PAYSANDÚ: welcome to Uruguay

Current location: click here

With 175.000 sq Km and 3.5 million habitants Uruguay is not only the smallest but the less populated country in this trip. The population lives mostly along the litoral, with Montevideo, the capital, counting 1.9 million. 
The economy is basically agriculture and cattle based, with a cattle size estimated in 9 million heads. A joke I heard here: if cows would become smarter we would be in trouble; that why we eat them so much. They really do. Paysandú (80.000 people) is the fourth largest city and was my entry point to Uruguay.

To get to Paysandú I took a bus from Rosario to Colón (Entre Rios) in Argentina. Colón is just 5 km apart from Paysandú and should be an easy drive across the Uruguay river (there is a new bridge) or even a short walk, I thought. But it was Sunday and was raining so that I ended spending the afternoon in Colón, waiting for the 8:45pm bus. The border crossing and drive to Paysandú went then without any problems.

The small city of Paysandú was actually a nice surprise for me. I was by far not as quite and boaring as I was told before crossing the border. In fact I liked it much more than Colón.

The General Artigas international bridge is very close to Paysandú.

Heavy rain was the days highlight. Some areas of Argentina were flooded and a general warning was given for the whole region.

Finally the rain stopped and I had a chance to walk around.

One of the discoveries of the day was Uruguayan wine. There are some very good reds around that can be drank mainly in the country as their production scales are too small for export. Merlot and especially Tannat.