Qualla: Minas https://qualla.com/minas-uruguay en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:57 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/c/b/s/minas-uruguay-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Minas https://qualla.com/minas-uruguay Minas: Introduction https://qualla.com/minas-uruguay/ Photo credit Roxyuru, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pour a glass of mineral water almost anywhere in Uruguay and there is a good chance it came from a spring in the hills above Minas. This is unusual company for a town of its size: a quiet provincial capital, tucked between the ranges of southern Lavalleja where Routes 8 and 12 cross, that nonetheless supplies the country's most famous bottled water and gave Uruguay one of the leaders of its independence. Minas does not announce itself the way the coast does. It sits inland among the sierras, framed by the wooded basins of the Arroyo San Francisco and Arroyo Campanero, and its drama is the slow kind, written into rock that is over a hundred million years old and into festivals that fill its little stadium twice a year.

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/c/b/s/minas-uruguay-wp/6cbs-minas-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Minas: Spanish Families and the Zones of the Mines https://qualla.com/minas-uruguay/ Photo credit Rodrigo uy, CC BY-SA 3.0. The town carries mining in its name, though its real harvest turned out to be water and stone. The idea was first floated in 1753 by José Joaquín de Viana, the governor of Montevideo, who wanted a settlement in what he called the zones of the mines and commissioned Rafael Pérez d...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/c/b/s/minas-uruguay-wp/6cbs-minas-spanish-families-and-the-zones-of-the-mines.mp3 0:06 2 full Minas: The Water of the High Stones https://qualla.com/minas-uruguay/ Photo credit Gigoma, CC BY-SA 3.0. Just southwest of town, the Parque Salus shelters the spring that made the name Salus a Uruguayan household word. A group of entrepreneurs acquired the land in 1892 and began bottling water from the source in 1902; more than a century later, Salus remains the country's leading mi...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/c/b/s/minas-uruguay-wp/6cbs-minas-the-water-of-the-high-stones.mp3 0:06 3 full Minas: The Hero and the Hill That Honors Him https://qualla.com/minas-uruguay/ Photo credit Roxyuru, CC BY-SA 3.0. Minas is the birthplace of Juan Antonio Lavalleja, the revolutionary who helped wrest Uruguay free during its independence struggle and whose name the surrounding department now bears. At the eastern edge of town, Cerro Artigas lifts a park crowned by an equestrian statue of José...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/c/b/s/minas-uruguay-wp/6cbs-minas-the-hero-and-the-hill-that-honors-him.mp3 0:06 4 full Minas: Pilgrims, Waterfalls, and Serra Country https://qualla.com/minas-uruguay/ Photo credit Rodrigo uy, CC BY-SA 3.0. The land around Minas rewards anyone willing to leave the grid. On Verdún Hill stands the National Sanctuary of Our Lady of Verdún, a pilgrimage shrine that draws the devout from across Uruguay. Sixteen kilometers east, the Parque Salto del Penitente hides a tall waterfall in the...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/c/b/s/minas-uruguay-wp/6cbs-minas-pilgrims-waterfalls-and-serra-country.mp3 0:06 5 full