‘It's South America, but you don't have to worry about your phone being nicked or sudden gunfire'

Telegraph

04-05-2025

I get the feeling Montevideo might not be the most exciting capital city in the world, when my guide, the affable Uruguayan ex-soldier Arnol, invites me to admire the 'quality of the wood used in the presidential front door'.
After that we go to visit Montevideo's 'famous' theatre, which is unfortunately shut, stride to the historic town walls, but all that's left is a gate, and try to see the remains of the German battleship Graf Spee (famously sunk here in the Second World War's Battle of the River Plate), but they've decided not to let tourists in.
All in all, not a great start. But maybe this is only right. Because overlooked little Uruguay – the lost wallet of Latin America, wedged between the mighty sofa cushions of Argentina and Brazil – is a land of deeply subtle pleasure and quite hidden allure: you have to work at it, but it's worth the effort. Head north-east of the city, and you can find fine wines, great restaurants and bohemian little towns along a truly fabulous coastline.
This subtlety applies to Montevideo itself. Sure, it hasn't got the tropical sass of Rio, or the boulevards of Buenos Aires. But it does have safety. It has leafy, decorous streets of cafés and bars that end in wide beaches, and wherever you sip your cortado or café con leche – try the brilliantly antique Caffe Brasiliano, near the Old Town main square – you don't have to worry about your phone being nicked, or sudden gunfire. And in a continent plagued by crime and mafias that is quite something.
Over a decent steak in Montevideo's Victorian wrought-iron Puerto del Mercado, now turned into an enticing dockland food court full of impressive parillas – Uruguayan barbecues – Arnol explains all this. 'Uruguay doesn't have jungle, we don't have mountains, we don't have earthquakes. We have cows, and safe streets.' As he puts it, Brazilians, Argentinians, Peruvians – they all come here simply because it has very little crime, the way the Victorian English would go to the French Riviera in winter, because it was not cold.
Uruguay also has that wine, and it is one of these winelands, just north of the capital, that is my next stop. The countryside around here is not spectacular in itself. More rolling than majestic. But there's no denying the quality of the booze.
In the elegant, century-old Pizzorno wine lodge – an hour's drive north – I stay in one of their sweet wooden rooms lost in the sunlit vines. The lodge has maybe the world's daintiest swimming pool, meaning you can do 100 lengths in three minutes, but the big thing is the vino, and among the many wines – red, white, dessert – it is the famous tannat that stands out.
As malbec is to Argentina so tannat is to Uruguay. An obscure European grape that has found its spiritual home in the New World, like David Hockney when he reached California. In Uruguay they take the beefy tannat grape and blend it into something special. It goes particularly well with steak. And this matters, so I am told, because when you find a great steak in Uruguay – and you will be offered many – it will be truly great.
Onwards and eastwards I drive, shadowing the coastline. For a while it feels exurban and scruffy, but then somewhere around the last tyre shop, I see the first daredevil surfers, pretty rivers meeting the sea, a horseman riding the beach with a definite hint of gaucho, and then I reach a turning saying 'The Eagle'.
The Eagle? It sounds mysterious because it is. Perched right on the shore, beyond an affluent coastal burb, is a large stone beach-house shaped like an eagle's head. It was built by an Italian-Argentine aristocrat (his vast estate was nearby). Some say it was a love nest, some say it was used for occult rites, some say it was built for Nazi spies (in which case it was entirely useless, as it was only finished as the Second World War ended).
What The Eagle does do, however, is point the traveller to Punta del Este, the languid, sprawling, surprisingly charming, sizzling-in-high-summer resort city, further along the coast – and my base for three nights, at the plush, soothing Awa Boutique Hotel, a five-minute cab ride from downtown (Uber works superbly in Uruguay). Happily, I've arrived in March, by which time the monied Argentinians and Brazilians have gone, but the sun is still shining. Indeed, March could be the perfect time – sunny, warm, empty – to see the magnificent seashore that stretches east of Punta.
Is this the most aesthetically refined coast in the world? It might just be. From Punta onwards the beachfronts are quite heavily developed, yet the development is beautiful. Almost every seafront house is built in the same 'barefoot Bauhaus' style: simple, clean, and flat-roofed, and all made of local stone and dark wood, with huge windows. Around and between these handsome structures are gardens of pampas grass, green cacti and pretty succulents, which fade cleverly into the dunes and then to the crashing sea, where sea lions disport.
I don't know how they've imposed the noble architectural harmony. Is it law? Luck? Whatever the case, it feels like a Cotswold village turned into a modernist coastal strip. What's more, all this artful prettiness culminates at one of the chic-est fishing villages in the world, Jose Ignacio – where Martin Amis lived – which boasts an ace seafood restaurant, Huella. Try the langoustines, with the local albarino.
Beyond Jose Ignacio the coast gets wilder and more poetic. Vultures wheel. Lagoons glisten. Sandpipers patrol the brackish shallows even as whales migrate along the epic sea lanes. As for humans, a kind of mellow bohemian anarchy prevails – endearingly Uruguayan – where surf shacks sit next to legal cannabis shops which lead to over-water lagoon hotels made of driftwood.
Here you will find a sequence of tiny, mildly piratical towns along the lonesome shore all the way to Brazil. Some – like Cabo Polonio – have no roads, running water or electricity. At night kids play guitars by candlelight on the sands, and if you're prepared to rough it (again in a safely bourgeois Uruguayan way) you will be rewarded with skies of a trillion stars, and possibly a psychotropic pizza.
Where to end? Inland. I'm on the hunt for that really good steak, and of all places I find it in a tiny cowboy ghost village which feels like it came from a fever dream by Gabriel García Márquez when he was moonlighting for the Michelin guide. The village is an hour from the coast, it is called Garzon, the restaurant is called Restaurant Garzon. Its chef is a famous Argentine – Francis Mallmann – who uses a lot of fire and wood whether he's doing TV shows in Punta or barbecuing lamb in Patagonia. The interior is cool, wooden, colonial and amiable. Offered the menu, I choose the steak.
It turns out to be possibly the best steak I've ever had. It comes with a glistening layer of fat, a glass of fine tannat, a giant dose of happiness, and it feels like a promise amply fulfilled. So Uruguay ended up exciting, after all.