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Uruguay: uro-guys, fatties, how much meat can you eat, package tourists

Uro-guys

Rhymer1
2005-03-26 19:35:38

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time I saw such preening was in a penguin colony.

Montevideo also has the best beef in the world. To sample what must be vegetarian hell, you head down to the market at the port. Here is one of the largest concentrations of barbies outside the syndney suburbs, although these are all undercover. You enter and sit down at a bar in front of a grill groaning with flesh, backed by an enormous fire. Menus are charmingly visceral and to the point: meat, guts, blood sausage. And then, for a couple of quid you sit down and eat a kilo or so of top beef. Maybe with a salad if you're feeling healthy. After my kilo of cow, I have to say, I felt good. A little like a python had fallen asleep in my gut, but fine and meaty in an unreconstructed 1970s sort of way.

Uruguay may also enjoy the distinction of being the latest country in the world. I know that we northern Europeans like to kick off our drinking early, eat, then turn in early. But here in Montevideo, we usually catch a film at 8:30 you would never, ever go for a drink then. After this well, actually we watched a spot of tax related civil unrest) you might go for a drink or two, say about 10:30. 11:30 or midnight is a good time to think about ordering food, but there would be nothing wrong with doing it later. Finally, if you were an earlybird, you might consider a nightclub at 2am. God knows how they do it: as far as I know cocaine and ectsacy are almost impossible to get hold of in Urguay.

For all its charms, though, Montevideo is very much a two day city. And, after a good 48 hours the weather has returned to form - that is, making you sweat without actually being that hot, the kind of humidity that makes your armpits smell like Big Macs. So, rather than linger on this torrid littoral, we have reversed our earlier plans. And for travellers, we have done the unthinkable: no-one on the Koh San Road will every speak to us again. Truly we will be pariahs amongst the noseringed and beaded classes...yes, on Sunday we fly up to Iguazu falls, keeping it real with a package deal.

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