Uruguay - A Good Place To Retire To!

Link to other threads on 'Shiney's Travels'
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/shineys-travels.61299/

Uruguay is an interesting country with a population of only 3.3 million people. It is fully literate with free education through university level. The national health service is free and there are almost 4 doctors per 1,000 people - compared to our 2.7! The national income per person is quite high and it's fairly cheap to live there.

Unusually, it's the only country in S. America that doesn't have a native population. The small native population (the Charrua) that were there were massacred after a number of battles. The last four surviving natives were transported to Paris where they died soon afterwards.

In Montevideo (supposedly named because a sailor said 'I see a hill' when exploring the coastline - it's quite a flat country) there's a monument to the last four natives.


They had quite a lot of good statues to celebrate the pioneers.

 

Although I've been to lots of countries, Chad isn't at the top of my bucket list!

I've been to almost every country in S. America, a lot of Africa and a fair amount of Asia in my interest of look at ancient sites, natural country and the way people live. Although I'm very interested in food, and cooking, I know little about drink (medically teetotal).

So, on to food.

In the last thread I did I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina (next door to Uruguay) and said that food was very cheap. Uruguay is similar. They both have good quality cheap meats and vegetables and fruit are also cheap because of the ease of growing them. So even poorer people are able to eat OK.

In Uruguay, as meat is so cheap, they are very much into BBQ type cooking and there is a very social side to eating out quite cheaply. There are many restaurant halls that contain numerous eateries that all, visibly,cook grilled meats - like a vast indoor BBQ area. The seating for each restaurant is congregated outside of each cooking area (still under cover in the halls) and it's a noisy and cheerful place.

They do have air-conditioning in a lot of these places which helps keep the place not quite so hot.

This is a view of just a fraction of the hall, before the lunchtime rush.


But it does get busy




Even on a mezzanine floor - the place is an old warehouse.


The meat is served in big plate loads and left on the table for people to help themselves.

 

There's no problem in seeing whether the food is being served fresh. When we were in there before the normal time (being my usual nosy self ) I saw a health inspector checking things.






You can see that some of them have a cooking grill, a finishing grill and a keeping warm area.


It gets pretty hot

 

Jiffy, we've found the quality pretty good. I don't know what the standard would be like for buying for your home but the restaurant food is good. A good, plentiful, meal in the place above (not cheap for Uruguayan standards) would cost about £7 including drink wine or a beer.

 

It certainly would, but I found more people that understood English in Uruguay than I did in Argentina - even in an enormous city like Buenos Aires. Portuguese would help as well, as Brazil is next door.

 

When travelling through most of the S. American countries we've found it possible to find enough veggie choice but the choice isn't great.

Having said that, it tends to be better than trying to eat veggie in France!

 

Montevideo is typical of large capital cities. Its population is something in excess of 1.3 million, which is more than a third of the population of the country.

It has a lot of historical buildings and some very nice parks. The biggest park is the Botanical Gardens, which is a very pleasant park and a fairly useless botanic garden! It consists of a lot of trees and few plants and there was little of photographic value.

The Solis Theatre is over 150 years old and in good condition. It puts on a lot of concerts and opera and the performances have an excellent reputation


As with a lot of cities they have an Independence Square and there are interesting buildings around it that show a great clash of periods and styles. The modern buildings are just glass cubes with a lot of unsightly air-conditioning units stuck to the outside but the old buildings are attractive and interesting.

Some of them are classical with lots of columns and others are of more unusual design such as this, the Palacio Salvo. It was built in 1927 and was the tallest building in Montevideo with its 26 storeys.


This record has been broken by the new ANTEL Telecommunication tower (state owned) which is 517ft tall and the largest in Uruguay.



and there are plenty of these around the old part of the town


The Legislative Palace is a very impressive building, inside and out. They do guided tours that show you how the different houses of government work.


Some of the older parts of town are a bit dilapidated but they're gradually renovating them and turning them into pedestrianized shopping streets. This is quiet because I took the photo on a Sunday.


They've done a good job of keeping the old character of the buildings whilst doing the renovations.

 

There are a lot of statues and monuments that are dotted around the old centre of town.

In Independence Square there's the statue of General Jose Artigas, known as the father of Uruguayan independence.
He's buried in a mausoleum underneath the statue.



There are statues at the four corners of the Legislative Palace, this is one of them



In a little park just out of the centre is this memorial to those who fell whilst serving in the navy. It's a modern art representation.


Sticking with naval matters, down in the docks are a number of pieces recovered from the famous, sunken, Graf Spee.

The anchor


and the sighting mechanism for the big gun

 

Whilst we were wandering around town we saw two police cars stop three young men on motor scooters. They were searched and the police found a small quantity of drugs and a number of stolen credit cards. The police were firm but did not treat them harshly. They were given a lecture and then taken away in handcuffs.

A local told us that the police were trying to cut down on the petty theft that was happening to tourists.
The commotion didn't disturb this busy street vendor!



Similar to England, there aren't many shops open on a Sunday but the local shop keeps open.



An architect with a sense of humour




I mentioned in the Buenos Aires thread about the tradition of drinking Mate. This is a herbal tea (yerba) that is shared amongst people. They have the Mate drinking bowl and straw (known as, respectively, the mate and bombilla).

The bowl is made from the calabash gourd and the bombilla was, traditionally made of silver but now is made of stainless steel.

The yerba (chopped leaves of the ilex paraguariensis) is put in the Mate and hot water is poured in it - but not too hot. It is left to infuse for a short while and then is drunk through the bombilla. The bombilla has small holes at the bottom end to filter the yerba.

The social tradition is that the host takes the first drink and then passes the drink round the guests/family/friends. The reason for the host to take the first drink is that if it's too hot or too cold the host will drink it all and make some more.

Everyone drinks from the same bombilla. Apart from being drunk at home, a lot of people carry their Mate with them with a flask of hot water.

When we were in Buenos Aries the first thing that we did, when meeting the guide we had hired, was to sit in her car and share the Mate.

This is what some of the more fancy ones look like. In the centre of the back row there is a bombilla sticking up out of the bowl.