Swiss Cheese In Uruguay

Twenty five dollars buys you this much first rate cheese in New Switzerland, Uruguay:

The Summit Farm has a restaurant as well as a cheese shop where you can taste the cheeses before buying. So we tasted a few among their vast selection…

…and bought the pieces we preferred and then had some melted cheese for lunch.

And then we drove up snd down the hill:

…to camp for the night in a park five minutes away.

For some reason it’s called the Little Train Park on Google Maps though I’m not sure why. 

The highway runs next door so there is some traffic noise by day but the insulation in GANNET2’s construction keeps our home quiet when we button it up. 

The cheese tasting was brought about by an invitation to visit the town of Nueva Helvecia -New Switzerland- from Pablo whom we met while camping in Brazil. He said come and have breakfast with me at 9:30 Saturday morning when you’ve finished in La Colonia. So we did. We woke up on the waterfront in the city Saturday morning and I took Rusty for a walk on the pretty cobbled streets. Everywhere you look is a photograph in Colonia Del Sacramento.

I have been struggling to figure out the actual location of the River Plate which it turns out is an estuary 220 miles wide at its widest where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. It is formed by the confluence of the mighty Paraná River and the Uruguay River about 250 miles from the sea. 

I’d never really thought too much about it until I got here but it has been the scene of some navy battles and its Spanish name Rio de la Plata ( River of Silver) is quite evocative. But it’s basically an estuary or a bay dividing the two countries. 

We have been figuring out how to spend less in Uruguay and using cash is one way. When we spoke with our new friends from Virginia it was interesting for us to see how Uruguay did not strike them as expensive. Clearly we have become used to low cost South American living. Personally I think Uruguay, clean orderly and easy to deal with makes for  good value for money. 1790 pesos is $45 minus 25% for cash or 20% for credit card payment. That’s their idea of a bargain lunch for two:

Cat alert: 

Gentleman’s little plaza.  

A Lambretta L80 rotting into permanence as street art: 

And then I came across a stature dedicated to William Brown an Irishman who is said to have founded the Argentine Navy and spanked the Spanish so hard on the River Plate he helped force the Spanish to give up control of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. 

He died at the age of 79 an Argentine national hero but is biography is extraordinary and worth a read. He lived a full and exciting and utterly unexpected life. I was glad I was prompted to find out about William Brown hero of the River Plate. 

We had a date at 9:30 an hour inland so we got going and drove to New Switzerland the land of cheese.

Welcome to the Swiss colony it says founded by immigrants from Switzerland Austria and Germany but whose culture is now represented by cheese from Dosnish speaking descendants. 

Pablo grew up in Montevideo but he got tired of the big city. He went to work in the US for five years in Maryland, rented a car and drove to Key West of all places before he came home to set up a new life in the interior of Uruguay. 

When we met in Brazil he was surprised to see we were from Key West a place he remembered fondly. So he invited us to visit when we arrived in Uruguay. 

We spent a couple of hours chatting about our trip and his journeys in Europe where he took his family in a rented motorhome.

Uruguayans like Argentines drink maté a bitter herbal mixture but Pablo does not approve of the Brazilian habit of drinking the stuff cold. We had coffee.

Layne wanted to check out a deli in town so after we said goodbye to Pablo we stopped off to see what we could find. 

Lots of stuff it turned out and quite affordable. 

We got a stroganoff dish, vegetarian lentil stew, and a fried fish plate for thirty bucks. 

And that included two desserts. 

Part of our economy drive in Uruguaybis wild camping deliberately a lot more and oddly enough we have found lots of free camping spots  in a country that defines itself by its low corruption levels and low crime statistics. Before we settled in to a free roadside park for the night we stopped at the farm for lunch and had Layne’s long desired fondue. Then we drove down to the main road there we were, home for the night on a bright sunny Saturday afternoon.

And Rusty was happy rolling in the grass under the weak autumnal sunshine. I like Uruguay.