27/12/2019 – Montevideo, Uruguay

We got up and walked a few blocks to a coffee shop called Lab Coffee. It was nice, a very hip café that roast their own coffee and with all the different methods to prepare coffee with. It was weirdly pretty quiet around though, there was no one else in the café or outside really. I get the feeling it could be a night owl kind of place. We went back home and cooked ourselves a scrambled egg lunch, and did some washing, which we hung on the line up on the roof terrace! It was a very hot day so it didn’t take long at all to dry. Montevideo is the most Southern capital city in South America, so although it is often hot and sunny in summer it still has its grey and overcast days (like yesterday!). Josh and I had planned on going to the gaucho (cowboy) museum but it was closed, so we ended up settling for the Joaquin Torres Garcia gallery instead. He is a Uruguayan artist who also lived in Barcelona for a long time, very nice, colourful work. We walked back through the main plaza and down the pedestrian streets of Montevideo. There were people around but not as many as I had expected. I think most people have gone to the beach in this time between Christmas and New Year maybe. There are a lot of health food and vegan shops in town. There are also lots of marijuana shops, as it is legal here. We get the feeling that Uruguay is very chilled. It seems progressive and also relaxed and bohemian. One thing we found out very quickly is how expensive it is here! It was quite shocking to buy dinner and breakfast supplies from the minimarket and to spend £20 on that! On the surface Uruguay feels slightly run down and poorer than Argentina but in reality the country is very stable and I think Josh and I are comparing everything to Argentinian prices, which to us of course seem normal, but in reality what with Argentina’s economic crisis, everything is at its cheapest there at the moment. We went home and relaxed for a bit before showering and ordering an Uber to Carolinas house. Carolina is Uncle Marios nephew (Pablo) ex wife. Long winded, but might as well call her family, especially now she has cooked for us! We went in an Uber to her house, which was about 30 minutes away, and was in a much nicer, more residential neighbourhood. She greeted us with a kiss and a hug at her gate, along with two big sausage dogs, two small sausage dogs, a bigger old dog, a house rabbit, a huge maine coon cat, a normal sized cat, and two guinea pigs! We gave her some wine and some alfajores, which she seemed to appreciate. She is tiny, at least half a foot shorter than me! We got welcomed into her lounge area where there was beautiful spread of homemade food. There was chorizo, homemade empanadas, Spanish tortilla, ‘milanesa’ - a South American dish of steak covered in breadcrumbs, and bread topped with avocado, smoked salmon, rocket and cherry tomato. It was incredible food, she is a great cook, which mum had already told me about. She and Josh shared a Uruguayan beer (they are 1L!) that appeared to wash down pretty well too! For dessert she brought out a homemade coconut milk flan thing, which she paired with dulce de leche and some truffles that she had also home made. She told us that she loves cooking, and she also has a business where she sells sushi! We managed to chat away through the language barrier for a good three hours, and I think we all had a good time. We used Google translate a couple of times but in general it seemed to be easy enough! Carolina wouldn’t let us wash up, she really didn’t want us to. She told us that in Uruguay if you cook for guests you also do all the washing up, and we kind of got the idea that she would almost find it rude of us to clean up with or for her. Kindly, Carolina also invited us to visit her in her holiday house in Playa San Francisco which is coincidentally next to the beach we will be staying at next, so we hope to catch up with her again next week! It was a lovely evening and we feel very lucky to have been invited into her home and to have eaten all this amazing home cooked typical Uruguayan food. Also any friendly face or link is nice to see when you have been backpacking for so long in unusual places! We thanked Carolina, said goodbye to her and all her animals, and got an Uber home to our air bnb.