Uruguay Sightseeing and Economy

Sightseeing

Punta del Este

This famous and naturally attractive seaside resort, known internationally, has a large number of places to visit at any time of the year.

Thermal waters

Uruguay has several thermal complexes, which have pools of varying temperatures. They provide a large number of services: hotels, sports facilities, nursery and restaurants, for your best stay.

Cape Polonio

Cabo Polonio is located in the Valizas area of Rocha Department (Uruguay). Its general appearance is that of a sandy strip of uneven width, which has about 35 km. long approximately, for about 5 to 7 kms. Wide. It is made up of a system of dunes that can exceed 30 meters in height and are aligned in the direction of the prevailing wind. This dune system is unique in Uruguay and constitutes one of the few coastal mobile dune areas in the Americas.

  • Educationvv: Provides school and education information in Uruguay covering middle school, high school and college education.

Cologne

City that maintains the charm and beauty of its colonial architecture. It has been recognized by Unesco as a World Heritage Site, being the only distinction of this type that our country has. Current testimony of the entire time of the Conquest, where its streets and stones tell of invasions, battles, looting, and more than a love story. Going through it produces a continuous series of emotions that make us feel its houses, patios, cisterns, churches, ruins, until sunset and wait for the color of the river to begin to darken.

Uruguayan Countryside

It has a unique form of tourism in the world: they are ranches, farms, tambos. They are located in the very heart of Nature. A peaceful, friendly nature. Immense fields, herds of cattle, wild colts, pure streams. With its 19th century houses, where the tradition and peace of the past are magically maintained.

Economy

Uruguay is an agro-exporting country, so agriculture: rice, wheat, corn, sunflower, sorghum, barley, soybeans, sugar beet, sugar cane, (although the latter is highly restricted by the climatic zone) and livestock (cattle, sheep) are the fundamental resources of the economy. The main industries are dairy and derivatives, paper, cardboard, fertilizers, alcohols, cement and hydrocarbon refining. Although mineral and energy resources are scarce; There are large deposits of agates in the north of the country, deposits of granite and marble, and gold extraction in the town of Minas de Corrales. The search for diamonds and other minerals is also under study. Uruguay is also the largest software exporter in Latin America.

Also noteworthy is the services sector (financial, logistics, transport, communications) as well as the booming information technology industry, particularly the development of software and related services.

In recent years, the forestry exploitation of Eucalyptus grandis and Eucalyptus globulus has grown in importance, with a view to the production of sawn wood and wood for the production of cellulose pulp. Likewise, a plant of the Spanish company ENCE is under construction, as well as others in project status. Another pulp mill belonging to the Finnish company Botnia is in operation, located on the Uruguay River, in the department of Río Negro, near its capital, Fray Bentos.

Religion

The Uruguayan State is secular, with absolute freedom of religion. The Church-State separation was established in the Constitution of 1919 as the culmination of a process of secularization that had begun in 1861 with the secularization of cemeteries and continued in 1877 with the approval of the Common Education Decree Law drafted by José Pedro Varela that established the non-compulsory nature of religious education in schools. There is in society a broad climate of tolerance towards different cults. The Constitution and the law prohibit discrimination on religious grounds.

Sports

The sport with the most followers in Uruguay is soccer. Basketball, cycling and rugby are also very popular.

Soccer

Soccer is by far the most popular sport in Uruguay. Despite being a small country in size and population, its teams have achieved great achievements in international competitions, the greatest achievements for this country being the two World Championships of 1930 (the first World Cup, played in Uruguay) and 1950 (played in Brazil, who was the favorite and lost the last game) and the gold medals obtained in the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games. More recently, it is worth mentioning fourth place in the World Championship held in South Africa 2010. In addition, Uruguay has won the America’s Cup fifteen times and is the current champion of the 2011 America’s Cup.

Soccer is a lifestyle in Uruguay. The vast majority of Uruguayans are identified with a soccer team, mainly with one of the greats (Club Nacional de Fúbtol and Club Atlético Peñarol). Sundays are par excellence the days to practice this sport. Throughout the country, soccer matches are played, which are the subject of discussion in the streets throughout the week. Soccer is a culture in Uruguay, and its practice is usually seen almost anywhere in the country, from the Centenario Stadium to the streets of urban areas.

Basketball

At the national team level, Uruguay is the third team that has won the South American Tournament of this sport in the majors the most times, behind Brazil and Argentina, with a total of 12 titles. He also won two bronze medals at the 1952 Helsinki and 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

Cycling

It is a popular sport, which takes place in all departments. As route competitions, the Vuelta Ciclista del Uruguay and Rutas de América are traditional, which run throughout the country, with great adhesion from the public that receives them in each city. Various clubs from Uruguay and also from other American countries participate.

Tennis

The most successful Uruguayan tennis players have been Diego Pérez (tennis player) Marcelo Filippini and Pablo Cuevas. Facundo Collete reached number 27 in the world ranking, Filippini for his part reached the 30th position on the world list in 1990 and reached the quarterfinals of the 1999 French Open. Cuevas was in 45th position in the world in 2009 and won the Roland Garros 2008 men’s doubles tournament reaching the 14th place in the doubles ranking.

Montevideo

Starting in 1750, the city of Montevideo began to receive from Africa an innumerable number of slaves who, although they came from the same continent, did so from very different ethnic groups. They were mostly from East Africa, Equatorial and Bantu, but also other areas of West Africa suffered the loss of their best young men and warriors.

From those years, millions of men of color became part of the repertoire of slaves and servants that the good families had, both in the city of Montevideo and in neighboring Buenos Aires (Argentina). All forced labor in America came to be carried out by slaves, men who were not only humiliated for centuries, but also lacked identity on the new continent.

Sad, lonely and aimless, they longed for their music, their religion, their customs and, above all, their land. Their masters, who many times even believed they were doing them a favor by allowing them to serve them, harshly punished any nostalgia or memory of that happy past.

Carnival was the only thing that helped them resist. From time to time, the slaves would recall their old African drums with which they performed their hunting, social or religious rites. This is how what today is called candombe would emerge: drum rhythm and dance whose origin we owe to these ethnic groups who arrived in the lands of the River Plate in Spanish and English boats. Before slavery was abolished, these men and women, with the permission of their masters, met in houses in the oldest part of Montevideo and there they reconnected with their own.

When freedom arrived, they began to gather in the poorest neighborhoods of the city, such as the neighborhoods of the South and Palermo, where the ancestral Calls were already being celebrated.

The presence in the Calls of the black lubolos was the best idea that the white man came up with to publicly apologize to his colored brothers for such barbarism and genocide. It is about white people who dress up as black to experience Carnival as they do.

city of Montevideo