Articles > Uruguay and other Beach Rides

One could easily see Uruguay as the 'Ireland of South America.' Small by New World standards, and overshadowed by its neighbours, Brazil and Argentina, but with a healthy economy and politically stable. Its warm, humid climate ensures a green land of small farms and bigger cattle ranches. Whilst like Ireland - and this is the strange thing in a non-island country - Uruguay is almost totally surrounded by water. The nation's southern and western borders are the River Plate and River Uruguay, whilst the eastern most part of the Brazilian-Uruguayan border lies down the middle of the enormous Lake Merin.

Uruguay's coast, though, is its most impressive aquatic frontier. Hundreds of kilometers of strand running north to south from the Brazilian border to the River Plate. A strip of white sand running from the frothing turquoise and emerald sea up into meringue folds of dunes and, from there, back into deserted grasslands shaded by wind tousled trees. Keep heading further - much further - inland and you'll reach the Argentine pampas, and then the Andes, and finally the Pacific Ocean. Strike out in the other direction across the Atlantic heading east and the next stop would be Africa's Cape of Good Hope. I, on the other hand, turning neither east nor west was preparing to mount up to ride a horse down this sandy frontier between ocean and continent.

Valeria Ariza is a national level show jumper in her native Uruguay, a country that has produced top riders in fields as diverse as polo, show jumping and endurance. But as in the neighbouring lands Uruguayan horses are not just for leisure. Gauchos - cowboys - still ride horses to round up cattle, to rope steers and to drive herds of horses from pasture to pasture. Two years ago Valeria first began working with local coastal gauchos and their horses to put together what must, surely, be the world's longest beach ride.

I was squeezing a trip to Uruguay into a mere day and a half. "Are you used to riding?" asked Valeria, in perfect English, when I met her in the Montevideo office, "because if you're happy, I've asked Joselo, the gaucho who's horses I use, to take you on a highlights ride of some of the best of the week long trip in one day. It'll be fast and quite a bit of distance, but a lot of fun." I shrugged to indicate I'd do my best to keep up. "I wish I could ride with you, but..." she added, pointing at her stomach, "the next generation is on the way, very soon."

We drove out of Montevideo at dawn the next morning and into the country. Along the wide verges gauchos rode to work, their horses jog trotting under them, lassos looped from cantles, dogs at their heels. And for the two hundred kms drive there was a constant flashing of rich blues off to the right. A jade-hued haze spied distantly between hills at first. Then, from closer, slabs of sky-coloured waters glimpsed through the trees. And finally an unbroken line of sea tumbling in aquamarine waves onto cream sands as the road ran ever closer to the Atlantic shore.

We pulled into the sand dunes beyond La Coronilla. Twenty kilometers to the north lay Brazil. And thirty and more kilometers to the south lay lunch. Joselo Veiga stood holding two horses. His eleven year old son, Sebastian, sat on top of a third. Both had high boots, loose bombacha trousers, and fishermen's jerseys. Joselo wore the beret that gauchos across the Americas favour in windy locations. His thick red beard gave him the appearance of a Viking sailor. All three horses were local Criollos, with ram heads, wide chests, short, strong legs and hogged manes. The saddles were the flat gaucho recado of leather pads covered with sheepskins. The stirrups were simple metal circles. Rather than using leather straps the horses' tack was mainly rigged like boats with lengths of nylon rope, and fishing gut thonging.

Joselo, too, seemed as much sailor as horseman. Relieved that I spoke Spanish his initial reserve faded bit by bit as we waved goodbye to Valeria, and the three of us rode over the dunes and down onto the sands. His father, Joselo told me, was a fisherman with three boats. His father fished sharks for their oil rich livers but he, Joselo, preferred being on land, and breeding and breaking horses.

With distance to cover by lunchtime we had pushed into a fast paced trot. But rather than risen to in European fashion, the local way was to sit into the saddle with arms held a little out at the shoulders, flapping in time to the horses' pace to absorb the 'bounce' in a system that felt ungainly at first but proved to be remarkably relaxing as the coast fell away behind us.

The Criollos too proved themselves perfectly adapted to their seascape world, shuffling rapidly through the thicker dry sand, drumming out a sharp canter across the wet strand, ploughing un-slowed up the steep sides of dunes when we detoured inland, cantering through deep pools of water left by the retreating tide. And through it all hardly working up a sweat in the hot sun.

The sheer emptiness of the landscape was thrilling. It was as pure as the Dingle beach scenes from 'Ryan's Daughter.' The strip of white sand ran like a flat road ahead of us to where it turned around the next cape or inlet. And with the splash of water and the salt fish smell and the sharp breeze our zigzags across the beach felt like tacking in racing dinghies as much as riding. The wildlife, too, was maritime. Albatross and gulls wheeled ahead. "Sometimes we see whales close to the shore," Joselo said, "and turtles come onto the sands, and at the right time of the year there are lobos del mar." Lobos del Mar - 'sea wolves,' were apparently sea-lions.

Riding inland at one point we entered the Parque Nacional Santa Teresa which centered on a surreally formal estate with laid out gardens, Edwardian greenhouses, shaded walks and a stone battlemented fortress complete with moat and drawbridge.

Other surreal moments had come and gone through the morning. Once we overtook a moped puttering over the hard sands towards the shoreline, long fishing poles poked fore and aft, and a woman sitting on the pillion seat behind the man steering. In her lap she held a bright green parrot. Whilst further, on the most desolate stretch of beach, a distant figure, faint at first in the sea haze, solidified as we cantered closer until resolving into a lone woman in a skimpy bikini walking like a Vogue model down the deserted sands hours from anywhere.

Joselo filled me in on the other highlights of the ride that I would miss with only a day to ride in. At one point, he told me, the horses had to be waded across a wide estuary being led by boat. Whilst a detour inland took riders to see the worlds only forest of Ombu trees, so grotesquely swollen and twisted that they looked like a Disney cartoon woodland. And he talked happily of the many asados - bar-b-cues of meat - held in the evenings.

Talk of food spurred us onto Punta del Diablo - the Devil's Cape - where a small village built out of driftwood houses shark fishermen, horsemen and a summer's worth of surfers and artists. We brought our horses to mooring between a fleet of fishing boats pulled up on the sands. We had reached port. It had been a fleeting voyage along the Atlantic coast, but enough of a taster to make me want to return and make a longer passage by horse down the edge of Uruguay.

And if it had been a short, fast day for Joselo and I sitting on our comfortable sheepskin saddles, Sebastian riding shyly beside his father had covered the thirty kilometers or so bareback. The future of gaucho toughness seemed to be assured in Uruguay.

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