Who ever goes to Uruguay?

Sorry, been on the move pretty constantly since Saturday so here's some pics of my time in Uruguay.

This statue is of the founder of Uruguay, whose name escapes me, in the middle of Plaza Indepencia in Montevideo. Underneath the statue is a mausoleum a la Lenin in Moscow, except with ashes instead of a waxwork dummy.

The two toy soldier-shaped outlines are actually real soldiers who guard hiss dust 24/7 in complete silence and at rigid attention. I was the only one in the room when I walked in and the guards were as photographed. They didn't move until I subtly waved my camera at the one on the left and he gave the most imperceptible of nods. (I did leave and then quickly go back in to see if they'd moved but they hadn't. What a job).

Montevideo is actually a very pretty place, there's not much to see there in anything more than a day, but it had a nice vibe and was a welcome break after the chaos of Buenos Aires.

If you've ever been to Puerto Cervo in Sardinia then you have a pretty good idea what Punta del Este is like - except Punta is bigger, has 40km of uninterrupted beaches, and is more expensive.

It's a really impressive place and I'm glad I was there in spring as the beaches were deserted but it was still hot.

Rodrigo (stood up in the middle) and his wife Alejandra run a tiny little hostel effectively out of the outhouses in their back garden, but what they lack in facilities they more than made up for in hospitality. Rodrigo drove me to the beach in his 1973 Range Rover (a good year for Range Rovers apparently) to watch the surfers and loaf about, and he rustled up a great BBQ for me, John, an expat Scouser living in Australia, and a couple of Swedish kids.

He cooked something up which he called a 'gland' from a cow's neck. Despite our fears it was delicious.

One of the things I've noticed about South America is how much sky there is and how visible the weather is. This is a storm coming in over Punta del Este. One minute 30 degree sunshine, the next torrential rain.

Oh, and there's a lot of thatched cottages in Uruguay...

In Punta del Este port, the fisherman prepare their nets and bait on the wharf wall and chuck the remains into the water, which attracts some pretty large sea lions who bask in the sun and wolf down the remnants.