It's now end of November 2009 when I´m writing this. With my brother Ton and his wife Annemieke, I, the author of this little blog, Niek, made a tour through northern Uruguay. We started in our village Fray Bentos in the west of Uruguay where we have our houses, and followed the river Uruguay heading North. First we visited Paysandru, a little town at a distance of 130 km. There we already saw the high water level of the river Uruguay, which starts in Brazil at a distance of 2000km in the Sierra Geral mountains, not far away from the Atlantic Ocean, roughly between Porto Alegre and Florianopolis. From the Atlantic Ocean this river first streams westwards, away from the ocean, collecting all the streams and rivers in the south of Brazil in the departments of Sta Catarina and South Rio Grande, forming the frontier with Argentina, after which it flows southwards where its water eventually becomes the border river between Argentina and Uruguay. More southwards, this huge flow of water comes into the Rio de la Plata, together with South America's second largest river, the Rio Parana, forming the largest funnel in the world. The water of both rivers is often colored by clay and has a brown-red color. With heavy rains as had been falling on our trip especially in Uruguay and the south of Brazil, the color of the river is a deep brown, and very reddish when colored by the sun.
Our next stop was in Salto, Uruguay's second largest city with 130.000 inhabitants. We found a nice old-fashioned hotel called `hotel Concordia`, with an very nice courtyard with palms and other full-grown plants facing all the rooms.
That evening, Uruguay's national football team was playing against Costa Rica and the Uruguayans won. Ten minutes later, more and more people, motors and cars were driving through the streets, all making lots of noise with their horns. People were shouting and laughing and later they blocked a key road and started to dance, so that no vehicles could drive on, but nobody stopped their engine, and this huge traffic jam, created by all sorts of vehicles causeda terrible pollution and lasted at least two hours!
Unable to sleep in my hotel room, the noise came over the walls of the otherwise so quiet court yard with the clouds of smoke, but it was a big party and an great experience to see all these enthusiastic people being happy, dancing and laughing without any violence.
The next morning the inside court was wet, and later I saw that it has been raining a lot the night after the big party, and this had raised the level of the Rio Uruguay even more, creating floods engulfing the lower parts of the city. Several roads and also the ramblas were blocked by the water.
We chose to drive from Salto to the east over the `ruta 31` to Tacuarembo and we saw flooded fields everywhere and sometimes it formed big lakes. After 200km, Tacuarembo is a nice little town in the middle of endless fields in a light hilly landscape, but is not especially different from other little Uruguayan towns. We ate a `Chivito` or a `Milanese` at a little as we find on the menu in all of Uruguay. Not expensive, not very original, but very tasty. Only the `Milanese` was quite dry.
The road goes over more high hills (up to 200m) before Tacuaremb, and 30 km before Tacuarembo we even saw a little mountain stream, a `corriente` like we used to see somewhere in the Dordogne or the lower Ardennes. Rare in Uruguay!
After Tacuarembo we followed the south-east direction of our road , now the `ruta 26`, to the little town of Melo: also a 200kms drive. We went in this direction for about 100km from the Brazilian border, which also follows a south-east direction. This `ruta 26` was a little bit busier than the `ruta 31`, where we could drive for long time without seeing any cars or even houses.
The `ruta 26` crosses various streams and rivers flowing into the Rio Negro, Uruguay's second biggest river and all these waters were like lakes, as a result of the heavy rain from the previous days. The Rio Negro is like the Rio Uruguay, upstream its water flows westwards to be collected in quite a big river, the Rio Negro, which has two dams causing big lakes and whose water streams into the Rio Uruguay 30km south of our town Fray Bentos.
In Melo, Ton and Annemieke searched for a hotel, and I decided to go back to Fray Bentos by car. First a 400km drive by night from Melo to Uruguay´s capital Montevideo, and then a 300km drive in the morning to Fray Bentos. For this 700km trip I had to pay about 25 euros. About Melo I cannot tell much, the town looks like most other Uruguayan towns with its streets in quadrants. We ate a good piece of meat in a restaurant, the most important local dish. Good vegetables are hard difficult to find everywhere around here.
After my bus trip back home, passing Mercedes across the bridge over the Rio Negro, where the water was already very high. Later I learned that the rambla in Salto and Paysandru was under water as were many houses.
At my home, I had never seen the waterlevel of the Rio Uruguay so high. My little cabin, made last year, was not far away from the water anymore, and my `pino´s` which I always put my chair behind for shadow, are now in one meter of water and there is only a small spot left of my beach, which otherwise is 250m long!
