Fray Bentos

If you grew up in Britain in the post World War 2 years there is a very good chance you ate Fray Bentos corned beef or steak and kidney pie out of a can. And of course it was just something you ate. You didn’t think about Uruguay or Friar Benedict or how that can got to your kitchen. But here I was:

The city was founded in 1859 and named for some missionary called Friar Benedict -Fray Bentos.

The city became an industrial powerhouse slaughtering cattle and refrigerating or packing them in cans and shipping them off to the world down the Uruguay River.

The corned beef business dried up and the factory closed in the 90s throwing the town into a recession from which it does not appear to have recovered. We felt like we had arrived in the poorest corner of Uruguay, so far.

The day started a bit more upscale 90 minutes south of  Fray Bentos near Caramelo  in a rather fancy vineyard.

I got up early at the Almacen de la Capilla vineyard - the warehouse of the chapel - and I decided to walk to the chapel in question.

It was a serene morning in the vineyard. 

The chapel was built in 1869 as a thank you to San Roque for saving their lives in a cholera outbreak. A new sewage system might have been more effective but  I wouldn’t have walked the hill to see that.

Rusty walked me to the gate and watched me trudge off letting me know I was an idiot and he was going back to GANNET2 where Layne was sleeping. I pressed on alone.

It was a lovely quiet morning. The church was closed and a sign advised they said mass one Sunday a month, and it did not appear that was happening this day but as I was there before seven in the morning, who knows. The place was buttoned up. 

We left the vineyard just before eleven and got an escort for the first block. 

We drove through Carmelo on a quiet Sunday morning, nothing much to see on a grid of unremarkable streets.

The winter sun is bright white and the yellow leaves are a reminder that autumn is well advanced. 

It was a cool crisp morning with highs promised around 75. 

The plan was to drive 90 minutes across the ranch and farmland of the very flat Uruguayan countryside to the city of Fray Bentos where there also happens to be the first bridge across the River Uruguay to Argentina.  

It turns out the city of 26,000, the hub of industry in historical Uruguay has ended up like Detroit holding an industrial base no one wants but unlike Detroit Fray Bentos is not reinventing itself. It does however have a laundry that operates on Sundays so we dropped off a load on our way to the waterfront in the Anglo Barrio where they used to slaughter and pack cows in cans for export.

I find it odd to imagine myself as a child not questioning where food came from or how it arrived at table. 

I traveled like that too with a much greater sense of acceptance than I do now. 

Sunday was a national holiday so I was spared the journey inside and they don’t re-open till Tuesday so I am never going to do  the walk through which is probably just as well considering what went on here packing thousands of cows into cans. 

Industrial decay which now rates UNESCO status.

There is a large grassy area fronting the river and we found a prime spot so we backed in.

Rusty took himself off for a walk on the waterfront but I wasn’t scrambling down the cliff to join him. 

And there we sat at around 3pm with nothing to do but wait for our laundry to be ready at ten Monday morning. People came and parked nearby and went to hunt fish and so forth in the river.

Evidence of a brick based industrial civilization is everywhere. 

But then it got odd and I attribute the arrival of dozens of cars to the fact that it was a national holiday coinciding with a Sunday.

As the afternoon wore on dozens of people showed up and got settled in with cups of maté and conversation. I can’t stand the bitter grassy hot infusion shared by Argentines and Uruguayans alike but then a tea and a Kindle suit me.

Unlike Argentines they didn’t start fires and grill meat, they just sat isolated by their cars not even looking at the water. It was odd. 

And then came the coup de grâce. People started leaving as it got dark but a music show began and when I say show I mean a loud beating thumping wailing trailer parked a hundred feet away which tried to demolish the surrounding buildings with decibels alone. It looked like an “ event” paid to celebrate the holiday. A half dozen maté drinkers were visible in the background but everyone else decided to flee the scene.

So did we, to enjoy a quiet night on a street, less evocative than the waterfront but much more peaceful.