As the summer began to end in Nashville, Aimee and I discussed the idea of heading somewhere warm over the Christmas/New Year's holidays. The youngest two of the boys were going to be out of town for the break, and Zac, the oldest was going to be home from college. Looking at our travel map, we noticed that South America was completely bare, aside from our 2018 trip (which I never blogged) to Santa Marta, Colombia. I suggested Uruguay. Aimee asked what one does in Uruguay. I responded "I have no idea? Let's find out!" Furthermore, it looked like it had a lot of coastline with beaches, and looked like its latitude in the southern hemisphere was northern enough that it should be nice and warm for the beginning of its summer in December. So we began planning a trip for Zac and us to spend the New Years in Uruguay!
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| Ryan's 6th Grade Report |
Travel to and from Uruguay's capital city Montevideo was fairly simple with a direct flight from Miami to Montevideo. This 9 hour flight was overnight, which while it saves us a bit of time in not wasting a day flying, it does make for a tired first day, as it is never possible to sleep as well on a plane as in a bed.
We boarded our flight at about 11pm, and tried to get comfortable. As the plane pushed back from the gate the Captain got on the intercom to provide his pre-flight announcement. He introduced the flight "Good evening, this is American Airlines flight 989 with service to.... to Monty....uh...Monty...vid..ee-yo". Aimee and I looked at each other at the same time both with the same question. "Does this guy actually have any idea where he's going?" He sounded very much like a 5th grader reading a big word for the first time when pronouncing the name of the city.
Nonetheless, the flight went off without a hitch. While our seats were in coach, the length of the flight included dinner, which gave us just enough time to each watch a movie while "enjoying" our airplane food and some cocktails before trying to sleep.
We landed in Montevideo about 10am local time (only 3 hours ahead of Nashville). The airport, though very small, was fairly modern. We tried to get off swiftly and get a good spot in line for Immigration, which was not terribly busy and only took about 20 minutes to get through. As we got up to the immigration officer, we noticed something that we had read ahead of time was a ubiquitous part of Uruguayan life. Behind the officer, was a wooden carrying box with a large thermos and a maté gourd with a silver straw called a bombilla (pronounced in Uruguayan Spanish as bombeeyja). Similar to wandering a city in the US and seeing everyone walking around with Starbucks, in Uruguay everyone walks around with a maté, as well as a thermos of hot water to continue filling it throughout the day. Maté is a yerba tea, and the locals will fill their gourd (which are usually either encased in leather or aluminum) half-way with yerba tea, packed to one side, and pour an ounce or two of water next to it, and sip it through the bombilla which is essentially a hollowed-out spoon with pin sized holes in the bottom of it. The thermoses are either carried around tucked under an arm, or in a small carrying case that holds the thermos and the maté gourd.
After making this observation we quickly made our way past immigration and into the airport. I went to the rental car desk while Aimee and Zac went to grab our luggage. I had a growing anxiety that our 3 large suitcases and 3 small suitcases would not all fit in the rental care we had gotten. Originally there was a huge price differnece between the "Nissan Versa or similar" and the next size up, and so I stayed with the smaller car. Now I was worried we wouldn't all fit. I asked at the desk if they had any larger cars, but the answer was no. The rep spoke limited English, so we communicated back and forth in English and Spanish depending on the depth of my vocabulary for car rentals.
We had planned to have the rental car only for the time we were outside of the city, and figured in Montevideo we would Uber anywhere we needed to go so as to not have to deal with parking in a big, crowded city. Avis had a rental office near the Mercado del Puerto area of Montivideo, and we selected to turn it in New Year's day at that office in the afternoon, since a lot of our sightseeing would be near there. As the Avis rep took my information, he said that there was a problem with the return, because that office was closed on New Year's Day. I explained that the app allowed me to book the return there. He replied "Don't worry about it, we will arrange for pick up there. We will be in contact with you later in the week."
His final warning to me was that there are speed cameras all throughout the country and to watch my speed. An American standing next to me also getting a car turned to me to emphasize the warning: "Yes, be careful, my dad racked up $2000 in speeding tickets when he was here." Oof. Message received.
I met up with Aimee and Zac, and we headed out to the car, hoping we could get all the suitcases and ourselves to fit in it.
Fortunately, with only a small requirement of Tetris skills, we were able to get several bags in the trunk, and a couple in one half of the back seat, leaving Zac plenty of room to ride next to them.
Our first destination in Uruguay was a horse ranch out in the countryside. It was a 3 hour ride from the airport according to Google maps, and we had planned to get there in time for a horseback ride and dinner. First we were going to stop in a small town called Minas on the way there for lunch.
Driving in Uruguay was not too difficult. Roads are very well maintained, and signage is almost to the point of excessive. Intersections are all roundabouts. Speed limits do change often depending on road features and when you are nearing a town. Also, fortunately, the speed cameras are all announced with a large sign telling you there is a speed camera ahead. While I didn't want to risk the tickets by depending on this, I continued to very closely abide by the speed limit. While face to face Uruguayans are extremely laid back and friendly, they do drive at high speeds, and constantly pass on 2 lane highways, (preceded by riding extremely close behind you). It is interesting, having driven in various countries and experienced various types of driving cultures, It struck me that this type of driving in the US would feel threatening, aggressive and road ragey. However I quickly adapted to the local culture and begin to adopt the same approach after not too long.
The landscape was a light green color, with rolling fields and vegetation that seemed somehow simliar yet also very different to us. There were a lot of palm trees, though many were shorter, squatter, palm trees than what you see in California or Florida, but between them, the grassy fields and trees looked like vegetation you'd see in the mid-west. We also noticed there were horses everywhere----tied up on the side of the road, out in fields. Uruguay is gaucho country, full of cattle farms, and we were starting to get a flavor for it.
As we approached the town of Minas, we saw a billboard for Alfajores. These are what we would call macaroons in the US, and the town of Minas has a long famous history of manufacturing them. In fact they have a museum dedicated to the history of alfajores. We were on a tight schedule and weren't going to get a chance to stop though. In my research it appeared there were a few restaurants near the city's plaza (all the cities in Uruguay seem to have one or more typical Spanish-style plaza in their centers). We headed over to that area, parked, and walked around to find one.
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| Plaza Libertad, Minas Uruguay |
We found a small restaurant, "El Artesanal de Minas Resto" which had outdoor seating overlooking the plaza. We asked for a table and sat down.
Even given my decent Spanish skills, I have noticed an inevitability when it comes to the first restaurant experience in any new country---looking like a complete idiot. It seems to be a mixture of learning the standard flow of the dining experience, the various regional accents, and just the anxiety of trying too hard to not come off like a complete moron. I did not succeed.
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| Our Lunch View |
The waitress arrived, and I did explain that I speak only a little Spanish. She offered drinks, and we went with just water. (Interestingly, Uruguay has a 0.0 BAC limit for driving, so even a single beer at a meal and then driving is against the law, which was a bit disappointing). After ordering the water, she followed it up with an unexpected question. I find the hardest part of a second language is the listening part, when in conversation. People in any language don't pause between words when talking, sometimes making simple words hard to understand. When the waitress asked, I heard "congasosingas". This was totally unexpected when simply asking for water. I looked at the waitress like a dear in the headlights and asked her to repeat. She looked confused by my confusion, and repeated. It didn't help. I looked at her, looked at the menu, quickly trying to figure out the right answer. She repeated probably 3 more times. It was clear that this was such a simple question that she had no idea how to even try and explain what she was asking.
Suddenly after far too long, it hit me "con gas o sin gas", meaning do you want water with bubbles or without bubbles. I was awash in embarrassment as the light bulb went on over my head. I asked Aimee and Zac if they wanted carbonated water or plain water. The answer was plain. I let her know "tres botellas de agua, sin gas".
This was not a good start. We still had to figure out the menu and order food.
Uruguayan restaurants generally serve various types of beef, as well as a ton of Italian dishes (The majority of the residents are a mix of Spanish and Italian heritage). Pizza, pasta, various types of french fries, and everywhere has Milanesa or Milanesa Napolitano. All of which, and their typical descriptions on a menu, were new to us at this point.
Aimee, who is almost vegetarian (she despises any meat except chicken, turkey products, and some fish) was very apprehensive of accidentally ordering beef or ham. The Milanesa Napolitano de Pollo sounded like it was a chicken dish, so she was going to try that. When the server came over, I asked if she could have that, and asked to confirm if it had any other meat on it besides chicken. I again got the sense that I asked a dumb question, as the waitress explained Napolitano means it has ham and cheese. I didn't fully understand what she was explaining (though it became more clear after she left, Napolitano style is red sauce, with a slice of cheese and a slice of ham on top.)
We ultimately ordered two Milanesas (not Napolitano) for Zac and Aimee. The one thing that seemed fully clear after all the confusion, was that we wanted two of the chicken dish with no meat (besides chicken). I ordered a chivito (which is by far the most common quick food in Uruguay - a sandwich with beef, ham, cheese, and egg (I asked for no egg), and olives).
When the food came out, Aimee's was a large tenderized, breaded chicken breast, on a plate of fries, but with tomato sauce, cheese, and ham on top. Zac's came out just the plain chicken breast, dry, with fries. (My chivito came out as expected, except at this restaurant they serve the meat on a bed of fries, instead of as a sandwhich).
We did ask for the dish with the ham to be corrected since that was the only part of the order that we didn't have confusion (and Aimee detests the flavor of ham), which the server did quickly replace.
We ate the food, exhausted by the experience, and thanked the waitress heartily when we were done for her patience throughout the process.
At this point we were running very late for our check in at the horse ranch. We had thought we'd be there at 3:30 and now it was looking more like 4:30. We jumped in the car, and continued the trek.
At one point, in watching my Waze GPS app, it seemed like it was taking me a very lon and indirect route. I checked Google maps, which took a much shorter direct way saving 45 minutes. In trying to reconcile the two we did make a few wrong turns, backtracked, and ended up even further behind. As we got to the final hour of driving, the paved road we were on, took a turn onto a dirt road. It was a wide and fairly well maintained dirt road, but it did go for quite a while throughout the rolling hills of the countryside. We were definitely out in the middle of nowhere. Our cell signal was coming in and out, but it was a direct drive to where we were heading, and we still saw cars passing us every 10 minutes or so.
We finally found the turn-off of the highway to get to Caballos de Luz. Aimee had been the one to discover this activity when we had been planning our trip. She was intrigued both because they had horseback riding, as well as that the food they serve is entirely vegetarian. The ranch is run by a woman originally from Austria but who has been in Uruguay for quite some time. The ranch is self-sustaining serving only locally grown food and is very much off the grid.
As we pulled down the smaller winding dirt road following the signs, at one point, there was a small handpainted sign that said "Caballos de Luz" by a gravel drive. We turned into it, and drove an a very rough, narrow gravel road for a quarter mile until we saw another pull-off to the right with a house, or a much rougher looking road heading down the hillside, to what looked like nothing. The house looked a bit ramshackle, with a lot of large random items discarded around it. Squalor would be an extreme description, but it definitely didn't look very functional (there was a large mattress up against a wall outside, and an old bathtub full of dirty water sitting next to the house.)
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| We Must Be Close... |
We decided this couldn't be where we were heading, but yet the road ahead didn't look like it went anywhere so we turned around and headed back to the smaller road we had turned off of, and wandered further to see if there was somewhere else we should be. There was not, so we headed back to the house, pulled up to it and I jumped out to see if someone was around. I called out a couple times with no response, and walked around to the back. The back had just as much clutter, if not more than the front. A woman was sitting outside drinking a maté. I asked where we check in for Caballos de Luz, and she directed us further down the road that we didn't think continued on.
I returned to the car, and shared the information. Aimee was a bit apprehensive about continuing (memories of Nicaragua certainly in her head.). The very faint road continued for a mile or two, winding around fields, trees, and hills. Finally, it came to an area that opened up, that looked more like what we were expecting to see. We were met by a dog, a cabin in front of us, and as we pulled in, Lucie, the owner came out and greeted us. We apologized, as we were a couple hours late.
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| Our Humble Lodging |
Lucie welcomed us in, gave us the tour of our cabin, and said that they would have dinner ready for us in an hour or so. While we waited, she suggested we follow a path down to the river. She said normally, it;s a good place for a swim, but it was quite a bit cooler today than usual (it was about 68F) and probably too cold for a swim.
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| Kitchen, Dining and Living Room |
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| Upstairs (Zac's) Bedroom |
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| Aimee Pondering Horses |
We took the advice and hiked the quarter of a mile or so down to the river and did some exploring. It was very pretty, and gave us a chance to see some of nature up close.
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| Orange Trees |
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| River/Swimming Hole |
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| River/Swimming Hole |
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| Ryan Pondering the Gaucho Life |
When we returned, dinner was about ready for us. A large picnic table was situated in a cleared out area under a canopy of trees right outside our house. Three plates were set out, and as we sat down, we were served salad, stuffed tomatoes that had various cooked veggies inside them, topped with cheese and green olives, and stuffed squash of some sort. There was a large bottle on the table, which I assumed was water, but when I opened it and poured it in my glass, it was a lovely deep red. Some local wine!!
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| Community Dining Area |
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| Dinner is Served |
We enjoyed our quiet dinner, and retired to our cabin for a very good night's sleep. Right before climbing into bed however, we did find an unexpected visitor on the floor in the form of a tiny black scorpion. We removed him from our abode, checked our sleeping quarters for any more, set up our mosquito net, and slept like babies.
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| Master Bedroom (First floor) |
