Every Christmas and New Year the pop-up restaurant scene in La Pedrera gets better and better and what better way to enjoy this quirky, loveable beach town than to rent a family beach house through the delightful Martha Bello (www.lapedrera.com.uy) and get Francisco at La Pedrera Surf School (+598 99 872 813) to teach you and the kids how to balance on a board.
In 2013 President Pepe Mujica announced he was nationalizing the country's cannabis industry so stoners would have to buy weed from government suppliers. Until that kicks in, the country has 3,000 registered personal growers, so there's pots of it about.
Colonia del Sacramento is one of Latin America's best preserved colonial towns, attracting ferry-loads of day trippers from Buenos Aires. Escape the crowds by checking into Casa de los Limoneros (www.lacasadeloslimoneros.com) just outside town, where owners Mario and Sergio have created a veritable oasis planted with oleander and white agapanthus.
There are plenty of deserted beaches in Uruguay where nobody would know or care if you dropped your drawers, but if you fancy sharing your secrets, head over to Chihuahua beach outside Punta del Este for a spot of no-nonsense nudism.
Aaron Hojman is an inveterate collector and upcycler of all things abandoned and whimsical, as evidenced in his hip posada Casa Zinc (www.casazinc.com) in the chic beach town of La Barra. Take your time picking through the dusty, piled-high shelves of his nearby antiques shop the Trading Post. Last time I was there I unearthed a 1929 portrait of a magnificently mustachioed gaucho.
I guarantee you have never set eyes on anything so wonderfully offbeat as the Museo del Mar (www.museodelmar.com.uy) in the backstreets of La Barra. It's a life's labour of love by owner Pablo Etchegaray and packed to the rafters with marine skeletons, coral, old photographs, tins… and a stuffed dog. The kids will love it.
Argentine chef Francis Mallman transformed the tiny hamlet of Garzon with his hotel and restaurant, and British art dealer Martin Summer's house, Casa Anna (casaannagarzon.com), is the most beautiful in the village. And just outside town is Bodega Garzon (bodegagarzon.com) which produces wine and deliciously fruity virgin olive oil and will even arrange a hot-air balloon safari.
Argentina and Chile might be better known for their vineyards, but Uruguay produces some sensational wines, particularly tannat, from small-scale vineyards around Colonia del Sacramento, Montevideo and even Punta del Este. Ryan Hamilton at The Wine Experience (thewine-experience.com) will take you on a tasting tour of the best.
The vast meat-processing factories outside the town of Fray Bentos were recently declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, including buildings from the 1800s when it was The Liebig's Extract of Meat Company (which also built the Oxo Tower in London). In the 1920s it passed into British hands and as the Anglo Meat Packing Plant became famous for its tinned corned beef and steak-and-kidney pies. Now 'Barrio Anglo' is abandoned, an entire ghost town; alongside the empty slaughterhouses and factories a hospital, a school, social and football clubs and houses where the meatpackers once lived.
Saddle up at El Charabon (www.elcharabon.com), a charmingly rustic estancia set on 950-hectares of rolling pampas, just inland from the endless, dune-backed Atlantic coast. Round up cattle with Fernando the gaucho and his sons as his dogs chase rabbits and armadillos.