Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
COST
(UR$)
DESTINATION
DURATION (HR)
Colonia
115
1½
Mercedes
143
2
Montevideo
344
3½
Paysandú
344
5
Salto
516
7
TOP OF CHAPTER
Mercedes
POP 42,000
Capital of the department of Soriano, Mercedes is a livestock center with cobblestoned
streets and a small pedestrian zone around the 18th-century cathedral on the central Plaza
Independencia. The town's most appealing feature is its leafy waterfront along the south
bank of the Río Negro.
WORTH A TRIP
THE LITTLE BEEF CUBE THAT CIRCLED THE GLOBE
In 1865 the Liebig Extract of Meat Company located its pioneer South American
plant near the river town of Fray Bentos, 35km west of Mercedes. It soon became
Uruguay's most important industrial complex. British-run El Anglo took over oper-
ations in the 1920s and by WWII the factory employed 4000 people, slaughtering
cattle at the astronomical rate of 2000 a day.
Looking at the abandoned factory today, you'd never guess that its signature
product, the Oxo beef cube, once touched millions of lives on every continent. Oxo
cubes sustained WWI soldiers in the trenches, Jules Verne sang their praises in his
book Around the Moon,Stanley brought them on his search for Livingstone, Scott
and Hillary took them to Antarctica and Everest. More than 25,000 people from
more than 60 countries worked here, and at its peak the factory was exporting
nearly 150 different products, using every part of the cow except its moo.
A candidate for Unesco World Heritage status in 2014, the former factory is now
a museum - the
Museo de la Revolución Industrial
( 4562-3690;
museo.anglo@rionegro.gub.uy; admission UR$30, incl guided tour UR$50, free on Tue;
9:30am-5:30pm)
. Guided tours (10am and 3pm daily) grant access to the intricate
maze of passageways, corrals and abandoned slaughterhouses behind the mu-
