. Montevideo isn't the worst city we've visited on the trip – not by a long shot – but it's homely, rather than spectacular; cosy rather than exciting. Plus, in the piss-pouring rain, nothing looks too crash hot.
So less than 48 hours after arriving, we decided to move on, west to the much-lauded Colonia Del Sacramento.
It was pish too.
Or if not pish, exactly, then just unremarkable. An old port town, back in the day a lot of goods were shipped here from Europe before going on to Buenos Aires (it had something to do with tax). As a result, Colonia boomed when people had some classy ideas about architecture. The results are grand old buildings, quaint little squares, haggard forts and absolutely nothing that you wouldn't find in about 10,000 towns across Europe.
We're spoiled, you see – what the rest of the planet (America, Australia, all of the old New World, really) pays top dollar to witness or emulate, we have in spades at home. We barely think anything of it, so what is a national icon in Uruguay is utterly unremarkable to your average man of Kent.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
So almost a week in Uruguay and scarcely anything interesting happened. But then we headed for the border.
About four hours north of Colonia lies the amusingly-titled town of Fray Bentos. What is one Uruguayan's homestead, in a Kentish man's lunch etc and so on.
Fray Bentos (the town, not the tinned pies) shares a border with Argentina that was closed for a number of years owing to a long-standing dispute about the further ruination of the river.
Now, for reasons unknown to me, it's once again functional, which made it our quickest escape back into the gigantic, glamorous neighbour. Alas, on arriving at the bus station we quickly found out the next bus to Argentina was at 8.10am the next morning. We looked at our watches: 12.10pm. So fuck that, right in the eye.
Instead we worked out that we could get a taxi to the border for a decent price, or one all the way to our next destination for a fortune.
We were dropped off at immigration 15 minutes later, stamped out of Uruguay, into Argentina, and began making our way over the giant bridge back to the promised land. Or at least we were until border police stopped us.
It's not possible to cross on foot and with no taxi, no bus and no friends we quickly found ourselves deep in the shit.
However, once upon a time, back in the distant mists of the 1990s, before he was a racist drunkard (or at least when he hid it better), Mel Gibson made the single best advert for Scottish tourism the world has ever seen. And so after mentioning that, the fact I have a kilt at home and that I could name at least one famous Uruguayan, suddenly we found ourselves in the unlikely position of having the gun-toting border guards hitchhike for us.
About 15 minutes later, we were loading our bags into a plucky little car, owned by a plucky little woman who spoke even less English than we do Spanish. But necessity is a funny thing, and we managed to garble a conversation about our travel plans and various tedious personal details too dull to repeat. So rather than just take us across the bridge, she took us to our final destination, Gualeguaychu. (As you might have guessed, it's pretty tough to pronounce the name of that town, but it's approximately said: Walie-wai-choo and fits neatly into the infuriatingly catchy Birds of a Feather theme tune. “Wallywaichoo, when you are far away...” We sang that bastard for weeks.)
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
We spent a few days there for Carnaval (more on that in a couple of weeks) before heading up to the implausibly awesome Iguazu Falls. With apologies to Mogwai, they can put a human being in a trance-like state. They're bigger than words and wider than pictures. If stars were weeping, they would look like this.
Iguazu, they say, is the place where the clouds are born.