Better or Worse: Uruguay edition

Mate gourds at a feria artesanal in Colonia del Sacramento

As outlined in the previous post, Uruguay was a bit disorienting for us with its alternating crowds and emptinesses, its laidback beach culture across the street from hustling highrises and office buildings, its similarities to cousin Argentina and its stark points of departure. Picking up our old habit of documenting the small things that count, we here list all things better or worse.

Uruguay

empty streets and tall sky

Newly aware that my time left in South America is short, I want to make the most of what´s remaining. Which means: traveling. Hillary and I crossed the mouth of the Rio de la Plata on a midnight ferry, a three hour ride that landed us in a little town called Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It was 3:30 in the morning when we arrived, and we asked the security guard at the port whether walking the five blocks to our hostel was a good idea. He told us, beaming, that Colonia was the safest place in the world. So we set off, took a wrong turn or two, consulted some drunken boys riding bikes slowly through the empty quiet streets and then a more helpful map in our Lonely Planet, before coming upon a singular vision. Three figures walking through a plaza lit with the orange glow of street lights bouncing off an overcast night sky, wearing white plastic hockey masks like serial killers in movies, dressed in clumpy, cotton-studded white tunics and metallic leggings. Sheep headed home from a late Carvaval celebration I assumed. They gestured to one another animatedly, silently, the sheep did, their woolen hoods bobbing together as they crossed the street in front of us. In that hazy light of the madrugada*, walking off our sea legs, Hillary and I froze in a terrifying hallucinatory minute. Finally I raised a hand and waved at one of the holey white masks that glanced toward us. The sheep waved back and all of their eyes found us and somehow I knew they smiled beneath the plastic at our anxiously amused and exposed faces.

street paint II

Corner in Palermo Soho.

I’ve continued my collection of street art locations. Here are some of my new found favorites.

green spaces

Parque las Heras, corner of Cnel. Diaz and Avenida Las Heras

The green spaces of this city are its sanity. Officey people take their lunches here, closing their eyes and tilting their heads back in the sun. The city’s cat population sets the tone for sun napping, gathering here during the days that are beginning to cool – too sticky and long a month ago but now breezy and bright. I counted 17 cats during a 45-minute walk through Jardin Botanico once.

q+a: tap water quality

Our favorite cafe, Origen, which offers vegetarian food and serves agua de canilla promptly, with a bucket of ice. Corner of Peru and Humberto Primero.

q.  How is the water quality down in Argentina (thinking of Mexico) ?*

a.  I was expecting to be brushing my teeth with bottled water, also thinking of Mexico, but surprisingly the water is potable. It actually tastes better than some of the tap water I’ve had in Texas.

Restaurants, cafes, bars, however, don’t give you tap water. They get you to buy it in bottles. When we first got here, that was cool. 6 pesos for a bottle of water, no problem. But we’ve gotten cheap. Really cheap. For example, if Hillary owes me 5 pesos, I’ll remind her that she owes me 5 pesos. That’s, like, US$1.29. So 6 pesos (that’s US$1.56) for a bottle of water? No thank you. Our alternative, of course, is to specifically ask for tap water. This is trickier than you might think.

Americans in South America

colorful streets in San Telmo

Liliana, Mike´s mom, sent us off with a book called The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton. It´s a collection of essays inspired by the author´s personal travels and the lives of itinerant artists and writers. De Botton writes, “What we find exotic [read: what possesses our imaginations; what allures us] abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home… [In our love of another culture] one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.”

oh, to be humbled

our bus

Hi everyone, I apologize for allowing karen to give all the updates, but I mean, I think Im right when I say that she just tells the story sooooo well.  :)

Anyhow, I wanted to share a story.

Our new apartment is conveniently located half a block from bus 111 which picks up every 5 minutes and seems to always be going to the area of town that we need to go to. Its wonderful and I can’t get over how much I love taking buses around town.   Last Friday I was trying to figure out how to take the 111 bus home from teaching in the morning.  I found the stop but was all turned around and didn’t know if i was on the right side of the street so I decided to ask one of the innocent bystanders if they knew which direction the bus was going.  I mustered up the best spanish I knew, which generally speaking is MUCH improved from a month ago (or so I thought).  I said something like, “Sabes cual direccion este colectivo….eh??”  The Argentine woman looked all flustered and responded by saying “No fala Portugues!!”

No fala Portugues?? (I don’t speak Portuguese)

I mean, come on, is my Spanish that bad? Guess so.  It’s good to be humbled every now and then.

Necesisto mas clases de espanol!

Luján

View of basilica from hotel balcony.

The town is pretty much known for one thing: a statue called Our Lady of Lujan. So the story goes like this. In 1662 a lonely Catholic in an Argentine frontier town asked a friend in Europe to send a statue of the Virgin. The friend, just to be nice, sent two. On the way inland, through Argentina, the wagon carrying the two statues got stuck. Or maybe the horses didn’t want to walk anymore. This part of the story is fuzzy. Anyway, when one of the statues was removed – the one of the immaculate conception – the wagon could once again move forward. So they left the one statue in Lujan and took the other statue on to its destination. The statue left behind became Our Lady of Lujan, protecting the community from the indian raids of the colonial days and even performing a few miracles over the centuries.

further proof of carniverous porteños

Window shopping in Puerto Madero.

I told you so. The above is an average view into the window of any parrilla, the restaurants specializing in grilled meat which are as populous as pigeons on these porteño streets. These little piggies are getting toasty for someones dinner, but not mine. I feel leeched of vitamins and the things that come from colorful food, so I´ve been searching out fruit and veggie vendors like the one below.

street paint

The Real Mr Mustacio (I know you´re worrying that I´ve offended Mike, but don´t. He´s already admitted defeat.) Corner of Balcarce and Carlos Calvo.

I like to see paint on the streets. It turns dusty concrete walls into magic scripts. It envisions the surfaces of our urbanity with a functional alternative to providing the boundary between business and street. (Which is boring.) Paint tells a story. It layers on. It peels and fades. It becomes subject to its surroundings. Its surroundings become subject to it. It makes walking much more interesting.

From what I´ve gathered, Buenos Aires has a pretty active street paint culture. [See recent article in NYT, which points to graffitimundo, a company that gives tours.] My neighborhood, San Telmo, does pretty well for itself. Lately, I´ve been choosing my routes according to the walls I´m friendly with.