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.
The beach at Piriapolis is paralleled by a walkway for pedestrians and sightseers, as well as locals taking a lunch break in their vehicles with the doors open to give the breezes a better chance to cool them.
A point of interest on the Rambla is a long row of white lion statues. They look out of place, at first, but they grow on me.There are not many new statues being built these days. Stalin and Mao had their pictures on schoolroom walls, but, these days, statues speak of antiquity and people seem far too eager to tear down their old history.
On the waterfront by the beach stands the huge Argentine Hotel that dates back decades.
On a trip inside to reconnoiter the hotel casino, and use the rest room, I am greeted by a great swimming pool, immense dining halls, hundreds of rooms on multiple floors. Reviews on Trip Adviser are mixed. Some say the hotel is old, moldy, and smells. Others say it is a nostalgic trip back to the early part of last century. Some say the rooms aren’t clean. Others say the staff is attentive. After perusing a few dozen reviews, the accepted three star rating seems to be the opinion held by the majority. I like to remember that I can have a great time in a place no one likes, and be bored to death in a place everyone loves.
Piriapolis is an older, more genteel version of Punta Del Este – a seaside resort town waiting for Christmas visitors to make it bloom again, as it used too.
It appears to be a destination for middle class travelers on a middle class budget.
These days, it is hard too say, we are too enlightened for statues of lions and old hotels.
We would rather wear our culture on our T shirts and use our cell phones.
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.
This day is spent in a small town that offers beach, shopping, a boardwalk,surrounded by hills and wooded areas, somewhat off well trod tourist tracks.
To get here we pull off Route 1 out of Punta Del Este and cut through gorgeous hills and grasslands with cows, fields of yellow flowers, a few white puffs of clouds on an otherwise blue sky tablecloth, small farm homes set back from the road.
Piriapolis is a destination where you can relax and put away pretensions.
There are peculiar houses in Piriapolis. There are homes with thatched roofs, sculptured walls, A frames, California bungalows, ranch homes, and even hippie hangouts with VW buses in the drive. One lady has a black winding staircase in her front yard that lets her go up to her roof to hang her clothes out to dry.
Dogs greet me as I walk through their neighborhoods and only half of the hounds are energetic enough to bark.
It is comfortable here,a hint of California in the middle of Dorothy’s Kansas.
I look for Toto and spot him asleep on a cushion in a front porch rocking chair. His head leans against a small pillow and a blanket knitted just for the length of his body lets me know that he is loved.
Piriapolis is a good shoe for the person it fits.
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