Invest The World -- International Travel and Investment

Uruguay trip preparation, continued

I'm now about five weeks out from my Uruguay trip, and I still spend a little time every day researching and preparing for it. That much preparation isn't necessary, but I enjoy parsing through every detail such that it's not a chore. I'm a bit torn: I want to see all of the country I can, but at the same time, I don't want to spend so much time in transit that I don't get to enjoy what's there.

Ecuador is also a small country like Uruguay, and on that trip, we limited ourselves to the coast (missing all of the highland attractions) and not only the coast, but just La Ruta del Sol. And even there, we frankly ran out of time and had to turn around a little earlier than planned. One thing to remember on these trips is that you can't plan out your travel time solely by maps.

For example, 60 kilometers on a four-lane highway in Mexico is different than the same distance, say, on a rutted dirt road to a fishing village in Belize. The former would take less than an hour; the latter has taken more than two. Likewise, in Ecuador, some of our travel was around curvey mountain roads, some with a bit of washout, others with poor children playing in the road.

According to everything I read, the coastal roads in Uruguay are easy to travel, so I don't expect this to be a problem. Rather than spending three or four hours a day in the car from one night's accommodation to the next, we'll most days spend two or less.

We're spending five nights in hotels, and so far the first two are booked. Had our trip been one month later, we'd have likely needed to already have reservations, but this is a shoulder season, and things are still available. The first night will be spent in Montevideo, in an area near Centro, the old part of town. The second night will be spent in an old (and slightly faded, I'm told) hotel at the seafront in Piriapolis. In transit, we hope to travel through the beach town of Atlantida (reputed to have some of the whitest sands on the Uruguayan coast) and visit the Sugar Loaf Development a few miles outside of Piriapolis. A salesperson from Sugar Loaf is to meet us at our hotel on Friday and take us to the development.

From there, things are still a bit up in the air. Punta del Este, an hour away from Piriapolis, would be an obvious choice, but I'm not sure how much traffic it'll have at this time of year or whether I want to drive through it. Although I had some ideas about visiting the colonial town of Colonia, chances are likely we won't have time to make it a priority. Though the pictures I've seen of it look nice, I've noticed that most photos are of the same two are three spots in town. I'm told, also, that--as far as old colonial towns go--there are better, and the pictures of the town don't reflect the diverse buildings that I saw in either Cartagena or Merida. Also, we'd discussed a day trip to Buenos Aires, but that may just have to happen another time, another trip.

Right now, it looks like it'll be mostly coastline, working our way out from the city of Montevideo as each location past Punta del Este grows more remote and (supposedly) laid back. As we loop back to Montevideo, I intend for us to take country roads so that we can see some of the agricultural region. Also, if for some reason the coast turns out to be a disappointment, or we just get tired of coastal towns, we could always change plans and spend a couple of days inland or north of Montevideo.

Labels: Montevideo, Uruguay

posted by Wesley Deaton @ 3:16 PM