We made some friends from the nation’s capital now retired from US government service and exploring South America. They were curious about a Florida plated van parked for the night on the waterfront. Their curiosity sparked a sudden flood of Uruguayan visitors eager to see van life as it is lived so Layne gave the usual tour:
You will notice the winter clothing but it’s not really that cold in the Fall in Uruguay, not so far. It’s 72 degrees and oddly humid but I’m still in shorts and shirt sleeves. However yesterday it poured with rain. It was a good day to travel so we did. First we filled up at the TerraVentura campground with potable water, emptied our toilet and trash cans and drove away from there under black skies. The plan is to return in a few weeks to install the parts Timo is ordering, but for now we are traveling.
Uruguay is the land of no stop signs. It cracks me up how in the US traffic circles are viewed as “impossible to deal with intelligence tests”and around here they just speed traffic along effortlessly.
After pouring all night into the early morning the rain had the decency to ease up and for the rest of the day we got scattered light showers and long dry periods which made being tourists quite pleasant and we had a new city to explore.
First we drove three hours across the flatlands of Uruguayan ranches and farms.
It reminded us of crossing Iowa, with its rolling hills and endless fields, countryside that bored most drivers but which doesn’t bother me in the least.
No speed bumps, just a few rumble strips and a warning to slow down on school days.
We are going to explore Uruguay’s wine country and apparently some Swiss settled outside the city of Colonia there to make cheese. Layne wants fondue.
Colonia del Sacramento was our goal, the most picturesque of the coastal communities of Uruguay.
It is also the port that handles ferry traffic across the River Plate to Buenos Aires two and a half hours south.
If you don’t take the car ferry the nearest bridge is further inland at Fray Bentos a city famous in England for corned beef and canned meat pies. More on that later as I am certainly going to visit the museum created from the former factory. I grew up on camping trips eating meat from Fray Bentos cans.
The other thing we had to do was get Rusty his travel papers to enter Argentina and we had a date with a vet in Colonia to get them done.
The reason for the rapid drive west was because we are meeting friends from
Key West in Buenos Aires next week and we have an apartment rented to spend a few days with them in the city. Then we will return to Uruguay to do some relaxed touring and to get our new electrical system
installed at TerraVentura.
I barely caught this rather drab uninteresting bus stop on the road. It’s functional but disappointing compared to others we’ve seen.
Snapshots from Highway 11 across Uruguay:
Notice no trash and very few blades of grass out of place.
We stopped to buy gas as we were almost empty and spent $158 filling our 24 gallon tank at $7:71 a gallon. Only French Guiana has been more expensive at $8:21 a gallon.
I asked the young attendant how was life in Uruguay and he shrugged and said it was fine. Even though it’s so expensive? I pressed him. He shrugged again and said “I’ve heard that.” I guess it’s just the way things are for him and who knows maybe he lives at home with his parents…
We stopped for lunch in a roadside park in San Jose where I took Rusty for a wander and Layne made grilled cheese sandwiches in the air fryer. Then it rained some more.
The San Jose River glorious with autumnal foliage.
As you can see it was a bit damp.
Weirdly familiar apartment housing.
And just for fun we hit a toll booth and our toll tag on the windshield worked perfectly.
Finally we got to the vet around three in the afternoon, early for our appointment. Then she explained our Brazilian entry papers are good for sixty days for Uruguay, Argentina,Chile, Paraguay and any country in the Mercosur common market pact. That was some good news. Rusty can cross borders freely on that one Brazilian piece of paper until June 10th. Yay!
With that out of the way we drove into the city of Colonia.
Uruguay is not a well known tourist destination, it’s a small country of three and a half million wedged between Brazil and Argentina two giants who spent the past hundreds of years feuding over who owns what around here. La Colonia del Sacramento was most often a Brazilian city from when it was founded in 1680 until independent Uruguay was created in 1828.
If you are curious about who owned what I found this handy table on Wikipedia so you can figure the confusion out for yourself.
Brazil called it the Cisplatine Province (the province at the plate river) and Argentina wanted it to control traffic in the river. Uruguay sits on the junction of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers which create the huge plate delta a major shipping point for products grown and raised in the interior. So Brazil and Argentina fought over this province.
Into this mess ride the first Earl Ponsonby from Grest Britain. Never one to miss a colonial opportunity Britain’s consul in Montevideo warned London that Buenos Aires in 1825 had designs on Brazil’s province of Uruguay and if Argentina nabbed it British trade on this coast of South America would be impacted. Enter Lord Ponsonby Britain’s special envoy who arrived to impose peace between Brazil and Argentina.
Ponsonby is a bizarre character, a womanizer who married his mistresses’ 15 year old daughter…
…and later stole King George 4th’s mistress Lady Elizabeth Conyngham which really pissed off the King of course. But Ponsonby got the job done, he detested Buenos Aires and taught that city a lesson by securing Uruguay’s independence from both Brazil and Argentina. Then he exited this story by going to Italy and becoming the British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples and as far as I know taking the King’s mistress Lady Coyngham with him. I can’t imagine what trouble he got into there but we are in South America.
Out of all this mess grew the most stable and democratic country in South America. Go figure.
Colonia is the city you see if you come across a brochure advertising this tourist backwater. It’s a small city, 32,000 inhabitants full of picturesque streets and scenes.
Much of the history is Portuguese oddly enough but the streets are cobbled, the ruins are genuine and everyone speaks English.
This is Fall and we are clearly out of season so the streets were decidedly underpopulated.
We paid a visit to the unique Origami Musem. Might as well; how often does a left hander who can’t tie a knot with any certainty get to immerse himself in origami? Across the street I saw a building all tiled over which is odd enough.
This is the only origami museum in South America.
The creator of this museum says it took her a decade to get it done but she’s done it in style in three languages.
It was quite fascinating to see how varied and complex is this art form.
The Pennsylvania Dutch were into origami - who knew?- and wrapped up love notes in folded paper. It turns out the US played a big role in the popularizing of origami outside the far east.
The Chinese invented paper and then started folding it. Other cultures notably pre- Columbian peoples in what is now Latin America folded their cloths in origami style as did ancient Egyptians with papyrus. This is the instruction page for an origami scorpion:
We learned about a pioneer of the art in the US much to my surprise:
Lillian Vorhaus Oppenheimer (née Lillian Rose Vorhaus, formerly Lillian Vorhaus Kruskal; October 24, 1898 – July 24, 1992) was an origami pioneer from New York City. Becoming a leading figure in the art form in her later years, Oppenheimer is credited with popularizing it in the United States. She adopted the Japanese word origami instead of the English paper folding, and the foreign term became established in the English language due to her efforts.
In 1928, Oppenheimer entertained her sick daughter with a paper folding book. She only picked it up again as a hobby with her friend, Frieda Lourie, in 1953. When she read Robert Harbin's Paper Magic (1956) in 1957, it changed her perception of paper folding (origami) from an isolated pastime to an art form in its own right. She began corresponding with prominent figures in origami such as Akira Yoshizawa, and, with Lourie, began to teach it professionally. In 1958, Oppenheimer and her art form received widespread publicity across the United States after The New York Times ran an article about her. She started informal lessons in New York City, dubbing the group "the Origami Center".
In 1980, she and her colleagues established the non-profit sister organization The Friends of The Origami Center of America. It was renamed Origami USA in 1994 and remains the nation's main origami organization, with many regional branches.
We went from the museum to find a place to park for the night. But I’ve gone on long enough for today.
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