On a Montevideo city bus headed back to Ciudad Vieja, Christmas decorations catch my eye. I take a detour off the city bus to enjoy them closer.
This Plaza is not far from Independence Plaza. Today, there are spectators lounging on park benches, not in any hurry to move down to Independence Plaza and face the huge imposing statue of General Artigas surrounded by government offices and fancy hotels.
This little intimate plaza belongs in Alice in Wonderland.
There is a funny looking Christmas tree that is so perfect it is not perfect. There are three pink flamingos in a pond that has nothing to do with Christmas but adds the right color. There is a balloon astronaut five feet above the ground. There is an airplane and little butterflies. A fountain that was dormant has been filled with water for the Holiday Season.
The most satisfying Christmas depiction I witness is three wise men on camels. There are some who doubt there is even one wise man in this world, but, that is too harsh. There may be as many as ten.
I sit on a bench like the others this morning and wait patiently for the wise men to say something profound.
They don’t say a word, and that, to me, is as profound a statement as you can not make.
Many accommodations I have stayed in here have had a bidet. You see them in other countries, but I never remember seeing as many as there are in Uruguay.
There have been issues.
In bathrooms, bidets occupy the spot closest to the shower. The toilet is shoved in a corner so when you open the door to enter or leave the bathroom the door gets in the way of you getting to the toilet. The bidet is not something I use so its position of authority in the bathroom is questionable.
In the Ramon Massini Suites in Pocitos, I take a moment to see how one of these contraptions works. Unthinking, I pull up a little handle and get a geyser shot of water spray into my chest.
After my experience with the bidet, I resolve to leave them alone.
Now, I enter the bathroom, close the door, sit on my throne with as much dignity as I can compose.
When you see bidets and realize that half the humans in the world are significantly different from you, it gives a new meaning to the words ” foreign relations.”
One of the first things I pick up in a new place is a local map.
I find main streets, find plazas, find the river, find the bus terminal or airport, a good place to eat, the farmacia, and someone who knows a little English if I get in a jam. The map the hotel gives me is called the “Plano Urbano de Salto.” One of the things to see close to where I’m staying is the Museo of Bella Arts.
This museum was once a huge home belonging to the woman whose portrait is on the wall when you first enter. The pink colored house is on Uruguay street and is open, free of charge, to anyone who wishes to see inside. Entering the museum, you see that the lady collected art, and, when she passed, left the house and art as her memorial.
One of the smaller, and maybe least ostentatious paintings, is of a gaucho.
In this oil painting, a solitary gaucho poses for his portrait while his horse looks back at him and waits for marching orders.
ThIs cowpoke travels light, has his bedroll and jerky and saddlebags, wears loose fitting and comfortable clothes, and looks ready for anything. Out in the wilderness, alone, he has to solve problems and is reliant on his wits, his experience, and horse to get him through dangerous times.
Being a gaucho must be a little like being a soldier in war. You have days and days of boredom and waiting punctuated with brief episodes of stark terror when bullets fly past your head, and any one of them could send you where you don’t want to go.
Gauchos and cowboys are something that Uruguay and the United States used to have in common.
However, it is hard to see how two countries who admire self reliance and the pioneer spirit have done so much to stamp it out.
The only place we see wild spirits now Is on television and in movies.
On vacation, where it is warm and people lay on the beach, you forget about Christmas.
Christmas comes in December no matter where you are in the world. In this Punta Del Este shopping mall, Christmas has arrived, decorations are out, Santa has been puffed up, and all that is needed is more customers and a brisk buying season.
During Christmas season we set time aside to do nice things for people we may not be nice too other times. This is the time of year when bygones are to be bygones, when wrongs are forgiven, when giving and getting are almost on par,when open hearts overtake our baser instincts.
Santa waves when I see him.
Everyone knows there is a Santa Claus and he lives in a big house at the North Pole. He has been working all year to make presents for all those who have been nice, not naughty. Ramping up operations, his reindeer are rearing to go but he also uses Fed X, Amazon, UPS, the Post Office, and DPS to help him complete his mission. He has look alikes sit in shopping malls and let kids sit on their knees and tell what they would like for Christmas. Everyone knows Santa can’t be in all places at all times.
Weather doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas. Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Christ whether it is hot or cold, dry or wet, spring or winter.
It remains odd, however, that more people these days worship Santa than Christ.
Casa Pueblo is one of the must see sights in Uruguay.
The house is the art studio and home of one of Uruguay’s most famous artists – Carlos Paez Vilaro. His biography calls him an abstract artist, painter, potter, sculptor, muralist, writer, composer, and constructor. He was born in 1923 in Montevideo and started drawing in 1939 at the ripe old age of 19. From humble beginnings, he created his life, as he found his way to live it, with friends all over the world.
The Casa Pueblo is, in his own words, “His fight against straight lines.”
The home he made in Punta Ballena, in the 1950’s, then a very remote place in Uruguay, was later expanded to include a museum, gift shop, restaurant, gallery, and studio. On film, in a sitting room at the entry to the historical site, the artist tells of his early life, his travels around the world. Coming from poverty, he identified with struggles for independence and was involved in music and culture of the barrios. He made films and played music. He was a Renaissance Man.
These photos present him as a young man, and then an older man. One of his sons commented, at the time of his death, that “I hope he rests in peace. I’ve never seen a guy who works that much, and I mean it. He worked up until yesterday.”
On the film, the artist calls work his peace.
Give thanks to artists because they are explorers with candles who show us the way in the dark.
At the end of the day, photos are sifted and sorted, evaluated, approved, or deleted.
You take as many photos as possible on trips because you know not all things you shoot are going to work. It takes only a quick point, shoot, then you put the camera back into your pocket, as you walk.There is nothing complicated about snapping a photo.
Sometimes, you look at the camera roll and find something serendipitous. You either see something in a photo you didn’t see when you first shot it, or, you see a mistake that interests you. It wasn’t planned, but it tweaks interest. This photo is one of these second types.
This odd photo is of me and my shadow.
Sometimes I don’t know where my shadow is, but most bright days, when I turn, just so, Mr. Shadow is right with me.
There used to be an old vaudeville song called “Me and My Shadow.” The entertainer would strut across the stage, looking over his shoulder, trying to catch his shadow catching him. It was a catchy Tin Pan Alley song and a catchy show stopper. People loved it. The only reason I remember is the performer played clarinet, and I play clarinet.
The vaudeville entertainer was Ted Lewis. You can Google ” Me and My Shadow ” and catch his thing on You Tube.
A reviewer of the Ted Lewis clarinet playing called it, ” The last anguish of a dying dog. ”
He might have been too kind.
The influence of the Catholic church is everywhere in South America.
There is a church near most squares and church bells can be seen and heard from most anywhere in most cities,towns or villages. Huge wooden doors open in the morning and stay open until dark. People come and go, take off their hats, kneel in the pews, say prayers for themselves and people they don’t know.
The normal thing I do when I travel is not to look in guide books before I leave the house. My norm is to start walking, discover,then research. Chance creates the possibility for surprise , and, when I strike out without a destination in mind, I find things of interest that aren’t in the guide books.
It is quite by chance that I find the Cathedral San Fernando in Maldonado.
Turning a corner, I have to say this church is the most renovated and pristine church I have seen in Uruguay. The pinkish color of these exterior walls stands in contrast to the blue sky, and the statue holding the cross at the top of the building looking down at me, as I come closer, has the same effect on me that statues of Zeus had for the Greeks. The cathedral, I learn inside, has an interesting history.
It was begun in 1801 and inaugurated in 1895 by a local man – Montevideo archbishop Mariano Soler, who was born in nearby San Carlos.
The Cathedral features the Virgin Del Carmen salvaged from a sunken ship off the nearby Isla de Lobos in 1829. It also has a dying Christ figure inside that washed ashore from unknown sources and found a home here.
The interior of the church gives a sense of what churches should convey – how small we are and how big the world is,how this universe was created by something much greater than us. As guests, in someone else’s house – we shouldn’t dirty the linens.
I sit in a pew and listen to silence.
I leave feeling better, and worse.
Jose Artigas is to Uruguay what George Washington is to the United States.
You see enough statues in enough places and finally you wonder about the men behind them. You do a little research and discover that Jose Artigas is a real person with a real history. Some of his history has been romanticized, but he played a huge part in Uruguay achieving its independence from Spain. Born in Buenos Aires, he spent the last years of his life exiled in Paraguay, but he is the man that people of Uruguay salute as their national hero.
As a boy from a wealthy family ,who settled in Uruguay, Artigas was sent to church to learn religious studies but refused to accept the discipline and dropped out of the school. At 12, he was sent to work on family farms and became close to the gaucho way of life.That stuck with him through his life and when, at 86, he felt he was going to die, he asked to be placed in the saddle of a horse so he could die there, which he did.
In his early days he had a price on his head for cattle smuggling and got a pardon in exchange for joining the military. He escaped capture several times, and made life and death decisions in his role as a military General fighting for Independence.
This compound, in Maldonado, occupies a city block and holds remnants of what used to house Artigas and his troops, men who were loyal to him to the end.
What is odd is that the kid who didn’t like discipline turned into a man who lived discipline, made rules, and had them enforced.
Men of substance often do things they don’t want to do, and live by rules they don’t like.
Discipline and success are not strangers.
Even during the day, when trekking, this window stays open.
In Punta Del Este, there is always the sound of crashing waves in my hotel room.
Each morning a salt smelling breeze wakes me up.
Every evening, exterior lights of taller and more sumptuous places light up the street outside, but these fine hotels ,apartments and condos don’t have any better view of the ocean than I do from this modest second floor crow’s nest.
There are objects, people and experiences you see every day on a trip that become anchors, holding you steady, keeping you from drifting.
This open window, by the sea, has become, quickly, one of my favorite anchors.
Piriapolis is a small Uruguayan town an hour bus ride from Punta Del Este.
A one way ticket on the bus lines COT, or COPSA, runs ten dollars. This is one of those side trips that gives a bigger vision of the country.The beaches at Punta Del Este are well spoken of but the beaches in Piriapolis are smaller, more accessible, with calmer waves.
Walking a wide boardwalk that runs parallel to the beach, I look down and see, peeking out of the sand, the head of a young woman. Her body is completely buried. I don’t know if she is asleep or her partner covered her while she was awake? I don’t know if she protested?
He is about to pounce when he looks up and sees me. I point at my camera. He kneels down and gives me a thumbs up.
It is a beautiful day and this couple has time to do whatever they choose. He chooses to cover her up like a kid playing in the sandbox and she chooses to let herself be covered up because it means he is paying her the attention she wants.
They have the beach to themselves.
Precious moments whiz past our heads all day, like bullets. A few hit us hard enough to be remembered,and, even fewer, get written down.
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