Colonia del Sacramento A waiter calls out to me as I walk down one of Colonia’s many cobblestone streets. The well-dressed Uruguayan is holding out a glass of wine, trying to entice me into the restaurant. “Come, try. Wine for you.” It’s a tempting offer after walking through the heat for the past couple of […]
The secret playground of South America
Away from Punta del Este Punta del Este is the typical beach holiday in Uruguay. But it’s not the best. Here, the sands stretch for kilometres. Waves crash onto the shore, filling the air with thunder and the smell of salt. Birds fly overhead while fish leap from the water. The sun rises in the […]
One man’s trash… is still trash
These are photos from a beach in Uruguay, beautiful in its isolation and lack of development… except for the tonnes of rubbish washed up on the sand. If a species of animal left our environment looking like this, we would probably declare it a pest and try to eradicate it. Take for example what we […]
Inside Turtle HQ
Turtle conservation work At turtle headquarters, it’s quite appropriate that things move slowly. Maybe it’s because of an affinity with the animal, maybe it’s the way of the beach culture, or, most likely, it’s just because it’s South America. Life for my week volunteering with a turtle conservation group on the Uruguayan coast had its […]
On the hunt for turtles
Sea turtle conservation For four days the sea turtles had been evading us and this was our last chance. We feared if we didn’t catch one today then we would leave this little stretch of the Uruguayan coast with a sense of disappointment… perhaps even failure. It was time to battle the waves for one […]
Morning in Montevideo
Montevideo, Uruguay One a quiet Sunday morning, the streets of Montevideo are almost empty. The city is slowly awakening from a night of fiesta, another journey into the revelry of the dark which South America embraces as a proud tradition. Music had escaped the bars of the capital and filled the crowded streets; the restaurants […]