Montevideo, Uruguay

My friend Juli made it to Buenos Aires to visit me as a side trip from Santiago de Chile. We spent the Sunday after she arrived in San Telmo walking around, drinking café con leche and checking out the street fair.


Juli y yo en Plaza de Mayo en frente de la Casa Rosada.


Having coffee empanadas on Avenida Belgrano y Avenida Defensa in San Telmo.


We love the street tango. How lovely!








And the street musicians.


On Monday Juli and I traveled to Uruguay by boat. This is a photo of the sun rising over Buenos Aires at Puerto Madero.


Juli y yo

We arrived in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay after about three hours. Colonia is a quaint little tourist town and I visited it last year. Juli and I had lunch there and then we took a bus to Montevideo, which was approximately 200 kilometers away, almost three hours by bus. Driving through the country of Uruguay was really serene. Nothing but green with tons and tons of farmland, mostly dairy farms. Even when we were just outside of Montevideo, the capital city, the landscape was very provincial.

We spent three days exploring Montevideo and had an amazing time! In my opinion, Montevideo is the South American version of Seattle!! The people are way more laid back and there isn't this crazy sense of urgency from people buzzing all around like there is in Buenos Aires. The city is más tranquila, and everyone walks around with a mate in one hand and a thermos of hot water in the other. It's really quite lovely. Everyone we talked to was kind and genuinely interested in helping us figure out this or that. There also seemed to be a more diverse mixture of ethnicity in Montevideo than in Buenos Aires. I wasn't hyper-conscious of my status as a gringa and no one seemed phased by my blond hair. Montevideo is much smaller than Buenos Aires, yet still maintains a refined sense of culture and an inviting city vibe.


La Rambla

Montevideo is a coastal city situated on a peninsula. La Rambla is a waterfront walkway that stretches around the majority of the city. It reminded me of Alki in Seattle.




Río de la Plata






Uruguayos enjoying a late afternoon mate by the water.






This sunset began to amaze me...












Plaza Constitución
















Teatro Solis








Another statue of a guy on a horse.


Actually, this guy is el prócer (the great leader/hero) of Uruguay, José Gervasio Artigas. As Juli and I were walking through Plaza Independencia, I saw this statue and signs referring to it as "El Prócer". I was reminded of a short story I read in my Latin American Literature independent study during my last quarter at North called "El Prócer", and I couldn't help but wonder if this was the statue that inspired the story. I thought that the author might have been Uruguaya, but I couldn't remember. Upon doing a little research to satisfy my curiosity, I discovered that the author of that story, Cristina Peri Rossi, is indeed from Uruguay.

"El Prócer" was one of my favorite short stories that I read for that class. It is a political commentary criticizing military force that gives example to how history is repeating itself through violence. In the story, the great prócer comes down from the horse to see how his country has been doing after all this time. He finds military rule dominating the streets of the city he had fought for, and can't understand why people still need to be protected. Uruguay, like Argentina (and most South American countries), suffered a military dictatorship during the 1970s. In any case, I had an enlightening moment when I saw "El Prócer" with my own eyes.







Juli and I absolutely loved Montevideo. I love Uruguay and I think I will need to spend more time there in the future.