Across the River

I had forgotten how much I love Uruguay. I love crossing the giantness that is Rio de la Plata, I love getting on the bus in the sun and looking at the green flatness and palm trees. It isn´t wild or exotic, just lovely. I´ve missed the ocean. I´ve missed watching the sky change over it.

I have discovered that I like certain parts of traveling alone immensely. I love to leave and arrive places by myself. To cross borders. To look out my bus window. I´m not such a fan of the parts where company would be nice- like while walking along the sea at sunset, or getting dinner, or catching an Uruguayan punk band performance. But I´m just not into people enough to do the whole friendly hostel companion thing. Fortuitously, I think my number of travel days without a single companion comes out to less than 10. I´ll manage. And in spite of myself I seem to have acquired a troupe of of Brazilian theater kids who sing and play absolutely every kind of Brazilian music imaginable and are headed to the deserted Uruguayan coast. Can't wait for Brazil.


Another thing I forgot about Uruguay is the absolutely fantastic hospitality of all its residents. This whole welcoming, friendly thing is pretty much the standard in Latin America, but here it might be at its max. On every visit, every person I have met has invited me to share anything they have to offer. They have a running joke that an Uruguayan will show up at your house, knock on your door, and ask what time dinner´s at and where the bed is. But this joke is only charming because, in fact, anyone here would cook something up and make a bed for you at a moments notice. A lovely friend of a friend showed up to walk me around the city, took me out to lunch, and then took me home with her to northwestern Uruguay, where she cooked me food, showed me her paintings, and lent me her bike. When I have a door again, consider it open anytime.

Maria and I checked out this marvelous underground public museum in Montevideo and were delighted to find it taken up entirely by an exhibit on city spaces as utopias- as spaces of creation, discovery, wonder, and exploration. Cities designed to play to our human desires for whimsy and for home, for the environment, for play. I´ve spend loads of time studying this idea, from Debord and the situationists, to Latin American ethnographies of space and studies of the history of domination and oppression written into city architecture, in Latin America and worldwide (check out Wikipedia´s definition of psychogeography, it´s neat). It was a lovely treat and really smartly done.


Uruguay has a grant total of 3 million residents. Maria tells me they sometimes think they would have been better off staying a part of Brazil, thus winning 5 world cup titles. I was in Montevideo during the biggest game of their national season. Our power went out 5 minutes in. No riots though! We carry our mate gourd and thermos to the grocery store, to the beach. Jose Mujica, the new(ish) president, is a marvelous lefty expolitical prisoner, who says charming things on his radio show. Maria was good to ask, however, how a country of 3 million can justify being unable to support the entire population. The poverty may be more low profile, but it´s still here, after all.

I´ll resist the temptation to back track and wax on about Argentine political history and current realities-I spent too long studying it to get into it now, and I was on vacation. But don´t forget to read about the exciting stuff going down at Bolivia´s alternative climate change summit right now! (and more). Chaves, Evo, Ortega, Correa, Naomi Kleine, Noam Chomsky, and Eduardo Galeano (those last three being three of my all time favorite folks), will all be in attendance. Adelante, pues!