After our first rainy day in Colonia, we made our way to Montevideo to our amazing couch surfing host Rodrigo. Seeing as everything is super expensive here and safe, we decided to hitchhike from Colonia. Montevideo is only 2 and a half hours away so we didn’t think it would be so difficult to get there but we ended up waiting almost two hours for someone to stop and just as we had given up hope a lovely Argentinian called Robert stopped for us and we spent a large proportion of the ride discussing South American culture and politics, my favourite 🙂
Arriving in Montevideo I was shocked to see Serbian flags everywhere. I hadn’t read about a large Serb population in Uruguay and as you can imagine was already getting pretty excited when Rodrigo explained heartbreakingly that it is the flag of one of the political parties in Uruguay. Shame.
We spent the first afternoon walking down the Rambla next to the coast watching the beautiful Montevidean sunset and chatting with Rodrigo who prepared us a delicious dinner with amazing Chilean wine. The next day Monika and I explored the historical part of the city, including a quick exercise regime in one of the plazas, and came back absolutely exhausted. We had a final evening with Rodrigo and the next day we moved east in search of one of the beautiful Uruguayan beaches.
This time in Montevideo further confirmed the Uruguayan’s obsession with maté as even walking through the centre we would see grown men, suited and booted, coming out of the office and walking down the street holding a traditional maté in their hand. Whether it is cultural, traditional, addictive or all of the above Uruguayans apparently start to drink yerba maté in high school and can’t stop for the rest of their lives.
Another interesting fact about Uruguayans that Rodrigo taught us is that while they appreciate a good wine like their neighbours, Uruguay’s preferred poison is whisky. In fact, Uruguay is the number one whisky drinking country in the world! Yes, even more than Scotland.
So to sum up- sea and beaches everywhere, amazing meat, legal marijuana and plentiful supply of whisky- I can definitely imagine a few of my friends searching for flights 🙂
