Category: Travel

Back in November, Brooke and I enjoyed our first trip south of the equator, spending a fantastic week in friendly Uruguay. In the spirit of that trip, we wanted to choose another destination for our vacation in 2006. The conditions were:

• Nobody we know has been there. Yet.
• It should be easily confused with another country (ie. Uruguay/Paraguay)
• It should be small enough that we could see a few different places in a week.

And we’ve found the perfect place. Slovenia. You see? It’s not yet on the tourist radar, at least for North Americans. George Bush made a famous gaffe (another one) where he mixed up the two countries of Slovenia and Slovakia. To give credit to poor W, it’s a common mistake. In 2004, Slovakia sent 602 kilograms (1,327 pounds) of misaddressed mail to Slovenia. And the entire country just surpassed the 2,000,000 population mark, making it smaller than the city I live in. In addition, the country spans many different types of terrain, from the Julian Alps in the north to the Adriatic in the southwest. The first of the former Yugoslav republics to declare independence, it has a robust economy, and joined the European Union in 2004. In fact, in contrast to researching our trip to Uruguay, this has been a breeze. The Slovenian government has numerous web sites for tourism and other information, and they are well-organized, attractive, impeccably-translated and full of useful information.

Though our trip isn’t until late September or early October, we’re already getting excited.

We got back today about noon, and have been unpacking, showering, sleeping and doing laundry all day. Hoping to get the rest of my pictures up on Flickr by the end of the weekend (all 400 or so!) and will try to edit my travel journal into something vaguely interesting for public consumption.

Did I mention that we came back to more than 10cm of snow? After a full week of plus 30°C weather? Yuk.

P.S. The photo is one of my favourites, and I’m hoping to write something about Uruguay’s football culture for the excellent site The Global Game soon. Watch for it!

Having a wonderful time. I’m beginning to post some of our Uruguay photos over on Flickr. Have a look.

Just for fun!

Though we’ve been planning for quite a while, I haven’t mentioned yet that we’ll be spending a week in Uruguay beginning this Friday. We chose Uruguay for several reasons. Back in 2002, I read a fascinating article about this virtually-unknown place in National Geographic Traveler magazine, and that stuck in my head. And last year, my company began representing a winery from Uruguay (which is known for a full-bodied wine called Tannat). Finally, since both Brooke and I have only ten days of vacation per year, we wanted to pick somewhere small enough to explore in a week. As an added bonus, we were able to use airline points accumulated over the past two Christmasses (my company gives us points as gifts!) to purchase what would have been very expensive tickets.

We leave on Thursday and fly to Miami, where we have an eight-hour layover. Then we take a night flight to Buenos Aires, and then the short hop to Montevideo. I’m hoping to be able to blog while we’re away, but I must say, once again, God Bless the Internets. There is very little tourist information available in English about Uruguay, but through a great site called Virtual Tourist, we were able to make contact with several Uruguayans who were gracious enough to offer to show us around. We’re even planning to take in a football match, hopefully in the historic Estadio Centenario, where the first World Cup matches were played in 1930, and where, just this past weekend, Uruguay defeated Australia 1-0 in the first leg of their playoff for a spot in the World Cup finals in Germany next year. (16/11/05 UPDATE: This morning, Australia beat Uruguay in the return leg 4-2 in penalty kicks after the match ended 1-0 for the Australians. So, I hope the country isn’t too gloomy during our visit.)

The internet was also instrumental in helping us plan a short escape from the Miami Airport on Thursday afternoon. We arrive around 3:00pm and leave again at 11:00pm, so our options were limited, but we’ve decided to take a cab to Ocean Drive, stopping at the News Cafe for some food before joining a walking tour of the Art Deco district put on by the Miami Design Preservation League. The tour should end by 8:00pm, giving us plenty of time to get back to the airport.

I’m very excited to be travelling to some places I haven’t been before, and Brooke and I have even been taking Spanish classes in preparation. One interesting hiccup, though, is that in Uruguay, the common “ll”, which is pronounced “y” everywhere else in Latin America, becomes “zh”. This should make our language adventures even more interesting.

Wikipedia entry on Uruguay

Virtual Tourist pages on Uruguay