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!”