Having little idea of what I will encounter I took a bus from Salto, Uruguay to Fray Bentos which I planned as a stop on the way to Montevideo. After 4,5 hours I arrived in Fray Bentos at about 10 in the morning. I took my whole backpack to the street corner opposite of bus terminal as there are no lockers in the terminal. After 45 minutes, at about quarter to 11 a.m., a public bus full of pensioners arrived and took me in a huge detour in 35 minutes to Barrio Anglo which is named after the factory and equals the WHS. Near to the former factory gate there is a newly built air conditioned visitor center with clean lavatory, small lockers, fancy information tablets, timelines and screens and some helpful employees that informed me nicely about what to see and later also called me a taxi back to the terminal. I placed my backpack on top of the lockers trusting the employees that it was safe and made my way to the Museum of the Industrial Revolution which is located in an old factory building next to the landmark fridge storage building. Despite the name the museum covers only the history and background information about the factory and not so much about anything else. I found the museum really interesting and together with my good friend Google Translator I managed to understand a lot of the Spanish on the signs. Most interesting I found the fact that the advertisement for the stock cubes that were produced in the factory was seen as revolutionary as they were the first product that were used to get the "wife more time outside the kitchen". Also really interesting is the historical meaning of the beef cubes which were an important and much appreciated nutrition of the soldiers in WW1. When I got it right even Jules Verne let his fictious space travellers take an OXO beef cube from Fray Bentos with them in one of his books. Additionally the many different workers from the factory coming from countries all over the planet and there tremendous meaning for the factory were highlighted in the museum.

After the visit inside I walked along the factory territory outside having a look at the different industrial buildings around. Really nice is an outside photo gallery that shows pictures being made in times from when the factory was still running without any censorship. Most shocking for me was the picture of the cattle that had just died and was bleeding out together with it´s compagnions on one of the hooks in the slaughterhall. Only a few meters further I was standing right in this slaughterhall still with a lot of the original equipment that had their last duty in the 1970s. This was really a moment where I thought about my consumption of meat as I´m always happy to suppress the part of life between the cattle on the meadow and the steak on the plate. 

After three hours of walking through the factory territory and visiting the museum (it´s no far distances there) I made it back to the visitor center and caught the taxi for the 4 p.m. bus which took me to Montevideo. On my way to Buenos Aires I will surely make a stop in Colonia for the other Uruguayan WHS before taking the ferry back to Argentina.

General remark to Uruguay: It´s really expensive. Even buying my usual dishes in the supermarket is more expensive than in Germany. No cheap holiday country unfortuantely as it would be nice to stay longer.