Uruguay

Uruguay is low, rolling grassland on the north-eastern shore of the River Plate, where the wide brown estuary opens into the Atlantic. Long low ridges called cuchillas cross the interior, but nowhere does the land rise into real mountains. The Uruguay River marks the west, the dammed Río Negro crosses the middle, and lagoons line the Atlantic shore. Sea lions bask at Cabo Polonio, and southern right whales pass Punta del Este in spring.

Charrúa and Guaraní peoples lived here before Spanish ships entered the estuary in 1516. The Portuguese founded Colonia del Sacramento opposite Buenos Aires in 1680, and Spain answered by fortifying Montevideo in the 1720s. José Gervasio Artigas led the revolt against Spain from 1811; Portuguese and Brazilian rule followed until British mediation produced an independent state in 1828. Early in the twentieth century José Batlle y Ordóñez separated church and state and built one of the first welfare states in the Americas.

Uruguayans carry a thermos under one arm and sip mate from a gourd all day, and Sunday means asado, beef cooked slowly over the embers of a wood fire. Afro-Uruguayan comparsas drum candombe through the streets at Carnival, and the tango La Cumparsita was written by a Uruguayan student in 1916. The national team won the first World Cup, at home in 1930. Holy Week is officially Tourism Week. Beef, soybeans, rice and wool lead exports, and pulp mills on the Uruguay River process plantation eucalyptus.