Llegada en Montevideo

Morning arrival to clear blue skies and high temperatures in Montevideo. I immersed myself in cultural experiences from the word go, visiting McDonald's to get change for the bus.

Montevideo feels quite like a large Spanish city of twenty years ago, and I don't just mean the climate, although I can see why it appealed to conquistadores wanting to pillage but needing the familiar temperature ranges of home.

There is faded grandeur but with occasional snazzy touches. I don't think I've been to any other country, including in Europe, where my UK passport chip can be read at an electronic control gate. The machine recognised which flight I'd arrived on, the gates opened and sent me on my way without so much as a passport stamp. Plus the electronic gates functioned, not at the 25% success rate of London airports. Grateful for no visa stamp as both of my passports are getting rather full and it's a dicey strategy to try to guide officials to stamp in the most space-saving place. Note to fellow blippers: don't try it in Singapore. She threw a withering 'I'm going to arrest you if you say one more word as we might pretend we are progressive but really we're a police state' look and peevishly occupied the most space that she could.

I think this is the most southerly point in the world that I've ever travelled. I've just been squinting at Swaziland on the map, and this looks like a higher latitude. Washing up in a middling sort of hotel, I've been reflecting on how travelling tastes and norms change over the years. I have only been to South America once before, to Bolivia and Peru in 2005, but also backpacked from Mexico to Panama just over ten years ago with my friend Andy. Both of those trips were utterly shoestring.

Being more financially secure and having limited time are two clear reasons not to want to totally put myself through the budget traveller mill this time. I remember one hideous hotel in Mexico where we found clumps of hair under the beds and what appeared to be blood smears on the bathroom walls. The owner said he'd kept domestic animals in there. In a dorm room, also in Mexico, a Polish guy brought a lover back to his top bunk and the next morning boasted about his prowess. Yes, we'd experienced the live audio show.

Despite being happier these days to buy a drink when thirsty other than risk falling into a dehydrated trance, there remain some familiar comforts, such as the pathological objection to trusting taxi drivers. I've spent most of the day in the sun, exploring Montevideo on foot. It's a relaxed, spacious city and known to be a relative beacon of safety amongst capitals in the region.

I slumbered on the grass next to the Estadio Centenario, built in 1930 to commemorate the first ever football World Cup, held in and won by Uruguay. Bizarrely a huge parking lot near the stadium is overrun by all of Montevideo's driving instructors, with dozens of learners simultaneously practising their parallel parks between cones.

Wandering around the presence of maté is ubiquitous, and people clutch a flask of hot water and a small cup (originally would have been a gourd) crammed with maté (a species in the holly family) leaves that they periodically add water to and squelch down to make an infusion that is sipped constantly.

The smell of pot is also ubiquitous as personal consumption has been legalised in Uruguay. A very short man who talked to me on the street asked if I wanted to go to the shop with him to buy some, and was at pains to explain that Uruguayans are still anti hard drugs, even though he reckons 80% of citizens smoke weed now. No doubt he doesn't want the country to get an unfair reputation as a haven for hard drug use. Reports decades ago of the cocaine trade in Colombia have affected that country's reputation immensely, and a new positive association with Colombia must be cultivated, as by all accounts it has masses to offer visitors. The short man also tried to convince me that the Foo Fighters are playing in Montevideo tonight and that the city is excited. Google does not back this up.

I ran out of energy early, probably after getting too sun-soaked, and have collapsed on the hotel bed, grateful for no blood, copulating couples or foreign hair invading my space.

The picture is of the statue of General Artigas, Uruguay's national hero, in la Plaza Independencia. He's generally credited with wresting what was to become Uruguay from Spanish control (although that led to many ongoing shenanigans between Uruguay and Argentina).