Montevideo is the little sister of Buenos Aires, they say over there in Argentina fond of. Similar architecture, similar culture, but a sedate, boring. A small town just a small town. And then comes, after a three hours boat ride on the Río de la Plata, and in fact, there are a lot of Tango and mate tea and football and love Dulce de Leche and huge Steaks and a couple of old Gauchos, such as the big neighbor.
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And there is good wine in Argentina, but grows even on the Slopes of the city. And there are lots of green places and a couple of hills and carnival, and beautiful beaches and winding coastal promenade, the Rambla. This is because, unlike Buenos Aires, Montevideo is a city that has turned their proximity to the water.
And then this fragrance. Times sweet, at times bitter. Joints. Marijuana. Everywhere. “Quite legal,” says Florencia De Armas. “Every citizen must grow the Cannabis. It harvests. It to consume. Even pharmacies Dope to sell. The power of Montevideo for tourists so appealing, although you are not allowed to buy as a foreigner Cannabis officially.”
marijuana Tours through Montevideo
Florencia, 26, stands on the Plaza Independencia, the Central square of Montevideo, dominated by the huge Mausoleum of José Artigas, Uruguay’s national hero who abolished already in 1830, the slavery, long before Brazil (1888) and the USA (1865). Around you citizens of the Joints Smoking in various forms and Strengths.
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The Salvo Palace and the Plaza Independencia
In the side streets of the city centre have opened up numerous shops with hemp products, hemp, fertilizer, hemp seeds, and even hemp Smoothies and Cannabis courts. Tourism offices are offering “marijuana Tours”. “This is our last great achievement,” says Florencia. “The first country in the world, we have legalized five years ago, marijuana.”
Florencia is doing a political Tour, takes you to the sites of liberalism in Uruguay, the smallest and most advanced country on the South American continent. She has lived both in Buenos Aires and in Montevideo. She is a sociologist as well as a tour guide. She is wearing light blue Jeans, a sky blue T-Shirt, sky blue sneakers, the national color.
President Pepe Mujica’s VW beetle
drove to the Plaza Independencia, it leads to the presidential Palace, a plain, functional building from the 60s, to the former state President Pepe Mujica with his ancient VW beetle and sandals arrived. Mujica was overturned in 2012, a ban on abortion and gay marriage won. “This combination – the legalization of abortion, gay marriage and Cannabis – is there anywhere else in Latin America,” says Florencia.
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a Little further, is the Parque Batlle is named after President Batlle y Ordónez, a Reformer who early in the 20th century. Century, state and Church separated, the work of protection granted, the right of divorce for women introduced, and also the right of women to vote.
“In all of this, we are ahead of Argentina,” says Florencia pride. The competition also permeates with her. Uruguay is also more secure, more stable, more friendly, less corrupt, less neurotic, she says – and it is such that those Who don’t want to lose the Faith in South America, in the midst of all the news of violence, crises and corruption, this is not quite correct.
Drive
Florencia can stroll through the old town from the neoclassical buildings. Behind each house on the corner of the Río de la Plata, which seems endless as the sea shimmers in the distance. Takes you through the parts of the city, where everything looks a little bit like Brooklyn – beards, fonts, cafes, vegan Restaurants, record shops. But the pace is different here, quieter. It happens to many green spaces that invite you to read. Museums, where admission is free of charge. Past works by the artist Joaquín Torres-García, the show the world the opposite: the southern hemisphere at the top. Argentina and Chile at the top, and the same including Uruguay.
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The Playa de los Pocitos is one of the most beautiful bays of Monte videos
It is an expression of the Self-consciousness of Uruguay, this “river of birds” as it is called in the language of the indigenous people, the Guaraní. The country in which 3.4 million people live, is half as large as Germany, but is ignored by its neighbours, like. Argentine is only for the beautiful beaches, which they have not themselves, and to create money that is eaten at home by the Inflation. Brazilians come to escape scandals or the hustle and bustle in the home. Tourists like to visit Haciendas of the old Gaucho life and the town of Colonia, a Unesco world heritage site, and Punta del Este, on the Atlantic ocean, where his Uruguay as Miami or nice. Especially you visit Montevideo.
More world titles than Spain
The capital city is ideal to Stroll and Discover. In many Places, one encounters reformers and pioneers, for example in Café Brasilero, where the writer Eduardo Galeano wrote his main work “The open veins of Latin America”.
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grill art: meat in the port market of Montevideo
Or, you pass the monumental Estadio Centenario, where in 1930 was held the first football world Cup, the Uruguay equal to won (4:2 against Argentina). Everyone here refers to the fact that the little Uruguay has so many world Cup titles won as the great Argentina, namely, two, and even a more than a conqueror nation, Spain.
With this self-consciousness of a liberal Uruguayan remains Florencia finally, reverently, in front of the Cathedral. But you do not pray. She says proudly: “We had an early separation of Church and state. Crucifixes were banned from state schools and hospitals. Today, there are just as many agnostics and atheists as Catholics – as in no other South American country.”
Why, she believes, is that so? She says: “to Whom it goes well, as in Uruguay, does not need so much, God.”
