Local Culture and Cuisine of Uruguay - Land of Horses

Nestled between Brazil and Argentina on the Atlantic coast, Uruguay is emerging as a destination for travelers seeking authentic experiences connected to nature and local culture - especially its delicious wine, cheese, lamb, seafood, and olive oil routes. In the capital Montevideo, you can take a bike tour along its iconic coastline, enjoy award-winning wines, and feel the passion of tango. You can also spot southern right whales, stargaze during a countryside stay, and immerse yourself in gaucho culture by staying at an estancia - a family-run rural establishment where you'll feel at home, engage in farm activities, and savor traditional dishes like wood-fired BBQs and homemade sweets passed down through generations.

Uruguay is also known as a land of horses, particularly the Criollo horse, a breed that's integral to the country's history and gaucho culture. Now just picture yourself riding a horse at sunset along the Atlantic coast or across Uruguay’s peaceful, undulating countryside. I'd love to help you plan a culturally rich adventure in Uruguay!

Article below by David Hochman from 8/16/2024 can found here.

José Ignacio is gaucho country. If you’re visiting Uruguay from the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll notice the moon appears upside down. Instead of spotting a “man” on its face, you might see a rabbit. The stars look different too. You won’t find the Big Dipper, but you get the Southern Cross and the trio of sunlike orbs known as Alpha Centauri.

My wife and I traveled all the way from California to glimpse these celestial wonders. We’d timed our trip to coincide with a full-moon horseback ride where the grassy, wide-open pampas of Uruguay’s interior meets the fabulously relaxed beach scene at José Ignacio. But already, the country was revealing surprises beyond those overhead.

Unlike in neighboring Argentina and Brazil, Uruguay’s economy and political climate are remarkably stable, with low levels of poverty, corruption, and inequality. South America’s second-smallest country is also the continent’s most secular and one of the world’s most progressive nations. Uruguay was the first country in the Americas to grant women the right to vote, the first anywhere to legalize marijuana, and a pioneer on same-sex marriage and energy independence. It also ranks high in peace and personal contentment, with low crime rates and few natural hazards such as earthquakes or tropical storms. Driving along the pristine highway from the airport that first night, I told Ruth, “I didn’t expect Uruguay to be so easy.”

Even the horses are chill: The criollo is known for being cooperative and reliable with an even temperament. Bauti Yelós said you could describe most Uruguayans the same way. He’s the charismatic head equestrian – the gaucho-in-chief, as it were – at Estancia Vik, a stunning guest ranch on 4,000 acres a couple of miles inland from the southern Atlantic beaches and one of two country lodges we were visiting. The other, Fasano, which is sleeker and more minimalist, also has an outstanding equestrian program. There’s tennis and an Arnold Palmer golf course there as well, and a dramatic glass-walled spa with views all the way to “Punta.”

“Uruguayans are the most welcoming and easygoing people you’ll ever meet,” said Yelós, who grew up in Argentina but has lived in Uruguay long enough to know. “There’s nothing flashy about them. They know what matters in life and how to truly enjoy it, which makes them great to be around.”

This is a country of grown-ups. When I made an awkward U-turn after missing an exit, obstructing traffic for a minute or two, I didn’t hear a single honk. And when I mentioned to Yelós my apprehension about saddling up in the dark on a thousand-pound steed, given my limited riding experience, he smiled agreeably and suggested, “Do you like to drink red wine? Because that will help.”   

Everything most first-time visitors want to see in Uruguay is within two or three hours of the capital, Montevideo, which feels more like a big town than a hectic metropolis. Set on the northeastern bank of the Río de la Plata, the city’s focal point is the nearly 14-mile riverfront Rambla – described as the longest continuous sidewalk on earth. Day and night, residents amble, play beach sports, and gather around shared cups of maté, the national tea drink, brewed from the leaves of the yerba maté plant and sipped through a silver bombilla straw.

You sense the thrall of gaucho country even in the city. The beef industry keeps Uruguay prosperous, and barbecues, or parrillas, dot the landscape much like fast-food joints in the U.S. At the Museo del Gaucho y de la Moneda, you’ll find antique saddlery and silver spurs so ornate they might as well be religious relics.

For the true gaucho experience, most travelers head to the large ranches, or estancias, where traditions date back hundreds of years to when ganaderos first herded cattle across the pampas. It’s hard to imagine what those rugged individualists of yore would make of their distinctive fashions – the berets, the ponchos, the wide-legged bombachas – showing up today on red carpets and runways. Or how amazed they’d be to clip-clop upon the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Atchugarry (MACA), Uruguay’s first contemporary-art museum, on expansive grounds near the country’s international party destination, Punta del Este.

A lonely cowpoke could spend hours wandering the museum’s outdoor sculpture gardens or admiring a rotating collection of works by Frank Stella, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Pablo Atchugarry himself – Uruguay’s best-known abstract artist.

Steps from the sand in the town of José Ignacio, 40 minutes up the coast from Punta del Este, is another marvel: American artist James Turrell debuted his first freestanding Skyspace in South America here in 2021. The small domed sanctuary has an open ceiling that frames the changing sky, creating an ever-evolving palette of color and brilliance. It’s like a carnival for the cosmos.

All signs looked promising for a cosmic experience at Estancia Vik too. The forecast for our moonlit outing called for clear skies and mild temperatures, but honestly, it was hard to pull ourselves away from the beach. We’d spent our first couple of days living the Uruguayan good life, which is easy to do in a place known as the Hamptons of South America, or the Saint-Tropez of 40 years ago. Locals like to say José was a sleepy fishing village until Brazilian supermodels and celebrities such as Shakira discovered these twin curves of coastline (one is Playa Brava, or “rough beach”; the other is Playa Mansa, or “calm beach”). To us, it still felt like an unspoiled dream.

One day, we found ourselves at an outdoor textile studio near the lighthouse, testing our marginal Spanish with craftsman Hugo González before eventually purchasing one of his handmade, naturally dyed wool blankets. Nearby, open-air juice bars filled with summering visitors, and simple “beach shacks” sold fine Italian linens and $800 cashmere cover-ups. The heart of the town, and the epitome of chic and laid-back vibes in these parts, is the restaurant Parador La Huella. Here, the bronzed and beautiful can be found spending hours under a thatched porch right on the beach. The afternoon that Ruth and I lingered there, savoring charred local sea bass and leisurely finishing off a pitcher of clericó – Uruguay’s signature white sangria – goes down as one of my all-time favorite travel moments.

Then again, that was before we went full gaucho under an inverted moon. Although it’s just up the hill from the beach, Estancia Vik is another level of pure and untouched. Navigating to the isolated estate house, the views opened and suddenly we were in a Uruguayan episode of Yellowstone. Twenty years ago, Norwegian billionaire Alex Vik and his American wife, Carrie, envisioned a backcountry idyll for cultured rancheros, and they launched the hotel as their first of three resort properties in the country (the other two are on the beach).  

Estancia Vik has a polo field and herds of criollo and quarter horses roaming to the horizon, but that’s where the ranch clichés stop. Its sprawling living room is centered by a 12-foot-tall Atchugarry sculpture set against a giant ceiling frieze inspired by Google Earth images of the coastline. A grill room, meant to invoke the barbecue sheds used by gauchos, has graffiti artfully splashed all over its tin ceiling and walls. The brick-barreled wine cellar is stocked with 5,000 bottles, including signature vintages produced at the Viks’ winery in Chile.

Despite what one might expect from proprietors of their stature, the Viks are intimately involved hosts. As guests gathered at the equestrian center around dusk, out they came – Carrie in a magnificent poncho, Alex in traditional riding trousers – to join us on the trot-about. The horse rides are open to the public, but it was a cosmopolitan, international crowd. Among the 30 of us were a newspaper editor from New York, a retired German couple happily traveling the world, some American honeymooners, and a lively group from a yoga retreat led by by Isabella Channing, a Uruguayan American who runs a wellness center with the Viks in José Ignacio. 

The criollo horses really are sweethearts. Our gaucho friend Yelós assigned me to an imposing stallion whose name, Rayo, translates as “Lightning.” I was hoping it was just horsey hype. As we set off onto the flats in a wide, formless pack, I kept a tight grip on Rayo’s reins and waited for the moon to show. The Viks managed to speak to each of us as we rode. Carrie told me that Alex’s mother was born in Uruguay, the daughter of the country’s ambassador to Norway, but that she and Alex hadn’t visited until their first child was born in 1987. “We connected with family and simultaneously fell in love with the culture, the artists, the proximity to gorgeous beaches and nightlife, and so we started looking at houses,” she said. They settled into a modest place on the beach before buying their estate in 2004.

Forty minutes in, we arrived at a small, forested area. Twinkle lights swooped from the trees and servers in white shirts stood by with hors d’oeuvres and trays of medio y medio, the Uruguayan cocktail that combines white wine with sparkling wine. We hitched up our horses and entered an elegant makeshift lounge area with long tables covered in white linens and set with candles. If you don’t eat beef, you might want to skip ahead, as what followed could only be described as a meat fiesta of epic proportions. Uruguayans consume about twice as much beef per year as Americans do, and, as platter after protein-rich platter came hot off the open-flame grill, I was starting to wonder if gauchos eat twice as much as that. 

This being a traditional asado (barbecue), we started with chorizo and blood sausage as appetizers, progressing to grilled sweetbreads, flank steak, short ribs, skirt steak, ribs, rib eye, and top sirloin cap. Is it shameful to confess I said yes to all these dishes, and to the hefty pours of Vik Cabernet that Yelós kept offering? There were organ meats for good measure, such as kidneys and liver, and grilled provolone cheese seasoned with chilies and oregano.

We laughed a lot; I do remember that. We danced too, all of us together, to Abba and Earth, Wind & Fire – and it’s vague now, but maybe some Beyoncé? In the old days, gauchos would compete in something called a payada, wherein drunken wordsmiths would improvise songs with nothing more than their guitars and imaginations. We pushed the tradition further, with a group karaoke battle (the Viks had a portable machine) in which Ruth and I and the Germans unleashed “We Are the World.” We finished dead last.

At some point, we all got back on the horses. It was late, and Yelós was right about how much more relaxed riding felt with some vino in the saddle. I would tell you if I noticed a rabbit in the moon that night. Honestly, the view was a little soft-focus. But that brilliant sphere in the sky brightened the way for Rayo to get me back safely and in outstanding spirits, with no fuss – and definitely no flash

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