wine country and Uruguay is burning

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Uruguay makes some internationally recognized wines. Without a tourguide, we did our best to figure out where the vineyards are. Only a few miles out of the city, the agricultural sector begins. Cows and sheep grazing on grass, not corn or other garbage that some ranchers in the US or the UK feed their animals. We also saw citrus orchards and other orchards of some unknown fruits, vineyards and even the beginnings of olive groves, which must be a relatively new agricultural trend down here.

According to a map, the town of Canelones is a major hub in the countryside of the state of Canelones, which is the center of wine production in Uruguay. The town was quite small and if anyone reading this blog has been to Costa Rica, the housing was reminiscent of the town of Quepos. Small box-like houses and fences around with lots of pedestrians crossing the streets. I was not sure what I was looking for in Canelones but we did not stay long and started heading back toward Montevideo. I saw signs for routa 48 which I knew was another road in wine country. Sure enough there were more vineyards and more fires in the fields. I found this one winery that was open to the public but they did not have any tours. The staff in the office gave me directions to another winery called Bouza which had public tours. We found Bouza but their public tours were at 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 pm and this was about 1 pm. We took some pictures and decided to come back to town for lunch.

At this time there was a haze as far as the eyes could see. For such a 'green' country, and they pride themselves on being environmentally advanced, I found these fires to be a complete mystery. I know that fire is an essential part of rice farming and Uruguay does grow rice, but these fires were nowhere near rice paddies. I have yet to find out what they were burning and why they need to burn anything at all.

Our landlady told me that someone told her of a gluten free restaurant that was supposedly across the street from a Jewish deli. A google search revealed 2 Jewish delis in Montevideo. I found the address of one, in a nice neighborhood of Pocitos, but there was no deli there. It was now the home of the Lubavitcher community and there was no restaurant at all across the street. We decided to head back the apartment and go to the port market again for lunch. Now that we attempted to park during the day we now had to deal with parking rules. In parts of the city they require a paid parking receipt. A helpful local (for a fee of course) got the parking receipt so we would not be ticketed or towed.

We headed out for lunch and had a relaxing 2 hour lunch at the market. afterwards, we did some window shopping. With all that fresh air and sunshine, it was an early night.

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