I recently took a trip to Uruguay, a country I knew scarcely a thing about, a very small country tucked in next to Brazil and Argentina on the map with a population of 3.4 million, a quarter of the amount of people compared with the amount of happy cows that roam the pastures there.
Uruguay and the good vibes2.
Introduction
Uruguay has access to 85% of the international beef importing market and having seen these cows with my own eyes, I can safely say you are eating steak that has lived a very nice life. Agriculture as far as the eye can see, very little industry, so very little pollution too, comparatively.
It’s funny how you relate to a place based on your own experiences, I will describe it for you. Uruguay was green, as green and flat really as England, but open, with sand and quartz tracks for roads in rural areas and eucalyptus plantations being the tallest and most noticeable trees. Wild expanses of weathered sandy beach like Western Australia. Horses and cattle, hot fresh empanadas and men clutching hot water flasks to refill their cups of Mate, like Argentina, Spain and Cowboy America. Casual caballeros riding in a shirt and trousers and a beret hat which came originally from the Basque region of France and Spain. The food was a delicious version of both traditional and modern European cuisine, sort of perfect really, fresh and unprocessed, made their own way. Delicious fish and incomparable steak, plenty of vegetables and of course dulce de leche which is really too sweet for words.
We ate mostly along the coast, also in an entirely remote village called Garzón that felt like being on the set of a country and western, a village made popular by a famous Argentine chef. And a beautiful vineyard winery called Bodega Garzón. Everywhere we went seemed to be touched with a brush of understated sophistication and good taste, relaxed, candlelit characterful restaurants made mostly of wood serving steak always, seafood and sushi and incredible wine, nice music, eclectic and mostly historic, flamenco and jazz and old pop music.
And then there was Art.
A sandy remote street walk near the coast and you could stumble upon a spacious art gallery full of very cool art from the 1930s, in colours that reminded me of New York interiors of that time, muted browns and reds, ochre and cobalt blue; line drawings and sculptures too. The gallery is called ‘galería de las misiones’ in José Ignacio, a fashionable beachside village with a short but vibrant social season, mostly folk from Buenos Aires, Brazil too and Europe. Lovers of nature and art, food and horse riding; taking a break from the city.
We stayed in two family run hotels of such incredible character, defined by their extensive and eclectic art collection ranging from ceiling and wall murals, to expressive and unique and immensely colourful sculptural and painted abstract creations, wall mounted and encased in acrylic display boxes, giant and wall mounted amethyst and quartz crystals and one of my favourites, which we saw examples of in various gardens and large open rooms that we visited, were the sculptures of Pablo Achugarry, a living and internationally renowned Uruguayan artist, prolific from the 80s until today. His sculptures are abstract and beautiful too, natural, almost like fossilised shards of wind or water, fabric, form, some more organic like parts of a tree, made of iron, bronze painted with enamel, or wood, until Achugarry discovered the extraordinary elegance of marble. ‘Simultaneously abstract and numinous, massive and delicately carved, his sculptures are reflections on the intervention of the spiritual energies into the spaces they occupy and invite contemplation of the divine”
These sculptures could fit in to any open space that married the indoors with the outdoors, to allow it space to breathe metaphorically, visually, and probably actually.. honouring this artistic representation of the natural world captured and frozen in time. Uruguay possesses that open, liberated feel, but also a grounded serenity. Your parasympathetic nervous system relaxes almost immediately, you can literally feel your heart rate and blood pressure drop and your energy start to flow in tandem. The obvious explanation for this, aside from sunshine and a sparse population, and very little air or noise pollution, is because Uruguay is quite literally saturated in water. It sits upon the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest known aquifer systems in the world, actually a national treasure that will hopefully be always valued and preserved in time like a beautiful Pablo Atchugarry sculpture.
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