The Pencil Museum
We were up early soon after 7am. It was already warm and going to be a very hot day. This was not a normal campsite. It was a bit of a mish-mash. A pencil museum, if you can believe there could be such a thing, a small dairy factory, a restaurant and a shop selling the products they make. They allow camping on the grassy area at the back of the buildings.
Dennis managed to find some old wrecks near where we we camped.
Before leaving I went to investigate the retail area, while Dennis wandered into the museum. The museum consisted not only of pencils, but also key rings and old record players, telephones etc. I can’t say I would have been enthused! I was more interested in finding a cup of coffee, which I managed successfully. We also purchased a huge block of cheese, after being given a tasting of several. It looks like Edam, with a red rind, but the flavour is stronger.
More museum exhibits
As well as dairy products they also produce jams, chutneys, relishes and pickled onions. Dennis located the table with lots of little tasting dishes and found a pimento chutney, to which he was very partial. Unfortunately, they only had this variety in large jars, so we bought a jar of tomato chutney instead. We tasted the chutney with the cheese at lunch time and they were both delicious.
Heading for Montevideo, the capital, after a short time Dennis was feeling sleepy. We turned off into a quiet country road under the shade of some large eucalyptus trees, so he could have 40 winks.
Montevideo
Uruguay has a population of around 3.5 million. More than 30% live in the metropolitan area of Montevideo. We had decided we would drive through the city and not spend time sightseeing. We will no doubt come back here when we ship Poki back to the UK. We stopped in the centre, though, to change money and top up my phone again.
Driving out of the city along the river Plate where it joins the Atlantic Ocean, there are lovely white sand beaches. This means there are constant blocks of apartments and hotels overlooking the beach. We turned off the beach road in an upmarket suburb and found a large and very well stocked supermarket. Supermarkets in Uruguay seem to be far better than those in Argentina.
After finding the campsite, check-in was a bit tedious. The young boy in charge started by telling me Poki was illegal in Uruguay having right hand drive! I explained tourists in transit could drive through. He wanted us to camp in a small, crowded, uneven place. The campsite I pointed out as being suitable, he said was reserved. After a bit of to and fro-ing he suggested we walk around and see if we could find a suitable place. Around the corner was a lot of empty space. Not all flat, but we managed to find a place at the far end.
Having set up camp and had dinner, it was already starting to get dark. We were parked near to the access gate to the beach and so decided we needed to go for a walk and to see the beach. The beach stretches for miles and even at this time of night there were still many people enjoying it. After a brief paddle we turned to go back and Dennis managed to step on a bee. A painful sting followed.
Back at camp we were soon in bed. The hot weather is very tiring.
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