Uruguay

Simon Calder selects Uruguay as on one of the best places for "Latin Passion".

Font size isn't everything, but Uruguay's self-esteem may be challenged by the succession of travel guidebooks that shout "ARGENTINA" and follow up almost apologetically with "& Uruguay" in much smaller type. The nation (which, since you ask, is nine times the size of Wales, and 90th biggest in the world) seems destined to be merely an appendix to a trip to mighty, beautiful Argentina.

Which is how I first arrived. The ferry 'cross the Plate leaves every hour or so from a smart steel-and-glass terminal close to the centre of Buenos Aires. The Argentinian capital likes to parade its supremacy over the rest of South America, with some economic and cultural justification – and it remains the only capital on that continent with a direct flight to Britain. But in sporting terms? Well, the fast passenger ferry sails from a nation that has won football's World Cup twice to :a nation that has won football's World Cup twice.

The Channel might be murky, but it is nothing to compare with the liquid mud of the River Plate. And while the white cliffs of France frame the traveller's arrival in Calais or Boulogne, low-lying Uruguay creeps over the horizon sporting colours barely discernable from the estuary. But at the end of the 33-mile crossing, you clamber ashore to a nation out of time.

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