We hated Uruguay!

When you travel constantly for six months, there’s bound to come a time when you arrive at a destination, and after a day or two just turn to each other and say: “I really hate this place”….Uruguay was that place for Akhona and me. This is why…

We tend to book 95% of our accommodation through Booking.com, and have probably stayed at over 100 hotels, hostels, apartments and guesthouses since we started travelling. So we are pretty good at making reservations, requesting early check-ins if our bus or flight arrives in the morning, and generally communicating with hotels and proprietors of accommodation. Our overnight bus from Puerto Allegra in Brazil to Punte Del Este in Uruguay was due to arrive at 06h30, so when booking our accommodation at F&F Hotel, I immediately requested an early check-in, with 07h00 as our arrival time. What usually happens is that the hotel will lock away your bags once you arrive if a room is not immediately available, leaving you free to go and get breakfast, etc. Sometimes we are lucky and they give us a room straight away. So when I got the standard response from the F&F Hotel stating that they would attempt to assist us on arrival, it was nothing unusual.

We arrived on time at 06h30 on a cold winters morning, and dragged our luggage into the warmer bus station waiting room so that we could hopefully draw some local currency from an ATM and get a taxi or Uber to our hotel. I scoured the bus station for an ATM – no such luck! In Brazil there are usually several at a bus station – not in Punte Del Este! We tried to find a wi-fi hotspot in the bus station – again no such luck! Luckily the sole taxi parked outside was willing to take a $5 note to take us to F&F Hotel – and why not as it was double the going rate….Grrr

The ride to the hotel was about 6 minutes, and we were dropped off in what appeared to be more of a residential neighborhood than an area popular with hotels. Booking.com has a rating of 9.1 for F&F Hotel – excellent in all ways based on reviews of former guests. We approached the front door and found it to be locked. We rang the doorbell and nobody answered the door. Not even after ringing the doorbell six times. By now it had dawned on us that the hotel reception was not staffed. Maybe a night manager was dozing in the back somewhere? More ringing, but now with ever-stiffening fingers as the cold wind bit into our bones.

Akhona began to show signs of hyperthermia, so I got out a spare jacket of mine and gave it to her to wear. I tried to build a barrier against the wind with our bags, and in true homeless fashion we crouched in the doorway, buffeted by the elements. I checked my emails and found the booking confirmation from F&F Hotel, which contained contact numbers if we needed any assistance. It also contained the wifi log-in for the hotel, so I could try using WhatsApp to call. I tried calling and messaging the supplied numbers but got no response. Clearly they had forgotten we were coming at 07h00. Very annoyed, we hunkered down and waited for a staff member to arrive.

At 08h30 a scooter carrying two women pulled up outside the hotel. They seemed unfazed on seeing us, and were not at all apologetic, shrugging their shoulders and responding in Spanish to our whining. Neither bothered to assist us with our bags, which we had to lug inside with our now frozen fingers barely able to grip their handles. I managed to write my complaint on Google Translate, and the one woman typed a response, saying that check-in was 14h00. I showed her the email from somebody at the hotel which clearly showed our arrival time as 07h00. Another shrug. Sensing a physical attack from one of us, she went off and made us coffee in an attempt to calm us down…

It became clear that no room was available yet for an early check-in, and we would have to leave our bags at reception until a room was available – 12h00 seemed to be the time offered. At around 09h30 a young man who seemed to be the manager arrived and I again went through the whole process of showing him the emails detailing 07h00 as our arrival time, He looked worried, was apologetic and offered us a 10% discount for the pain and suffering we had endured. We paid for the room, and set off to the local mall to buy a local simcard and draw some cash from the ATM.

We tried every ATM at the mall, but none of them would give us any cash. It turned out that they were all empty or faulty…Thank heavens I had US$ in cash which I could exchange at a foreign exchange kiosk at the mall. Then we could buy the simcard, and we were all set to explore the town. Punte del Este is promoted as the playground of the rich and famous during the summer months…the Hampton’s of South America. In winter it’s as dead as a doornail. We honestly couldn’t see the attraction…sure it has a long beach, but the water is pretty rough and it’s not really a particularly beautiful beach.

We took a walk around the mall to see what food was on offer, as we were by now pretty hungry. The offering was not inspiring – the food court was half-operational and the asking price for a toasted sandwich and a drink was around $10, with prices rising to around $20 for a pretty dismal looking pizza. Whaaatttt!!! We decided to leave the mall and find something on the street – the only problem was that there was nothing in the vicinity other than a very busy McDonald’s. We decided to go there as a lady resort – at least the prices would be more reasonable….NOT!! Imagine our horror when we found that the price of a Big Mac was about three times what we pay in South Africa. Yes, around $10 for a Big Mac. By now we were ravenous, so decided to order two burgers…I went for a ‘gourmet’ option with bacon to lessen the blow. Total cost was $22….for Mc Donald’s! We were really starting to take a disliking to Uruguay…

After eating our burgers, which in all fairness were not too bad for Mc Donalds, we took an Uber back to our hotel, expecting to be able to get to our room and take a shower. No way, Jose! We were kept waiting until 14h00, and ignored as we sat in the lounge with scowls on our faces. At 14h00 I wrote a strongly worded message on Google Translate, and suddenly the room was ready…It had been ready all along but they just let us sit and wait until the ‘official’ check-in time. I think you now see why our hatred of Uruguay is real 🙂

The room itself was pretty small, and we soon discovered that it had a water leak under the floor right next to my side of the bed. Water was essentially bubbling up from under the floorboards whenever we used the bathroom. Luckily we spotted this early on, or we may have had water entering one of our bags from underneath and destroying valuable gear. Of course, there had been no warning of this issue from the hotel staff.

In the two days that we spent in Punta del Este we found very little to excite us. We resorted to buying produce from the large supermarket at the mall so that we could cook ourselves a hearty meal, as our hotel had a nice kitchen. Even this proved to be an issue…We had read in the Booking.com reviews that people had used the kitchen to prepare meals, but now it was FORBIDDEN! We were told to walk two blocks to the F&F Hostel if we wanted to cook. So we ended up lugging our produce down to the hostel where we spent a few hours cooking and eating our delicious chicken stew. We brought the leftovers back to our hotel, stored them in the little fridge in our room, and then on the next night we broke the rules and used the microwave in the hotel kitchen to heat our meal. The hatred was growing by the day…

The only interesting landmark in Punta Del Este is a sculpture of a set of fingers sticking out of the sand at the main beach, which has become the most popular tourist attraction in Uruguay…go figure 🙂 We decided to go down to the fingers early in the morning to do a little photoshoot using it as our location…It was freezing cold and windy, which made for a fairly uncomfortable 30min shoot, but we managed to get some cool images…

On our last night at F&F Hotel we had another bizarre experience which was the cherry on the top of a very sour pudding for us. The staff leave the hotel unattended from around 5pm until 9am each morning it seems. So when other guests ordered Uber Eats, the guy delivering their meal was left ringing the bell for ages until an annoyed guest (that was yours truly) went to open up – several times. Then at 7pm, I again went to open the door of the hotel after people had been ringing for at least 15mins. Two desperate-looking Brazilian guests were standing in the freezing cold with their bags. I let them in and heard a now familiar tale. They had confirmed their arrival time of 19h00 with the hotel days before….Can you fu%@*ing believe it. We then spent 15min trying to reach staff on the supplied numbers, before I suggested that one of them walk two blocks to the hostel to seek assistance. Sure enough, he returned with the same manager who had given us the discount the day before. He offered no apology to me for having to do his work…It was clear that these people had no idea of what the hospitality industry is all about. Shocking!

The next morning we took the bus to our next destination – the capital Montevideo. We had booked a hotel in the historical district of the city, as we usually do in most big cities. The historical area is usually very picturesque, and is a hive of activity. It’s normally a great place to be based for a few days. Not so in Montevideo it turns out, especially during winter. The historical centre was largely shut down, and many buildings are derelict. We found one or two decent places to eat lunch during our stay, but at night everything was closed, other than a local supermarket. We had to buy our food there and eat in our room.

We took a walk around the area during the day, and found some cool wall murals to photograph, and of course there are lots of old buildings which look very interesting, but the place just lacked life and energy. We also visited the famous Puerto Mercado to investigate eating there, but it was one big tourist trap, with prices to match. We beat a hasty retreat to the side streets near our hotel and had a great, affordable meal there.

So the area of Montevideo we stayed in was a bit of a bust, but we chilled there for two days, had English channels on our TV at the hotel, and a standard buffet breakfast each morning of mainly sweet cakes, but luckily they also included scrambled egg, ham and cheese. It was not terrible, but we were not particularly impressed.

Our final stop in our whirlwind tour of Uruguay was Colonia del Sacramento, which was raved about by every travel website and blog we looked at. We needed to pass through on the way to Buenos Aires anyway, as the ferry leaves from there, so we made another two night stop in this former smuggler outpost. It rained heavily on our first day in the town, so we stayed mostly indoors watching movies, only venturing out for lunch, and to buy something to take back for supper.

The next day the weather was really great, so we set off to explore the old town – and it did not disappoint. Beautiful old buildings abound, and even though it is off season there were quite a few tourists around. We used the opportunity to take some cool photographs and just bask in the sun in this great atmosphere.

When we felt hungry we started to look around for a place to eat, and stumbled across a quaint restaurant where an old man was in the process of making a great-looking seafood paella.

We decided to try the paella and grabbed one of the last available tables at the restaurant. It turned out that the old man is the owner, and has been making paella for over 20 years. The cost was of course astronomical – $25 per portion – so we decided to order one portion and share it. It was the best meal we ate in Uruguay without a doubt.

After a very satisfying lunch we continued our walk around the old town and spent about another two hours taking photo’s and just enjoying our last few hours in Uruguay before we had to head to the port to catch our ferry to Argentina.

Finally it was time to go and collect our luggage from our hotel and stroll down to the port to catch our ferry. Colonia del Sacramento had made our six days in Uruguay worthwhile, and our feelings of hate had been swept away by its history and colorful old town. Would we return to Uruguay? No – it’s just too expensive for what it offers, which for us was not enough to make for a worthwhile trip…