Sunday Lunch

We awoke Sunday morning to a brisk 50 degrees and bright spring sunshine at our campsite on the bluffs.

We spent an hour zig zagging across country to our  lunch date at a  winery we visited on our last trip in Uruguay. Layne had discovered they were having a lamb luncheon on Sunday afternoon so off we went… .

As we drove they were getting lunch grilled…

The route Google Maps picked zigged and zagged across country from Kiyú to Progresso where the winery is located, an hour’s drive which we did in 80 minutes. From the red dot to the blue, you pick the route…

Narrow back roads all the way.

Grape country. 

We knew we were getting close when the back roads became dirt. Oh well.

Lunch was at 12:30 and there were a few of us. But first a tour of the winery by Omar the owner. 

Omar:

This is the fourth generation of a Northern Italian family that emigrated here.

The winery opened in 1954 and made massive amounts of wine, 750,000 bottles but Omar wanted to reduce production to make better quality wines.

Lunch was lamb. Empanadas to start. 

With a peach and Chardonnay spritzer. 

And grilled lamb sausage with root vegetables. 

Tannat is the national wine of Uruguay, full bodied and not too dry and tannic I enjoyed the bottomless glass. 

Layne fearlessly broke the ice rounding up leftovers for Rusty whom we had left aboard GANNET2. 

He was kind of pissed off as he had been enjoying the grounds. 

I figured he needed to be penned in while we ate as the dining room was open to the fresh air and it didn’t seem appropriate to have him wander in.

Deserves flan and the conversation turned to what we liked about Uruguay. One guy spoke up saying Uruguay is different as the country supports social advancement. He said in Uruguay a young kid from the countryside can if s/he has the inclination, get free education through university with government support including board and  lodging and this change social status. Thats not easy or encouraged in other South American countries. Then he described the completely free health care and no one at the middle class table demurred.

Our lunch with two bottles of wine to go and a chunk of cooked lamb for the fridge came to about one hundred bucks. Thats a very reasonable price in this expensive country. 

We needed a nap after all that. Rusty kept watch. 

Inevitably all that napping got Rusty exhausted and he asked to go to bed early where he had dinner…kibbles and lamb. 

And so to bed.

Tomorrow Montevideo and another lunch and friendship.

A Short Drive

 Playa Kiyú, Uruguay

We awoke to a cold wet drizzly gray Saturday morning in Uruguay so all three of us promptly put our heads down to get a few more minutes refreshing sleep.   I don’t know how 14 year old Rusty does it but he goes all night quite comfortably without peeing, twelve hours easily, he must have a bladder of steel so if it’s cold out he curls up next to me and starts snoring as I lie in bed wondering if Lady Blakeney will ever figure out that her husband Lord Percy is actually not a dandy but the dreaded Scarlet Pimpernel, savior of the cream of French society threatened by Madame La Guillotine.

Back to reality of a Saturday morning in cold wet Colonia Valdense, the French travelers blocked the communal toilet so Adrián has been forced to act and called in the builder (and his son) to get an estimate on rebuilding a bigger and better drain pipe.

Meanwhile he’s had to bow to reality and installed a waste basket for toilet paper which is normal across South America where drains can’t cope with toilet paper debris. The only country south of the Rio Grande where you flush toilet paper is Suriname. Go figure.

Rusty excluded from lunch in a house full of cats. Saturday lunch was at two in the afternoon. 

José the Spanish businessman with the small dog is in the GAP shirt and the French couple  sit next  to  him.  Grilled beef, roasted root vegetables, a Spanish potato omelette confusingly called a tortilla in Spain…

The French lady was a patissier in her former life where she owned a pastry shop in the Savoie region of France near the Italian border. She spoke wistfully of her creations and the mountains and the winter snow which she will look forward to seeing in November when they go home. She produced some superb lemon pies for us:

She is also expecting their first child. I’m guessing travel may no longer be a priority. 

I was ready for a nap but we had a date two hours away Sunday so it made sense to get on the road and make some inroads. Driving away on the open road is always a pleasure. 

Uruguay has little traffic, no hills to speak off, an orderly tidy unpretentious country you never hear about as there is no drama here, no corruption, the peso has been pegged at 40 to the dollar as long as anyone can remember. 

Education is free, as is healthcare, gasoline is $9 a gallon so driving is an expensive pastime, nothing happens, motivation is low in this backwater and energy is not wasted on being speedy or efficient. 

For me it is a pleasant break traveling South America but I think it might be too laid back for me to live here permanently. 

It is becoming a popular place to retire to, as it’s easy to qualify for residence and you get ten years tax free if you settle here. In an uncertain world Uruguay is far off the path of drug dealers or intercontinental ballistic missiles. 

The beach had chosen for the nights in iOverlander, the travelers’ app. It looked promising.

If it didn’t work out there were gas stations nearby for back up places to sleep.  We had a place to aim for.

There was a large clearing and we pulled to one side to park for the night. Of three cars there before dark all had left by sunset.

The River Plate looking south toward invisible Argentina.  

Rusty got into it and sniffed the whole place out.

Snake warning. Don’t panic. No one has died of snakebite in Uruguay since 1986 which seemed reassuring. This is a popular spot in summer apparently. 

A possibly seasonal pizza shack: 

“I love N Y C” I think. The beach is down a steep escarpment slippery after rain. 

Memories of youth: 

We ran our space heater off the batteries which was enough to stay warm till we went to bed.  

Total darkness; total silence. On the road again.