Beckerman himself owns 100 head of cattle and he says a lot of the country's 3.5 million population have an interest in cattle.

But agriculture was an interest that only came later in life for the globe-trotting Beckerman.

With a surf board under his arm, Beckerman left Uruguay in 1977 after the military came to power.

'As a young man you need a sport to stay fit mentally and physically and surfing saved my life. Being out in the ocean you could not get involved in nasty things like politics,' he says.

His global surf safari took him to some of the world's great breaks in Hawaii, the west coast of the United States and Bali in Indonesia and he was amongst the second generation of surfers to take on the previously uncharted breaks along the South American and Mexican coasts.

He eventually arrived in Canada and got married, but at the age of just 24, Beckerman took on an epic six-month trip traveling overland from Alaska to Uruguay, a journey that took him across most of North and South Americas.

He says the experience made him aware of the diverse cultural influences that make up the continent.

'Uruguay is a transplanted culture. We are Europeans transplanted into the country and growing up, my awareness was all about Europe, my parents sent me to a French school,' he says. 'I knew nothing about South America or its culture so I wanted to get to know my continent.'

Beckerman returned to Canada where he studied international relations and lived for 26 years. For many years he ran a successful telecommunications company that set up cable television across the South and Central Americas.

He was appointed Uruguay's honorary consul general in Canada in 1994, a position he says allowed him to give back to a country that had offered shelter to his Jewish descendants during World War II.