Tue 4.5.2010 by Liz
Awww, Uruguay is so small compared to our Argentina road trip. We got all the way to the east coast in about 3 hours, an easy drive. We camped in Santa Teresa National Park for a couple of nights, going down to different beaches each day. It was quite a well set up national park, except that it wasn’t high camping season so all but one toilet block was open, which was annoying when I was really needing one.
The park also had a tiny zoo type thing which was a bit sad actually. There were a number of small pens and cages with various animals in them, such as monkeys, goats, and a fair few birds. The pens were way too small for the animals, and the monkey’s had this small concrete floor pen with the two monkeys separated by chicken wire dividing the pen in half.
And we were a little sad about the attitudes of the locals towards the animals. From our perspective it didn’t seem like the visitors to the park – treated the animals with respect. It was kinda of like “you are here for my entertainment, now dance!”. Is it wrong to hope a toucan will bite off the finger of the kid poking it with a stick? It is somewhat of a difficult position to be in when you're in a foreign world and witnessing things you fundamentally disagree with.
fter our camping in the national park we headed the very short distance to Punta Del Diablo, once a small fishing village which was then taken over by tourism. Basically every house or cabaña was holiday accommodation, and it being out of peak season, most of them were deserted.
It is a cute little town made up of mostly sandy streets and dotted with small houses and cabañas of varying bright colours. We first stopped for lunch on the foreshore ‘main strip’ which wasn’t so ‘happening’ as otherwise it would be during peak tourist season. Only two establishments were open for lunch, the rest closed and shut away until the next summer or public holiday weekend. It did make for a peaceful visit though.
After lunch we found some cabanas for a couple of nights (which is where I am now). After following signs to ones which we established were only open during summer we find one that’s open all year round – and bonus, it came with a cute puppy!
The cabañas have an old log cabin feel to them with a loft area for the bedroom. Down side to this is when we tried heating the place while we were down on the ground level working, all the heat rose to the top. The up side, I was nice and toasty when it came to bed time :)
Today we went walking around the town and up the beach and had a picnic lunch. We went rock hopping on the rocks around the shore (which was much easier with shoes on this time, as yesterday we found out the rocks aren’t as smooth as they appeared from a far and quite painful to hope along whilst barefoot).
So far, with lots of cleared farm land and planted gum trees, Uruguay’s country areas are looking a lot like Australia’s. Tomorrow we head off into the middle of the country to see what that has to offer.
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