Rolo on Tour

(36) Mate-Matics and World Champions

1 07 2011

Returning from Rio it was very soon clear that I will not see this type of weather again for a very long time.
The first spot where I had to bear the cold and rain again was Posadas, the capital of a province called Misiones in the Northeast of Argentina. It gets its name of the jesuite missionaries who have been around in that area.
My mission was not convincing anybody to join any religion, but to visit fellow traveller Julio.
A good argentinian host as he was, we of course had a nice asado(barbecue). I gotta say that culinary speaking having a nice piece of argentinian meat is just paradise.
Of the other 2 argentinian specialties, Dulce de Leche and Mate Tea, though I am not really fond of. The latter I just take for the camera:

Hmmm, Mate

That guy crosses too many borders. We should keep an eye on him!

Leaving that place (in the most luxury bus ever, they even offered champagne!) I could soon mark off another country on the list. But this country was not Paraguay, that would have been too easy (You can see it in the background of the last picture ;-)). Instead the next destination was Uruguay, easily accessible crossing the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires.

The problem was that I was catching the coldest time of the year there, which makes it hard to enjoy. The country itself is supposed to have very beautiful beaches for example, but what help is that to me in winter?
In general that is a thing which you can avoid with good planning of your trip. You check clima diagrams and so on and you may end up having a plan which enables you to leave your umbrella at home. But then plans can always change, so you might as well save those planning hours and just hope for the best 😉

A highlight the capital, Montevideo, has to offer is the stadium where the very first soccer world cup in 1930 was hosted. They created a soccer museum around it with exposures of some cups, fotographs and newspaper articles regarding all the big soccer events since then.
So If I am not mistaken I have to congratulate the Celestes (as they are called by their supporters) to winning 2 World Cups more than the Netherlands.

gocelestes