Needless to say it was the name that drew us to this place. Even though we're here I find it difficult to believe that the town, home to the original "frigorifico", or meat-rendering and cold-storage plant, exists. We had expected an industrial setting, the South American equivalent of Bolton or Hartlepool, but we couldn't have been more wrong. The town is a delight. It is laid out along the banks of the river Uruguay, there are palm trees and willows everywhere and there is even a replica of the Crystal Palace bandstand in the middle of the main square, a gift from the old factory to the town.
We arrived at lunchtime and the place was deserted, with only a faint melody from a radio to disturb the tranquilo on which Uruguay prides itself. Saturday night was a different matter. You may think you go mad for it in Manchester or Brighton, but they do it just as well in Fray Bentos.
The main street is transformed into a huge dining hall, where couples and groups, old and young, sit out and enjoy their own equivalent of the craic. Just to complete the feeling of well-being, the cars stop for pedestrians and most drivers wear seatbelts, practices that tend to be frowned upon elsewhere in South America. Although Fray Bentos pies live on, the meat factory closed 20 years ago. We decided to take a tour of the old site, run by a woman called Diana, who has the most remarkably specialist English vocabulary covering the minutiae of the mass slaughter of anything with four legs.
We now know more than anyone could ever need to know about the production of meat in Uruguay. The plant was founded in and was originally German-owned, feeding their troops during the First World War, before being sold to the British in and enjoying a heyday during the Second World War, when it supplied meat to the Allies. At this time "throughput", as Diana put it, was 6, animals a day and every bit of the cow was used.
Among the by-products was corned beef. It's an eerie place to wander around, with huge, voluminous slaughterhouses, gates swinging on the wind and derelict mess halls. The canteen still works and turns out a good pasta dish, apparently, but no tinned pies. Unesco has given World Heritage status to far less.
