Alone in Valizas

March 23, 2010

Today was an absolutely beautiful summer day. The ocean was perfectly calm and you could actually swim in it rather than wave hopping, not a cloud in the sky, just hot and sunny. We have just one more day left in Valizas, one more day to hope that our faulty umbrella does the job while we read on the beach as if we were on holidays.
The past couple of weeks have been turbulent; we missed our friends terribly after they left. We had our minds on home; our comfortable bed, friends, being fully fluent in the idiom, even planning what restaurants we would head to first. We were having trouble being here now!
Meanwhile, here in Valizas, we have definitely reached “the far end of summer” again. Fall is in the air; it has been very windy with blowing sand and rainy, (though we have been to the beach every day). Why we even found out a few days ago that the clocks have fallen back an hour! The sun basically sets at 7PM now. Valizas has been given back to the locals and it is a very sleepy place in March.
We were on the verge of changing our tickets and going home early, part of the panic was due to finding our favorite restaurant on the beach closed on a Monday. Generally the produce at the local stores is of poor quality, the bakery is practically never open. All the locals must shop in the bigger towns around. Anyway, the crisis was averted, our restaurant opened again on Tuesday and now is open, noon to 4 every day (except Monday) for lunch, and we are their faithful daily customers.

The chef /owner and his wife are just lovely and they know we like things spicy, so he has been spicing up his regular fare: woks and beautiful fish with a variety of sauces and he even made this fantastic shrimp risotto for us, delicious. The local wood burning pizza place opens on the weekend and we have found the best combinations there, so we settled down on the food front. Suddenly it just seemed crazy and wrong to take this long luxurious year off and then just rush home.

So we are enjoying our last days, alone in Valizas now and have fallen into a very pleasant routine of reading, playing scrabble and beachcombing. We have paid the boatman to take us across the river a few times to the dunes and the beautiful beaches on the other side.

Last Saturday we walked to Cabo Polonia along the shoreline, about a three-hour journey. It has got to be one of the most spectacular walks on the planet, surreal and beautiful.

Locals are now saying ‘ola’ instead of staring and we are very glad we outstayed our leaving early desires. Tonight, we burned Yvonne’s paper cowboy hat that she got in Greece, end of an era, and my favorite little stray dog who often sits with us on the beach, came home with us and she is now well fed and sleeping comfortably on the couch of our deck. Apparently many dogs get left here or lost after the summer rush. I am hoping this bit of fortification keeps her going till the Easter weekend when perhaps some kind tourists, with a car, will scoop her up and take her home for the winter. She is such a sweet dog and as you can see the perfect apartment size!

Last night we watched a very sweet Uruguayan film; “El Bano de mi Papa” (My Father’s Bathroom), about the pope coming to Uruguay and saying a mass in this remote little town which looks to be around here. All the locals invest everything to supply delicious street food and our hero builds a bathroom, since certainly the faithful will need such a place to relieve themselves. Well, all does not go as planned and the faithful are few and nobody makes their million.

There is the sound of chains saws and weed whackers all around us and a crew is sprucing up the town square with brightly painted benches and chainsaw art birds. It almost seems as though the town is expecting a special visitor. But our time here is done, this time next week we will be home to spring in Vancouver!

Travels with Brent and Jaik in three parts: Part 1

Part One: Meeting in Montevideo

Well, we have arrived in Valizas, our final destination before we return home. Brent and Jaik left us here at our beach house on Saturday afternoon. We spent a very fun, sometimes funny, three weeks with them that passed all too quickly. It all started on February 16th at the very, sleekly designed Montevideo airport, when after travelling 24 hours their American Airlines flight landed, we, as well as the 5000 Uruguayans pictured on the floor, were glad to see them.

There is a blood, red champagne made with the Tannat grape, particular to Uruguay, and with two chilled bottles, and we celebrated their arrival. Tim and Taylor, friends of B&J from Toronto, happened to be in Montevideo on an excursion from Buenos Aires and so they joined us for a tour of the apartment and a late dinner at the port market. The six of us were visiting loudly in English strolling the deserted streets of the old city, when we were accosted by six youths who pushed Jaik and tried to pick pocket Taylor. I began yelling at them in Spanish, wishing I had said “I was going to tell your mothers”, (but this did not come to me till later in “post almost accosted analysis”), somehow the youths backed off without further hurt or incident due perhaps to our proximity to the market where the police were all hanging out together. This was not what we planned for our friends’ first evening; but the potential robbery and assault occupied our conversation and was an exciting beginning. Yvonne and I agreed that this incident topped the “bad things that have happened to us while travelling for a year in foreign places” list. It was scarier than the evil taxi driver in Istanbul who took us miles out of our way and tried to make us pay more by pulling the “you passed me this no good old currency trick”; and worse than losing an “s” of the scrabble game irretrievably under a closed deck; and not comparable at all to our former Montevideo lavadero not returning our laundry bag. Getting reacquainted with our friends was a delight for Yvonne and I, discussing music, books, movies, even TV, politics, artistic endeavors and Canadian happenings we missed out on like the polite way to sneeze and cough and the scandal of the human rights museum and other unfortunate government blunders.

All the while we explored Montevideo.

Our tour of the Joaquin Torres Garcia museum was a highlight, discovering his universal constructivist art that utilized the golden compass measurement of beauty. Most of Torres Garcia’s work was destroyed in a fire while on exhibit in Rio de Janeiro, but his influence can be seen in the work of Uruguayan crafts people and the pervasiveness of his design is such that even is our somewhat rustic beach house a Torres Garcia reproduction graces the wall. Especially famous is his drawing of the South American continent upside down, encouraging South Americans to look to themselves, not to the north or Europe, for inspiration and inventiveness. A student of Garcia’s, Jose Gurvich has a great little museum in the old city dedicated to his work. He was a South American Jew who lived in Israel and New York and did many paintings based on life on the Kibbutz. His paintings were fantastic! Tucked away in a bit of a scary square right off Plaza Independencia is the monument to sexual diversity “to honour diversity is to honor life”. It is a perfect miniature of the monument in Amsterdam. The graffiti around the monument was plentiful and colourful
and supported the message, BUT the location is somewhat underwhelming.

Speaking of diversity the Uruguayans are a pretty homogeneous group of 3 million, and our little group seemed to invite stares. The whole populous are avid, blatant, starers. (remember Uruguay all the freaky people make the beauty in the world).

Montevideo is full of street art and particularly stencil art, we captured much of it in countless photos that would make excellent t-shirt souvenirs…whoops copyright… but the art on the walls is plentiful. Travelling sharpens the eyes, I just don’t see the graffiti art in Vancouver but will now be more aware of it. Some of the stencils where ones we had seen in other places except this time instead of a bouquet of flowers I think the
former terrorist is throwing a rubber chicken?


We introduced Brent to the Chivito (Jaik always preferred the fish and salad) and returned to our favorite restaurant, Parada Sur, in Barrio Sur, several times.

The cuisine of Uruguay is limited; the salad (if you order the mixta) is always lettuce, tomatoes and onions, undressed. If you want hot sauce, which I always do, it is salsa ingles Tabasco. There is always a fish or shellfish option BUT grilled meat and potatoes are the norm. Vegetarianism seems to be discouraged as most of the veggie options include way too much cheese. I think a Uruguayan cry might be “Let them eat steak!”

Brent and Jaik brought some vital supplies with them from Canada, three kinds of Thai Curry paste and Tampons with applicators, these things, along with Ginger Ale, are just not available here. Yvonne cooked up three kinds of delicious curry (pork, fish, veggie) and we hosted a little dinner party at our apartment-Casa Sarandi. It was a pleasure to meet Danielle and Ivan, teenagers who, with names, dates and specifics, helped fill out the conversation with all the things that adults of a certain age seem to forget. Brent, the ultimate net worker, had made a connection with a dance choreographer in Montevideo, Martin Inthamoussu. We went to see his show at the beautiful Teatro Solis and this connection lead to Brent and Jaik meeting the person with the most interesting job ever! “The dresser to the president”. Now some of you may remember from “The Postcard Race” that the new president of Uruguay, José Alberto Mujica Cordano, who was inaugurated on March 1, was a former Tupamero guerrilla, and was imprisoned during the military dictatorship 1973 -1984, where he served 14 years, this included being confined to the bottom of a well for more than two years. He has recently purchased a plaid suit jacket, but he is really a jeans and t-shirts man of the people kind of guy. Will the dresser make a fashionista out of him OR will the dresser be dismissed? I will be following the story.

Since we arrived in South America there has been constant, torrential rainfall. We have heard tell of flooding in Peru. In Buenos Aires a street that had long ago been a river became a deep, fast flowing river again, right through the centre of town. It seems to be an unusually wet and stormy season on this continent. Dare I say climate change? We witnessed a magnificent storm from a bar near the Rambla….first the wind threatening to blow most of the outdoor seating away, the scurry of the waiters to retrieve the furniture, close the windows and bring everyone inside…..buckets of water falling from the sky in such a short time and making the street into waterfalls. Spectacular!

We saw tango music at Bar FUNFUN, the view from the top of the Radisson, a contemporary tango concert at the beautiful Puro Verso bookstore, Murgas at the summer theatre, shopped at street market stalls an, though Jaik was not quick enough to get the much coveted “monkey with a drum” Brent managed to find a beautiful watch.

I was even getting to like the ugliest building in the world BUT it was time to leave Montevideo and discover more of Uruguay.....??????

Travels with Brent and Jaik: in three parts : Part 2

Part Two: from Couch Surfing to Punta del Este / A Study in Contrasts

Brent and Jaik are members of this really cool organization called couchsurfers.com. This on-line community seeks to bring people together globally by offering participants a place to post their profile and open up their lives and their homes to travellers. Millions of people around the world are members of this organization started by a man in San Francisco when he inherited three mansions in that city. Brent and Jaik have hosted couch surfers in their beautiful country house “Poof Bluff” in Manitoba and couch surfed in Italy and in Minneapolis. We decided that, certainly, we were up for a couch surfing adventure and cruised the profiles in Uruguay to find Juan with a rustic farmhouse. It was very close to Colonia, a town we wanted to visit. Juan kindly wrote that he could host all 4 of us. We arrived at the address in the little town of Juan Lacaze, Juan’s parents gave us directions to the farmhouse and Juan was there to meet us with Opheline, another surfer from France. Well the farmhouse rocketed “rustic” back it’s original meaning since the toilet wasn’t working and the farmhouse, also an art deco design like our apartment, was in great need of some fixing up starting with a good clean, some proper beds and a hardy round of paint and decor. Juan is a lovely young man who told us many stories of his life and his other couch surfing friends and about the website marryacanadian.com. We all spent a great day rambling around in the beautiful town of Colonia marveling at the buildings and gorgeous setting…then the long night as best we could was spent in the rustic farmhouse. The welcome rooster’s cry alerted me that morning was coming and at first light Yvonne and I hightailed it to town to get a cup of coffee BUT though we searched; both a women at the bakery and a bartender told us that we just weren’t going to find a cup of coffee in that town. Juan has become an emblematic figure in our journey now…Jaik coined the phrase “What would Juan do?” I was inspired to write a couple of haikus (or almost haikus) about Juan and my first couch surfing experience. I will share
them with you now:

Juan collects pencil sharpeners
Loves to make strangers friends
Gives away his shoes.

…..and this one I wrote especially for Yvonne:

Rustic farmhouse friend
Couch surf me away quickly
Soft, clean sheets, ensuite.




We made our way to Piriaoplis and checked in to rooms at the Hotel Budapest, a modest, pleasant hotel where, after the assumption of heterosexuality on checking in, and the coming out for room assignments it was all good. The owner served us a breakfast that included coffee with hot milk. Piriapolis is a resort town that has seen better days. You can tour the castle of the alchemist, take the cable car up their sugar loaf and pretend you are in Rio, but sadly we didn’t do any of those things. We slept very well and heard abut the earthquake in Chile, and in the morning drove off to look around the swanky, manicured, picturesque, upscale
resort of Punta Del Este, where all the houses have names. We discovered that just over the undulating bridge from Punta is little town called La Barra, which was much more in tune with our vibe. We ate at an outdoor restaurant run by a very friendly couple, she was an amazing baker who made us a fish appectizer and a welcome burrito lunch. Delicious! Amongst the very cute cabins, we spotted a place we had almost stayed, (but it was slightly beyond our means) called Casa Zinc, and asked for a tour. It is a gorgeous guesthouse constructed ëntirely from recovered materials. The architecture themed bedroom made us all gasp at the beauty of it. I was so awe struck I could not even take a picture...B&J have picts of this one and check out their website: http://www.casazinc.com/

I think Casa Zinc was the kind of ¨rustic¨we were expecting !

Travels with Brent and Jaik: in three parts

Part Three: Game On! The beach house in Valizas

Yvonne and I were both a bit trepidatious about the beach house we had rented without ever seeing inside. It turned out fine, especially after Brent and Yvonne set to work cleaning every surface and reorganizing the kitchen.

Valizas seemed almost deserted since the last time we visited in January and could hardly drive up the street. This time the town seemed populated mostly by dogs and the odd free-range horse. Jaik gave names to the dogs as we explored the endless beach, took the boat across the river for a safari in the dunes, and had a bbq under the full moon. We were grateful that the pizza place was open, though we will never again order a pizza with peas on it,
and were happy to support the restaurant on the beach staying open and keeping our waitress busy serving up the camarones wok dish not to mention the magical, outdoor survivor type bar under the trees. It was a popular haunt where I continue to enjoy the mojitos.

We had been toying with the idea of a photo contest and once in Valizas, Jaik prepared the challenge. In three days we were supposed to capture photos that expressed words chosen for every letter of the alphabet, along with 4 special categories. The thirty photos were to be revealed in the final Friday night slideshow. This all-consuming game had us marveling at the orchestral nature of the clouds during the thunder and lightning storm, glad for the windy days since it made for quite a few gusts, trying to capture the itch when caught in the mosquito infestation on our trip to Cabo Polonia, searching for visual haikus and generally made us all very avid photographers. Here are some of the winning photos.

Orchestral ( photo B&J)





Memory ( photo B&J)

Vessel

Worry

Haiku

I will upload my images to Flickr once we have an internet connection again. We plan to continue the challenge for round two, shooting in our respective communities and sharing our results on-line. Here was our game plan. Take up the challenge or make your own categories:

a-alive, b-breath, c-cuddle, d-dignity, e-elbow, f-furrow, g-gust, h-hush, i-itch, j-jewel, kkindle,
l-luscious, m-memory, n-netar, o-orchestral, p-purr, q-quiet, r-riddle, s-stir, ttwirl, u-underneath, v-vessel, w-worry, x-x-ray, y-yellow, z –zoom and the four special categories: encapsulate Y&R year off, find a homo, a haiku, and something that reminds you of Beausejour. What a fun time we had with that game. I think I’m addicted!

In Closing

About two year’s ago, when Brent had business in Vancouver and visited us, he had been doing research on Uruguay, as a possible place to retire. Uruguay was a very stable, gay friendly, warm country. During that visit we spent time looking on-line at beautiful buildings for sale in Uruguay at VERY reasonable prices. Why we even fantasized about buying a hotel. Brent was the one to make us first look to Uruguay as a place to spend the last few months of our time off. Later in talking about Montevideo Ian connected us to Bruce and then to Karen and Sergio….so it was very appropriate to have Brent and Jaik join us here…… We were so happy to have such creative, easy going, curious friends with us on this last leg of our journey and as Yvonne said today “Come back it’s too quiet without you!”

"The Postcard Race" Final Winner Announced

Another winner from Winnipeg! Congratulations Marcus for being first to report receipt of your round #12 postcard. "The Postcard Race" has now officially concluded. All that remains is for us to search the abundant antique and craft tables in Montevideo to find something especially for you and mail it off. Brent and Jaik will be acting as special consultants in selecting an appropriate prize.

We have been keeping post offices around the world busy this year; countless postcards have been sent, as well as many packages of various dimensions. In addition to prizes mailed to winners of "The Postcard Race", so far 13 packages; we have mailed other boxes and padded envelopes home. In total 49 packages, soon to be 50, were sent (always choosing the slowest and the cheapest postage), though some packages are still in transit, as far as we know ALL packages have been received in a very timely fashion.

"The Postcard Race" would like to thank:

-Postal workers worldwide for their patience and for being part of this amazing network that, for the most part, still does house calls!

-Postcard and stamp designers and sellers.

-Linda and Jody for receiving packages we mailed to ourselves.

-All our contestants and especially those who sent responses even though they knew they were not winners.

The Montevideo Round

-Candombe (can-dome-bey) is an Afro-Uruguyan percussion rhythm that has been an important part of Uruguayan culture for over two hundred years. This rhythm traveled to Uruguay from Africa with black slaves and is still going strong in the streets, halls and carnivals of this country.

-Uruguay with a population of approximately 3.2 million is a small country located in South America bordered by its two massive neighbors Brazil 162 million to the East and Argentina 34 million to the West.

-The Carnival in Uruguay is the longest of the world. The main attraction of Uruguayan Carnival is a parade called Desfile de Llamadas (Calls Parade), a candombe-summoning parade, which incorporates Bantu and Angolan Benguela cultures brought by slaves in colonial times. During the eighty days of celebration, popular theaters called tablados are built in many places throughout the cities. Carnival groups perform popular opera at the tablados, singing and dancing songs that relate to social reality and the political situation in the country.

-Montevideo was founded in 1730 by the Spanish to keep the Portuguese out, and the nation of Uruguay was created in 1830, with British Intervention, as a buffer state to keep Brazil and Argentina from fighting over the territory.

-The only place, outside of France, where Cognac can be made is in Uruguay. After World War II, France paid its debts to Uruguay with Ugni- Blanc, know-how for making Cognac, and the right to use the denomination."

-In 2005, Uruguay unveiled the first monument in Latin America honoring sexual diversity. The rose-colored block of granite shaped in the form of a triangle is in Montevideo’s old city. Set atop a concrete column, the monument is inscribed with the words: "Honoring Diversity is Honoring Life."

-The Charrúa were indigenous people of Uruguay. They were nomadic and sustained themselves through fishing and foraging. Following the arrival of European settlers, the Charrúa were progressively killed and integrated into the prevailing colonial cultures. Most of the remaining ones were massacred at Salsipuedes (literally "Get-out-if-you-can") Creek in 1831 by a group led by Bernabé Rivera, nephew of the first president of Uruguay, after they were invited to a meeting and ambushed. Only a few escaped this massacre. Four of them were taken to France in 1833, including Tacuabé, to whom there is a monument in Montevideo, Uruguay.

-Uruguay and Paraguay are both named from Guaraní, the language of native people from the region. The ending "guay" means to, or from water. "Gua", meaning to/from, the simple one letter word "y" being the Guarani for "water". For Paraguay; para ("river"), gua ("from"), i ("water") meaning "river that comes from the water", referring to the bog in the north of the country, which is actually in Brazil. And for Uruguay; uru (a kind of bird that lived near the river); gua ("to proceed from"); and i ("water"), which tourism Uruguay has made more poetic by saying “River of Colorful Birds.”

-José Alberto Mujica Cordano known as El Pepe, is a Uruguayan politician and former Tupamero guerrilla fighter. He was elected president in the 2009 presidential election and will take office on 1 March 2010. The Tupamaros, were an urban guerrilla organization in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. (see Costa Gravas “State of Siege”). El Pepe was imprisoned during the military dictatorship 1973 -1984, where he served 14 years, this included being confined to the bottom of a well for more than two years.

-It has been over 30 years since the tragic 1972 plane crash in the Andes that left most of a Uruguayan Rugby team stranded on a mountain and then caught in an avalanche. The incredible story of their survival is the subject of many films (see “I have come from a plane that has crashed on a mountain”). The survivors still live in the neighbourhood they grew up in Montevideo and since 1975 play the Friendship Cup, a rugby game Montevideo and the Old Christians and the Old Boys from Santiago.

-The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project has sought to develop and distribute a low-cost and rugged computer to children around the world in a bid to raise global standards of living. The government of Uruguay was very enthusiastic about the project, and created "Plan Ceibal" (Education Connect) to fund and distribute laptops to every state-funded elementary school in the country. Uruguay was the first country to deploy 380,000 laptops. Over the last two years, laptops have been distributed to every student between the ages of six and twelve.

-The 1930 FIFA World Cup, the inaugural edition of the world championship for international association football teams was played in Uruguay. (FIFA) selected Uruguay as host nation as the country would be celebrating the centenary of its independence, and the Uruguay national football team had successfully retained their football title at the 1928 Summer Olympics. All matches were played in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, the majority at the Estadio Centenario, which was built for the tournament.

"The Postcard Race" #12 The Final Round

...where if you have never heard of Uruguay, except on

"The Simpsons"

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShZGIqhUqNU),

you find out more.

Sadly, the last round of "The Postcard Race" is upon us.

Hard to believe but true.

Round 12 is winging its way into your mailboxes as we speak.

There are no mailboxes, that I have seen, in Montevideo.

Postcards were mailed from the Correos on Sarandi.

The woman pictured above date stamped every last one of them.

Handicap protocol was, of course, implemented.

The first person to report receipt of their postcard, on this blog or by email, and tell us

what they learned about Uruguay,

will win something mailed to them from another country.

Good Luck contestants and I hope you have enjoyed

"The Postcard Race" as much as I have.

I hope it will inspire you to seek out postcards and stamps where ever you go;

since really there is nothing so nice as getting mail.

just real life in Montevideo with a side of re-entry and Carnival

We are really enjoying our HUGE apartment in an 1940's art deco building in Ciudad Vieja, (the old city) of Montevideo. High ceilings with ceiling fans, three decks, various bathrooms, comfortable beds, interesting art, high thread count sheets, great views from our 3rd (really 4th floor), ye olde elevator and a panoramic vista from the rooftop. We have an internet connection, a store right downstairs and have re-stocked up on reading material, bought groceries. So, really, why leave the apartment?

The old city is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water, so even when it's really hot, which it has been, and especially when it is rainy and stormy, which it has been, nice breezes come into through our windows and keep us cool. We are on Buenos Aires street, a stones throw away from Teatro Solis, Plaza Independecia and a block from Sarandi, the pedestrian mall. About 25 of the city's buses pass below our window, punctuated by the odd clip clop of the horse drawn carts used by the binners (who actually sort the garbage), cabs and cars and motorbikes; all which creates a bit of a roar that erupts quite early, peaks at rush hour with high pitched honking, strange bus horns and the sound of power tools.

The old city is a mish-mash of architectural styles all together: colonial, art deco, modern, somewhat disheveled and beautifully restored. During the day the old city is alive with workers, and at scheduled intervals, depending on when the cruise ships are docking, with tourist police and crafts people who give the impression of a bustling metropolis, but last Sunday, in the pouring rain, we were out for a walk and Yvonne commented that she felt like we were in some deserted movie set not a soul around: spooky and surreal.

Speaking of movies we have seen quite a few recently and are headed for another this afternoon. Sure, there are museums, galleries and what with being in the middle of the world's largest carnival plenty of genuine cultural happenings to experience BUT with only six weeks till we return home we can't help but turn our minds to face the new reality: SOON WE WILL BE HOME. We have made appointments in Vancouver, even bought concert tickets for Patty Griffin at the Commodore. The films are just part of our re-entry plan. American movies here are not all dubbed like in Europe and we have been able to see the english versions of "Sherlock Holmes" and "Invictus" and OMG "Avitar"! Just so you don't think we have completely forgotten what continent we are on, did read the Bolivian president's impressions of Avatar. Last year the UN general assembly called Evo Morales "World Hero of Mother Earth". Avatar was the third film he had ever seen at a theatre and he said: " "There is a lot of fiction in the movie, but at the same time it makes a perfect model for the struggle against capitalism and efforts to protect nature." So he liked it! I found it really scary and violent, but as always an American hero save the day! So far Avatar has made more money than the total value of Uruguay's annual exports.

I much preferred "Invictus" which we saw on our 13th anniversary after a hasty dinner at the Mexican booth of the mall food fair. Terrible!!!!!! The bad thing about going to movies is that they often involve going to malls, well they all look the same, we could be anywhere, just part of re-entry.

In the stunningly brilliant plan that is our year off, we had always hoped to have friends trade The Olympics (TMP) for Carnival and join us in Montevideo, only Brent and Jaik, some friendly Manitobans, are scheduled to come and we are holding off the many exciting things this city has in store for us until their arrival. We don't want to be the annoying, know it all friends who say oh we already been there and it sucks or we just have to go there we've been 3 times and it is the best. No! We will explore and discover together. We are looking forward to their arrival, fresh-faced and enthusiastic; our tonic for staying in the moment. Of course, I am compiling a list of potential activities, since that is my nature, and Yvonne is already worried that there will be no napping on tour once they arrive!

In keeping with normal life anywhere we have located the closest lavadero (laundry), found the best grocery store, discovered the neighbourhood market day (Friday), found somewhere to buy coffee that is not roasted with sugar (some weird Argentinean and Uruguayan recipe for bad coffee), found a woman who sews and a place to enhance beauty!

But we also attended a parade! Desfile de Llamadas (Calls Parade), a candombe-summoning parade. You have to buy tickets. Bleachers are set up so you can have a seat at the parade. (Really the only way to watch a parade I have decided unless you just stay home and watch it on TV). We watched about 19 Candombe groups. Can-dome-bey is an Afro-Uruguyan percussion rhythm that has been an important part of Uruguayan culture for over two hundred years (a side effect of slavery). Many drummers drumming; a few hundred in each group, each has a costume, many flag wavers waving; huge cloth flags (REALLY REALLY BIG) bearing the colours of the groups are carried by a various flag wizards on very tall bamboo poles. They use the wind and the cloth to dance the flags around and sweep them over the crowds who reach out to touch them. The good ones and there was a sliding scale were pretty amazing. Many sexy ladies of all shapes and sizes dancing. So judges give an award to the best group and the parade continues for two nights. After about ten groups, it was hard for us newbies to distinguish one from another, but I think we had the rhythm down.

Last night we attended an event celebrating the 1000 days publication of a progressive daily called La Diaria where we saw a great composer and arranger who produces lots of the theatre "Murgas" that are staged in all sorts of venues during carnival. Pitufo Lombardo, a popular songwriter was great and now I must get his CD to see what he was really saying. Many people knew the songs and were singing them altogether.

Uruguayans really talk very fast, many of them mistake me for a Brazilian and they are only half wrong, probably for my atrocious Spanish. The turns of phrases here are particular, people are quite polite with greetings and salutations. They greet with the double air kiss of the cheeks; the other day while booking our ticket home at a travel agency we watched in awe as a women arrive to work and walked up and down the aisles greeting all her co-workers, about 10 of them with the double kiss thing. When you depart they say "que le pasan bien"(their version of have a nice day) but it sounds better. Whenever you say gracias, (thank you) the preferred response is "NON Por Favor" (Meaning: "NO Please don't thank me") and there is much use of the word "barbaro" for many things which is fun to say and means terrific or awesome....Que Barbaro!!!!!

"The Postcard Race" We have our round 11 winner!

Congratulations Jeseka! Montreal has been a lucky location in these last South American rounds. Jeseka reported receiving her postcard on Thursday, February 4. and later the same day Johanna in Newfoundland reported receipt. Well , we may have to have a second prize on this round too.

This announcement highlights the fabulous floors in our swank, art deco apartment in Montevideo! (I wanted to use whipped cream Jeseka BUT Yvonne wouldn't allow it. ) One of the great features about this apartment is it is its proximity to the post office ( right next door) , where I will be going presently to send your prize; just after you reported receiving your postcard we spotted the perfect gift at a craft booth on Sarandi, the pedestrian street in the old city. A package of goodies for Moira and Trish ,the round 10 winners is also on the way. All gifts go to Montreal today! So watch your mailboxes you Montrealers.

The Postcard Race: Round 11 “The Beach Round"

It is time for the beach round of the postcard race, no facts, no figuring, no educational tidbits, simply postcards and stickers.

By now you know the rules; first to report receipt wins a prize; something mailed to them from another country.

Strangely it was very difficult to even find any postcards in this tourist zone. Perhaps postcards are disappearing and Uruguay is on the cutting edge of this terrifying trend!

I know that several places I obtained postcards had to pull out ancient cards that they thought they would never sell. Finally we encountered a photographer in Valizas who still kept the faith and made postcards.

Though it costs 17 pesos to mail an international postcard, very few of those stamps could be found, so we had to piece other stamp currencies together. We also had to go to three towns to gather the required amount of stamps.

So look for a postcard like the ones pictured above to arrive in your mailboxes soon!

GOOD LUCK CONTESTANTS!

Beach Inspectors on the Road

We’ve had a car for a week now. We rented it from Enrique in Chuy (pronounced chewy). Chuy is a frontier town. The broad boulevard “Avenida Internacional” runs between two countries; on one side Uruguay and the other Brazil. We arrived in dusty Chuy mid-morning after the short bus ride from Punta del Diablo, Enrique assured us that around midday a car would be ready for us and sent us off to explore Chuy. This did not take long. The Uruguayan side of the town is lined with one duty free store after another duty free store. The stores all sold the same things, things that can be found in any duty free store in any airport, anywhere: perfume (who buys all this perfume), brand name cosmetics, liquor, chocolate, electronics. We bought a bottle of gin (Bombay Sapphire), chocolate (Toblorone) and a jar of artichoke hearts on the Uruguayan side, and a fly swatter on the Brazilian side.

We arrived back at Enrique’s travel agency, no car yet but he assured us he was already working on plan B. His co-worker (wife too) asked us how we had enjoyed our shopping and I explained that the duty free stores offered nothing I could not find in Vancouver. Does globalization mean the end of variety and uniqueness; will everyone have the very same bag, use the same lotions and sport the same logos? Anyway, she told us about her travels in Canada, of visiting Lake Louise and there in the hotel finding a “Manos de Uruguay” handicraft store. Funny! I told her I wished there was such a store in Chuy.

After lunch, still no car. We decided to fill out the paperwork and pay for our rental so that when the car did arrive we would be ready to hit the road. A rental in cash was nearly half of a rental by credit card so we opted for cash and killed some time at the bank machine. Our two-week rental including insurance was 16,000 Uruguayan Pesos, about (800 US). With these large numbers buying things involves big wads of cash and complicated math. It is unnerving at first spending 500 pesos and then telling yourself that it is only $25. Enrique gave us a strange receipt, it said the funds were for the “concept” of renting a car, this kind of worried us. Off we went again and this time we at least located some postcards, even if they were from the 1950s. By 6PM it was clear that we would not be driving out of there as we dreamed. Our option was to borrow an uninsured car and then come and exchange it for the “concept car” in a few days. “What could possibly happen!” exclaimed Enrique. Enrique did not have the imagination of either Yvonne or I. In any case we took the bus back home with the promise that Enrique would deliver the car to us at our cabin in a few days and true to his word he did.

We have been enjoying exploring the coast, being beach inspectors and location scouts. There is 100 kilometres of dunes from La Paloma in the south to Barra de Chuy in the north. There are some really beautiful beaches! We spent a morning at La Esmeralda, a gorgeous white sand beach that goes forever any way you look. Boogie boarding was impossible. Playing in the waves there was like standing on fine glass shards and being sand blasted, very therapeutic. Our favorite town so far is Barra del Valizes, it had such a very cool relaxed vibe and is next to the UN protected area and national monument of Cabo Polonia, a unique sandy eco-system (no cars, no electricity).

The dunes are so extensive and constantly shifting. The coast has always been treacherous for sailors and tales of shipwrecks, pirates and buried treasures abound. Beach glass is harder to find in this sandy world but plastic litters the beaches and is found too easily. The province of Rocha should ban the plastic bag as well as the plastic water bottles to protect the huge variety of birds. The province boasts large lagoons where many birds thrive, the sounds of birds’ wakes us every morning. Uruguay actually means: “river of the painted birds”

We have walked the full length of Playa Grand now and got to the point. Just around that point we discovered the perfect beach for boogie boarding, in Santa Teresa National Park. We love the National Park not only for the beach but also because of our favorite restaurant; they make fish (Brotola) with a fantastic pepper sauce and super great fries. Playa Del Barco is a somewhat protected bay and the waves are strong yet gentle enough to keep the fun level up and the danger level down.

I am trying to master the parrella for bbqing. It is such a fantastic system, (pictured here). First you have a fire (I know we are burning up the trees) to make your coals then you use the coals for cooking: vegetables in tinfoil, roasted peppers and beautiful meat. All the cuts of meat are different here and named differently, for the bbq we prefer the pichana, a thick cut with a layer of fat to keep it moist. This we can cook from “jugoso” (rare) to well done. I think there should be a cooking show dedicated to cooking with the parrilla. So photogenic, such an ingenious design and oh so delicious!

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On the East Side

Thirty years ago, Punta del Diablo was a small fishing village where intrepid Uruguayans and other travellers would venture for a rugged beach “get away from it all” in the sand dunes by the sea. Today it is the destination location for youth. Tons of young people are here, camping or renting cabins together. There are venues all over where probably every Uruguayan band plays in January; including two large corral-like structures on the back end of town where DJ’s spin till the wee hours.

January is high season. We did not begin looking for a place here until early December, and by some miracle and Yvonne’s adept internet research skills, we landed ourselves an excellent cabin in the somewhat manicured suburbs near the dunes at the end of Playa Rivero. We love our little cabin; wrap around deck, doors and window that open all around to let in the cooling breezes, a parrilla on the deck (traditional wood burning Uruguayan BBQ; an essential part of every home all over Uruguay), and a very well equipped kitchen. Yvonne and I are the first guests in this brand new cabin. Though we have heard tales of sleeping with earplugs during January, we seem to thankfully be in some freakish zone of quiet.

The town is full of lots for sale and new constructions, from shacks to more luxurious accommodations. Many very cute, painted brightly, super surfer’s scene beach townie. Not knowing anything about the town’s codes or bylaws; it all seems very hap-hazard anarchistic. If we came back in a few years, or perhaps next week, the landscape would have changed.

We rented boogie boards and went out to Playa Rivero (the closest beach to us) for our maiden voyage. The weather here has been what one could call variable; high winds, extreme heat, cloudy, rainy, hazy, thunder-stormy. Our first day in the waves was windy and the surf on Playa Rivero was brutal. Very, very strong, relentless waves that left us breathless, wishing we had knee-pads and not staying too long. We discovered that surf on Playa Rivero is never gentle no matter what the weather. Yet, Playa Rivero is the most popular meeting place and by noon it is wall-to-wall beach umbrellas and chairs and volleyball and, well, not our favorite kind of beach.

Down our street in the other direction, a longer walk, over the dunes we discovered Playa Grande, a more deserted beach with a kinder, gentler surf and wide-open spaces. It is our preferred beach.

Before long we learned that the Atlantic is never gentle, when we floated out on our boards at Playa Grande and the waves turned us topsy-turvey, which brought the “guarda vida” (life guard) down from his observation shack to inform us that floating was not allowed ”always keep your feet on the sand”! OK we are being super cautious now! The guardavidas utilize flags of yellow and red (perhaps they have other colours too) to indicate no go zones and the strength of the surf. Tomorrow I will ask what they mean exactly so as to prevent further incidents.

The atmosphere of Punta del Diablo just makes me crave fish tacos and other Mexican delicacies, not a popular food group in Uruguay. But today we found Mamacitas, a restaurant that serves up tacos with guacamole and Tabasco for hot sauce. Delicious. We have also been testing empanadas from a number of locations and have determined that the women who deep-fry them fresh in their small stand in the artisans’ market win our taste test. Our store, plus bakery, a few blocks away, has almost everything we need. They are open 24 hours in high season, and it is often so packed that they close the gate to let people out before others can go in. The economy here is definitely geared to make hay while the sun shines in December, January and February, which makes us think that March and April or November would be lovely loners paradise.

For being all geared to tourism, the shocking news is that there is not a postcard to be found anywhere! I feel a road trip coming on. The sweet palapa (open concept) restaurant 30 meters from our house provides free WiFi and so we are not as off the grid as we thought we would be.

A small-motorized vehicle, kind of a wagon being pulled by a motorcycle, picked up our laundry today and will deliver it here tomorrow. Garbage pick-up (just throw it all in together) is everyday. After seeing those horrifying images posted recently by Kris K on facebook (http://chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11) I am dismayed by the over use of plastic everything; bags and bottles that inevitably find their way to the dunes and the sea and the beaches. The plastic bag ban needs to make its way here soon!

A charming, typically Uruguayan thing has been catching my eye here; people walk clutching in the crook of their arms (hugged tightly to their chest) tall metal thermoses full of hot water to add to their gourd full of yerba matte in their hand. This method leaves one hand free for carrying other things, smoking, talking on your cell phone, holding-hands, driving your 4X4 or ready for any eventuality. Is this learned behavior? I must collect some photos.

What we are reading:

R2

The Book Thief

The Queen of the South

Twilight (lame)

YP

The Devil in the White City

The Best Travel Writing 2008

Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?

The Girl with Braided Hair

The Gringo Trail

Until I Find You

The City of Falling Angels

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