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.

Hillary straight chillin on the roof (that's what Mike would say)

Better than Buenos Aires

- Great beaches. We got back to the sun after spending all summer closeted in humid Buenos Aires which lacks swimmable bodies of water. While at the beach we spotted a band on the back of a truck that drove along with a gathering audience/parade along the beach road. Very very cool. +10

- Palermo Art Hostel in general: 1) basement with bar and cool experimental latin rock bands at night; 2) roof featuring hammocks, adjacency to residence of rooftop Beatles guitarist, and amazing views of Montevideo; and 3) great girl culture – we met travelers from Canada, Britain, Argentina, Mexico and Oregon. +16, cause homebase counts

- Genuine neighborhood friendliness that Hillary and I haven’t experienced since the howdy honks on Texas highways. +4

- The city is perfectly walkable. Because our hostel was centrally located, the farthest point of interest was no further than 30 blocks, which is no big deal (especially coming from Buenos Aires). +4 because we prefer to walk (good thing since Hill and I have both sold our cars back stateside……)

in Montevideo

- More awesome street art. +13

- Old cars were EVERYWHERE – old vintage cars that have been kept up over the decades because import taxes are so high. The mechanics here are good. +4

- We finally got to see a piece of Carnaval. Very entertaining, if indecipherable. +8

Hillary and our new friend Violeta on the colectivo en route to the Murgas

Worse than not having monedas* for the colectivo in BA

- Mike didn’t come  -7 cause he majorly missed out and we majorly missed him

- Bus fares were UR$17 (approx. US$1), 400% higher than transportation in Argentina. -2

- We really wanted to rent bikes to cruise along the beach road, but our plans were foiled by Sunday and then a national holiday, both of which do not respect the needs of tourists. -4 for the missed opportunity

- Uruguayan choripan (called chorizo) did not live up to its porteno cousin. Watery dill relish is no substitute for delicious chimmichurri. -3

- We heard tell of the Chilean earthquake, which we selfishly lament for its effects on our travel plans and flight schedules. -6 (But really, this is a huge tragedy for the country. Check out photos of the aftermath here, and donate to the relief effort if you can.)

+59 -22 = a pretty good time

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.

The winning party´s flag waved all over the city on the day of the president´s inauguration.

The remaining three days of our time in Uruguay was similarly exhilarating if less extraordinary. We took a bus to Montevideo where we discovered that it was a holiday weekend – quiet, empty, the city only to be found on the beaches, in the heladerias*, and at a Sunday feria* that we wandered. It seemed more like a garage sale – souvenirs like mate gourds and hand-woven bracelets were lined up on crowded tables next to watch batteries, men´s underwear, electrical wire, antique china, fruit and DVDs. The feria stretched through the gridded streets of a 16-block area of the city, and it seemed as if the entire population had come out to buy their week´s produce and see what else they could dig up. Every group wandering through the crowds had a designated mate handler: gourd in grasp, a thermos tucked under elbow, mate and sugar hidden away in a leather pouch over the shoulder. The gourd would pass hand to hand and back again for a refill from the thermos, the ritual bringing a sense of calm and order to the labyrinthian chaos of the streets.

People watching at Playa Pocitas

We met a porteño* student of photography who had come to document the final days of Carnival. She rounded up a group of us who were staying at the lovely Palermo Art Hostel, and we crossed Montevideo on the final night of summer to watch the murgas, groups of a capella singers dressed in lavish costumes whose songs are studded with rowdy political humor indecipherable by our rudimentary Spanish. Hundreds of people filled the velodrome, their laughter and their children sliding down the sloped walls of the outdoor theater on flattened cardboard boxes. We bought beers in plastic cups and chorizos (Uruguay´s choripan) wrapped in paper towels that soon became soaked with grease. Violeta, our porteño friend, wandered close to the stage snapping pictures and the rest of our group – Canadians, Brits, and we Texans – speculated on the meaning of the lyrics based on our understanding of every 10th word. The skits and songs seemed to be particularly pointed toward the events of the following day – March 1, a national holiday and the inauguration of a new president, which coincided with Hilary Clinton´s visit to the country.

members of a murga, performing

Velodrome sledding

I was disappointed to leave, dreading the three-hour ferry ride back to Buenos Aires. But through a series of lucky circumstances featuring our lack of a time-telling device and poor understanding of frantic Spanish, we ended up being herded through customs and down a gangplank onto a speedier ferry which made the crossing in one hour instead of the three. And because we gained an hour in going back to Argentina, we actually arrived in BA before we were supposed to have left Uruguay. This and the sheep and the simultaneously full and empty streets – It all left me with the impression that there was something quite magical about Uruguay, and I wish to know more of it.

I read that Uruguayan mechanics are among the best in the world. They have a booming business because import taxes on cars are so high in the country.

Corner in Palermo Soho.

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

Trash can found in San Telmo, on Humberto Primo between Defensa and Paseo Colon.

Mosaics in Palermo, close to Plaza Serrano.

My new favorite, the Zebra Lady. On Bolivar between Carlos Calvo and Humberto Primo.

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.

Plaza el Lector

The architecture is the scenery, rising around the mounds of grass, encasing each plaza in a tight block of activity and brick, reminding you that the grass beneath your feet grows within bounds and the city will subsume you once again.

Plaza Emilio Mitre, on Avenida Puerreydon in Recoleta

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.

First, you have to remember how to ask for it. Me gustaria un vaso de agua de la canilla por favor. Literally: I would like a glass of faucet water please. It took us weeks to remember the word canilla, coming up with all sorts of alternatives in the moment that counts. We’ve unwittingly asked waiters for vainilla (vanilla), costilla (rib or pork chop), castaño (chestnut), and calleja (sidestreet). But even once we began to consistently remember the word, we still have had trouble getting our point across. Waiters seem biased against tap-water-drinkers. There are several methods they employ to avoid serving it. I will list them here.

1) Act stupid. If el mozo (the waiter) thinks he can get away with it (meaning, he thinks your Spanish is bad enough), he’ll pretend he has no idea what you’re talking about and laugh, telling you you’re speaking gibberish.

2) Force your hand. El mozo will bring you bottled water anyway, making you shell out your pesos by opening the bottle in front of you and pouring it into a glass before you can protest.

3) Forget and ignore. No explanation needed.

Even when we’re successful in obtaining free tap water, however, there are tokens of resentment hidden in the waiter’s act of compliance. They generally relate to the following:

1) Delay. This category applies to all glasses served 20+ minutes after your request.

2) Volume. You are stiffed. Your water glass is only 20-45% full.

If we were smart, we might begin to accept that it’s likely not good manners to order agua de canilla in Argentina. But no, we’ll probably continue. I mean, it’s become kind of a game for us to weedle it out of the waiter or see what lengths they’ll go to avoid delivering it.

* Question taken from comment section of this blog. If you’d like to audition your question for its own post, go ahead.

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.”

One of my own impetuses for coming to South America was, simply, to leave the United States behind. Sure, there were other reasons to come to Argentina, but Spain or Mexico may have done just as well. I thought, months ago and rather guiltily, that I wanted to escape. What? I wasn´t sure. I knew the list must include the push toward the dreaded life plan and the building expectation – live to work! – that pervades even the young social circle I was part of in Austin. The overtime clocked by even the least motivated of us. The guilt at taking a day off for the fun of it. The anxiety produced by the prospect of being ten minutes late. I was distancing myself from this even before I left, dumping my office job for the Austin art scene. I wanted to leave behind the US clock, rushing by, counting off seconds that should be spent more productively, suggesting guilt just by their passing. For me, that´s what it all added up to: guilt. Guilt for wanting to take a nap. Guilt for not having a plan.

view of San Telmo through the window of a conference room that hosted an interview.

I remember, joltingly, a conversation I had on a restless day, one of the last as I counted down until high school graduation, until my exodus from my childhood playpen – the endlessly familiar streets and homes belonging not to me but to my parents and the parents of my friends, where there was nothing else that I wanted to discover. I was in physics. Mr Kahlig knew what I was thinking, and knew that the whole class was thinking it, and had left off some theoretical explanation on why holes can’t exist and had succumbed to his favorite topic – his Z Coil tennis shoes – in a chat with a grade-digger in the front row. I was talking with a friend about the imminence of the future, a starry slide show of illusions clicking rapidly through my brain, when the topic turned to study abroad – Italy? or Madrid? My friend said to me: “Why would you want to leave this country? It’s the best in the world.” I was shocked, and I still am, that in one sweeping moment it could be possible to establish your only experience as the only one that could – or should – matter.

No, Argentina isn’t perfect. I have been frustrated continuously, daily, in my search for a job. One man who interviewed both Mike and I for a position denied me even the dignity of rejection, emailing Mike with the explanation that “women aren’t considered for this teaching post.” Another man hired me, asked me to select a curriculum at a local English bookstore, then ignored all of my follow-up emails. Another person, who enlisted me to be his tutor, told me after the first meeting that he would be on vacation for two weeks and would be back in touch. Six weeks later and I haven’t heard from him. Our Spanish teacher, Silvina, tells us that Argentinians don’t like saying no, they like to delay the inevitable or avoid it altogether. We miss the US job search, straightforward in its disappointments.

the lights of Puerto Madero

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!

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.

Las virgencitas

So, pretty cool statue, right? From what we gather from the story, this statue must be pretty large and heavy if it could slow down the horses. Must have some pretty magical powers for fending off indians. Must be pretty impressive since a 350 ft church, sanctified as a basilica by a pope in the 19th century, was built as the statue’s shrine. Three hundred fifty feet. Now, this town is smallish. There’re no fancy theaters, bustling economic districts, or prestigious art museums. In other words, no notable architecture and no building taller than 2 stories. Except for Our Lady’s home. It towers over the entire city, its orangey stones glow against the sky of the Pampas. So yeah, it’s pretty impressive. It’s not just another building. It’s the #1 pilgrimage site in all of South America, La Capital de la Fe (The Capital of Faith). There’s even a well attended procession on foot from Buenos Aires once a year. People walk from Buenos Aires to Lujan, an 18 hour trek, all in honor of Our Lady. Wow.

You really get a sense of scale here.

Okay, okay, it sounds pretty cool. So Mike and I decided to check it out last week. Bus to Plaza de Mayo; subway to Plaza Once; train to Moreno; second train to Luján; bus from station to city center. Total traveling time: 3.5 hours. Total time inside the church searching for Our Lady until we realized she was just that little doll-sized thing by the confessional: 15 minutes. 14 inches tall. Underwhelming. The trinkets (called virgencitas, little virgins) sold in the plaza were almost as big. However, all was not lost. Mike and I enjoyed seeing the church, which was beautiful and had funny (sometimes scary) gargoyles perched on the facade. We were somewhat shocked by the friendliness of people who inhabit a slower, kinder existence than those of us in Buenos Aires. We counted 43 stray dogs. I was able to conduct a rather complicated conversation with the ticket salesman at the bus station in Spanish without embarrassment or mishap. We found a hotel that was cheaper than any hostel we patronized in Brazil. And that was the end of our pilgrimage to Lujan.

Dogs, everywhere.

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.

At the San Telmo Mercado, corner of Carlos Calvo y Bolivar.

The last time I went, I walked away with:

4 duraznos (peaches)
3 nectarinas (nectarines)
medio kilo de uvas blancas (green grapes)
4 bananas
5 tomates
1 palta (avocado)
lechuga de manteca (butter lettuce)
1 mango

… all for the equivalent of US$7. Take that Central Market.

________________________________

Unrelated updates:

1) I start my first teaching job tomorrow night. Yay!
2) Mike and I are taking a break from the city in the Pampas, in a town roughly the size of San Angelo or Ann Arbor, but with a very different feel. More info and pictures soon.
3) Hillary just found out that she has been accepted to UT´s social work program. Mike has been accepted to New England Law with a hefty scholarship. Both are still waiting on news from additional schools. High fives all around and hip hip hooray! (This post-Argentina plan-making gives me the impression that our time here is just a parentheses and that real life will resume.)

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.

Not exactly graf, but I love this spot. On Defensa, between Chile and Belgrano.

In the corner of the wall, the artist titles this mural "Educación o Esclavitud" (Education or Enslavement). Garay and Paseo de Colon.

In case it´s hard to tell, this portion of the building bulges outward from the main structure organically. Carlos Calvo, between Paseo de Colon and Balcarce.