Estancia La Aurora, Uruguay's UFO Ranch

Estancia La Aurora is a working cattle ranch on the banks of the Río Daymán, off Route 3 near the Salto–Paysandú border — about twenty minutes south of Salto city, a few kilometres beyond Termas del Daymán. Since the mid-1970s it has been at the centre of Uruguay's most famous unexplained-phenomena story, often compared to Roswell or Argentina's Cerro Uritorco.

It began with two precisely dated events. On the night of 3 March 1976, an old ombú tree on the property was found burning, pierced by a large hole, with scorched marks in the surrounding grass and dead animals nearby — on a night of clear skies, which made a lightning strike hard to sustain. Then, in the early morning of 17 February 1977, the estancia's owner, Ángel María “Toto” Tonna, reported an intensely luminous object descending over the corral during milking: a dog was found burned, a prize Normandy bull died, sheep were scorched, fences were cut, the generator was damaged — and the city of Salto lost electricity for hours.

Witnesses over the years — the Tonna family, farm workers, and visiting journalists and researchers — have described lights so intense they hurt the eyes, circular scorch marks in the pasture, toppled eucalyptus trees, and objects seen not only at night but also in broad daylight. The story that Neil Armstrong visited the estancia is the most repeated of the legends the place has gathered: Tonna said he came, and Armstrong's office answered in 2008 that it had no record of it.

Uruguay is one of the few countries in the world with an official government body dedicated to the subject: the Air Force's CRIDOVNI commission. Its official position is that the known cases can be explained by atmospheric phenomena, natural causes or human action — yet its own officials have described the area's reports as unusually intriguing, and the mystery has never been put fully to rest.

The estancia is a private working ranch and does not open to visitors. The shrine on its land does. The Gruta del Padre Pío, built in 1987, is 13 km from the city on the Camino Tierras Coloradas, off Route 3 near the Daymán bridge, and it is open 24 hours a day.

The last stretch is on foot, a long walk past signs with phrases of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. At the end, the image of the saint stands behind a grille, and people leave flowers, candles and written notes. It draws pilgrims from across the region, and more of them every year.

It is a place of prayer first. Voices low, no music. It is also where the lights are seen at night, and they have been seen by day too.

The shrine exists because of Ángel María “Toto” Tonna, the owner of La Aurora and the man at the centre of the 1976 and 1977 events. He built it to keep a promise to a Capuchin friar who had been his spiritual adviser. By his own account, written years later, a vision on 8 January 1987 showed him the exact spot. The shrine stands on the edge of the property, on land the family went into debt to buy.

Two Argentine sculptors, Guillermo Beckes and María de las Mercedes Schoenemann, moved into the estancia to make the statue. They worked in the milking shed, with clay from the banks of the Daymán, and modelled a young Padre Pío about 2.5 metres tall. The shrine was inaugurated on 25 May 1987, the day the friar would have turned 100, with the bishop of Salto, Carlos Nicolini, present.

Nicolini died the following year, and the bishops who came after him discouraged visits. Only in 2007 did the diocese say Mass at the grotto again. It now does so twice a year, on 25 May and 23 September. The family has turned down offers for the land and the statue, and there is still nothing to pay. The longer story, with its sources, is in my Journal: Estancia La Aurora: Uruguay's UFO Ranch.