I’d expected the cattle, but not the landscape they were grazing. It was gently undulating grassland, all carefully sectioned off by wire fences; lush and green and dotted with isolated farmsteads. The countryside didn’t fit my preconceptions about South America. It looked more like Oxfordshire.
Uruguay is a small chunk of a country wedged between mighty neighbours, and getting a handle on it had been difficult from the start. Reminders of other lands abound. The Spanish, who first arrived in the 16th century, left behind their language and a few colonial settlements, but most of the touchstones from other continents date from rather later.
During the mid-1800s, a flood of immigrants from Europe arrived here in search of a new life. Earlier in our journey, we’d passed a signpost for Colonia Suiza, a town settled by colonists from Switzerland. The pasta I’d eaten for lunch was as good as any I’ve tasted in Italy, and the vineyard next to the restaurant was straight out of Tuscany.
At least Fernando matched my mental stereotype of a middle-aged South American male. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick, curly hair that gleamed with brilliant-ine and was slightly too long to be fashionable in Europe. With a penchant for Cuban cigars, he looked as if he’d just stepped out of The Boys from Brazil.
Driving into the small settlement of Carmelo, I began to recognise other telltale signs of a proper indigenous culture. Initially, the teenagers zipping along the tree-lined streets on mopeds put me in mind of small-town France, but the Gallic atmosphere evaporated when I realised that everyone was drinking tea.
People walking the streets, people sitting in the sun- dappled plaza, even the youths aboard their motor scooters were supping maté, the South American staple brewed from the dried leaf of Ilex paraguariensis, a relative of the common holly. Every man, woman and adolescent was equipped with a gourd in the hand and a Thermos of hot water slung on a strap across the shoulder, ever ready to top up their day-long infusion.
Cafes, restaurants and hotels will happily refill your flask, Fernando told me. The brew is drunk through a straw, traditionally made of silver, hence the ability to drink while in motion. We think we’re addicted to tea in Britain, but imagine wandering the streets armed with a cuppa and a steaming teapot.
Soon, however, the reminders of Europe returned. We passed what looked like three-sided open-air squash courts — frontons, Fernando said, built by Basque settlers who wanted to play pelota in their new home. British workers who came to build the railroads brought their games too, though some have proved more enduring than others. Uruguay’s oldest football club, Peñarol, was originally formed in 1891 as the Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club.
Indeed, it was a legacy of the old country that had drawn me to this corner of South America in the first place. Few people in the UK know much about Uruguay, but there is one town in the west of the country that almost every Brit has heard of. I was heading towards a settlement whose products occupy an iconic position in Britain’s culinary history. I was on my way to Fray Bentos.
URUGUAY WAS built on the products of its country- side, and in its heyday, the meat-processing plant was a state-of-the-art facility. It was under British management between the 1920s and the early 1970s, and sits on the waterfront of the River Uruguay. The cows were herded in at one end and tins of corned beef emerged at the other. Pursued by Nazi submarines, these chunks of cured meat arrived to sustain the allied effort in the second world war. In 1943, the factory exported 16m tins to Europe.
Not any more. Today, the town doesn’t even produce the whiff of a meat pie. The factory closed in the late 1970s, shortly after it was nationalised, and the brand name was sold to Campbell’s. The last tin of Fray Bentos corned beef I bought was produced in Argentina.
The vast frigorifico — a slaughterhouse and enormous freezing unit combined — survives as a museum to the industrial revolution, which itself was imported wholesale from Europe. The museum’s director, Señor Boretto, showed us around. “We’re guarding some of your heritage,” he told me as we wandered beneath the aerial walkways, chutes and pulleys. “They used to call this place la cocina del mundo, ‘the kitchen of the world’.”
In keeping with the philosophy of the age, the factory was surrounded by facilities for its employees. The sturdy brick houses still run along the river’s edge. The company town also featured a hospital, a school, a social club, a football team and Uruguay’s first golf course.
