San Ignacio

We arrived in the red dirt streets of San Ignacio on Tuesday, a short 4 1/2-hour bus ride from Iguazu. I have loved to look out at the small towns we've driven through on our giant comfortable buses (so far South America does buses really well) and it felt wonderful to get out and stay in one. Our bus was met by a local guy named Michael who sold us on his new hostel a couple of blocks away. It was a nice place, opened 3 months before by an extensive network of relatives, including many sisters who seemed to do a lot of the work including making really delicious meals.


We walked out to the ruins of the Jesuit reduccion in San Ignacio, built in the 17 & 18th centuries and not rediscovered for restoration until the 1940s. The iron-rich earth here is red and the mission was built with blocks of soft and beautiful red sandstone. The ruins are in a big park which contains the remains of all the residential buildings lived in by the Jesuits and their convertees, the Guaraní. The ruins are just walls without decoration, except for the remains of the church where carved pilasters and reliefs surround the main door. All around the main plaza and down the fronts of the old residences are the remains of square pillars that used to support an awning. At night every pillar around the plaza is spotlit with its own light and the carvings are illuminated with soft and changing colored lights. Vaguely folkloric music plays from the trees. It is a beautifully ethereal experience.



On Wednesday we walked out to the woodland home of the Argentinian poet and writer Horacio Quiroga. A museum there houses family photos and rusted tools and tells the story of Quiroga's life, fraught with tragedy. His father accidentally killed himself while cleaning a gun and, startled by the shot Quiroga's mother dropped baby Horacio on the floor. His stepfather killed himself after suffering a debilitating stroke. His brother and sister died of typhus. His first wife committed suicide after becoming depressed living in the forest where Quiroga had moved the family to live on the Río Paraná away from the hustle of Buenos Aires. Quiroga committed suicide when dying of prostate cancer and having been, as a plaque informed us, left alone and dying in the forest by his second wife and his daughter.


We gleaned all this from informational plaques along a path through a bamboo grove. The walk did not yield only tragedy. According to the English translation, Quiroga was not only a writer. "He was manufacturer of sweet of peanut, broken corn and mosaics of bleck and hoarder of ferruginous sand. He was an inventor of an exotic device to kill ants..."

On Thursday we took the hostel up on a tour of a local provincial park. It was a beautiful hike and lovely day. We had one other hosteller, Bas from Holland, and our guide Beatrice. Also Nelson, the driver of the immense open topped truck that took us into the park. The park is on the banks of the Río Paraná which runs between Argentina and Paraguay. It is full of medicinal plants and beautiful trees. It also apparently housed Herr Borman, Hitler's secretary, who fled to Argentina after the war. There is a ruined building deep in the forest, possibly an old Jesuit outpost, called Casa Borman where he is thought to have holed up for 10 years. According to our guide Borman escaped to Paraguay when he was close to being captured and has not been heard from since.

Cataratas de Iguazu

Last Monday we visited Iguazu Falls at the intersection of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Although the National Park was very "touristic" as people say here, it was still breathtaking. Toward the end of the day we went to look down into the Gargantua del Diablo. It was one of the few things we have seen that truly deserves the word awesome. Here are a few pictures and a video to give you a taste:





We also saw more iguanas, a coati with babies, and many beautiful butterflies, one of which appeared to be a good omen for Obama.

El Palmar

A lot happens in a short amount of time traveling. It's hard to keep up. Writing about Friday on Wednesday means that I am really behind. Leaving Montevideo we took the bus to Paysandú on Uruguay's western border with Argentina, then another short bus ride over the Río Uruguay to Colón, Argentina. We wanted to see El Palmar, a national park with a lot of wildlife. We were running short on Argentinian pesos but figured we could get some at Colón.

Ah, but banks are not as easy to find as they might be and there was none close to the station. We asked at the tourist office if the town nearest the park would have a bank and took a chance that it might. From Colón the bus dropped us on the side of the road outside the little town of Ubajay where the bus stop attendant told us that the nearest bank was 40 kilometers away. Yay.


The guy running the restaurant changed one of our emergency US$100 bills for a little under the going rate and we got a remis (gypsy cab) into the park. We camped by the Río Uruguay and got to see a family of capybaras, or carpinchos, wander out of the forest. Many many vizcachas live in the campground -- they are like much bigger chinchillas with a heavy black stripe across their lower face like a Groucho Marx mustache.




It felt great to sleep out under the stars after our urban soujourn. The next morning we met 2 really nice Israeli backpackers, Assaf and Ofer, and spent the day hiking with them, into the depths of the palms and then back out to some undated ruins of giant stone ovens where quicklime seems to have played a great role.


We ate dinner in the patio of the park restaurant where the vizcachas scamper about the tables and giant toads get underfoot, sometimes fatally as Assaf found out. We also saw many beautiful birds, black and white iguanas and giant toads. We have not yet seen a ñandu, the ostrich-like native.


We started hiking out of the park Sunday morning, along the road that leads 9 miles to the entrance. About 15 minutes down the long and dusty road we hitched a ride from an incredibly nice guy named Manuel who chatted about the park, politics, Argentina. His car was amazing, with a gaucho Jesus dangling from the rearview mirror, a cracked windshield and 2 wires that he reconnected under the steering wheel while still driving when we moved from the gravel road to the highway. He ran out of gas a little while after we hit the highway and we hiked the rest of the way to the bus stop. We caught the bus to Concordia and spent the hot day walking in it and waiting for our evening bus to Iguazu Falls.

Cementerios

A last post about Montevideo. In our last few days there we went to two Uruguayan graveyards. One in our neighborhood and another in the old city. They were truly astounding especially for someone who grew up going to cemetaries in New England. The only similarity is they both look wonderful as they decay.

I have decided that when I die I want a bust of myself looking very bearded and serene. Underneath I want a dozen or so statues: women, children, grown men, a priest, and possibly a winged angel, all with looks of absolute torment on their faces. Hilary hasn´t yet committed to this plan.

Here are a few pictures to give a taste:

We're leaving already?

We're heading out for Argentina in the morning and I can't believe our sojourn in Montevideo is over. Everyone has been so kind to us here, curious about us and interested in our travels. We've said goodbye to the man at the cyber café - to us he will always be Señor Zoom. We took photos of the giggly bubbly chicas at the panaderia who all wished us good travels and told us to be careful.

We said goodbye to our friends at the planetarium and got to photograph Jupiter through the telescope eyepiece. Our lady at the lavanderia wrote us a goodbye note which she had a friend translate into English. Lavanderia became our "clean wash store." I want to post photos of all these people but haven't jumped through all the uploading hoops yet.

And we've said goodbye to our profesora and her husband, though we'll hand over the keys to her apartment tomorrow. She has been nothing but encouraging about our Spanish and wants us to take 10 minutes to email her questions whenever we hit a town with a cyber cafe. We may not be rock solid on the past subjunctive and conditional but we are miles ahead of where we started.

We expect to spend the first days in Argentina in a national park called El Palmar where we hope to see carpinchos (capybaras), among other things. For a leg of the journey up to Iguazu Falls we hope to sample a South American train ride. The falls are supposed to be spectacular, spanning the Argentine-Brazil border.

It feels as if we just got here and as if we've lived here a long time. We are lucky to have found such a lovely place and people on our first stop -- we feel like we'll always have a home in South America.

fines de semanas

We've taken two weekends away from the city -- one west to Colonia del Sacramento and one north to Punta del Diablo.

Colonia is a 17th century port on the Río de la Plata, S.A.'s version of the Big Muddy, and is across the wide river from Buenos Aires.

In its first century the town changed hands many times, control fluctuating frequently between the Portuguese and Spanish until the early 19th century when Uruguay was established.

The old town is a confluence of cobblestoned tree-lined streets leading down to the riverfront. A white balustrade lines most of the road along the river. There is an old lighthouse built on the ruins of an older convent, the old city gate and walls, and scattered cannons. We moved in to the Hostel Colonia and were promptly accosted by a sun-scorched Australian who upbraided us for spending too much on Spanish lessons.


It is a lovely town to walk through and we spent most of our time wandering the streets and stopping for a drink or a meal. This is where we met our helpful parrilla-hound Panqueque. We had a lovely glass of wine at an outside table at Garibaldi, a corner restaurant with walls hung with old-timey memorabilia -- someone's grandmother was a showgirl.


The second day we rented dread-o-bikes and doggedly pedaled them along the river, heading out of town and into the countryside. Brakeless and utterly uncared for, they made for hellish but exploitable companions. We took them out to the crumbling cement bullring that saw 8 bullfights before Uruguay outlawed bullfighting. We rode through vineyards and finally back to a watering hole on the riverbank where we downed Patricia and steeled ourselves for the ride home.

Punta del Diablo is along Uruguay's Atlantic coast. At this time of year, mid-spring, it is still mainly locals, fishermen, and inexplicable tourists like us. There is a new hostel in town, El Diablo Tranquilo, opened last year by a young (North) American couple. The hostel let us pitch our tent out back when we found out that the local campgrounds wouldn't open for another few weeks.







The beaches are remarkably lovely now, empty of people and edging up to rolling blue-green waves. We swam in the crashing surf and walked the 10 miles to a nearby fort in a local national park, one of the hostel's little dogs following us the whole way. We met lovely Dutch and Danish friends at the hostel and spent a night playing cutthroat UNO and drinking Patricia at El Diablo Tranquilo's adjacent restaurant.

Bizcocho, Panqueque, y los perros de Uruguay

We have met many nice people in Uruguay, some of them dogs. There are many dogs in Uruguay. They are not the half-feral beasts I hear about in parts of Mexico and Central America. They are well fed and looked after for the most part (our teacher cooks meals for her dogs), but they have a level of freedom you don't see much in the States.

In Montevideo few people use a leash (except for the occasional professional dog walker who may have a dozen or more) and many dogs seem to just take themselves for walks with no human companion. This is especially amazing because the traffic in Montevideo is fast and follows no discernable rules. I have come close to being run down myself, but the dogs seem to fare just fine. They also feel free to pass out in the middle of the sidewalk on hot days and speak their minds in full throated barks in the early hours of the morning.

We met our first dog friend in Colonia at a parrillada where we had much too many barbequed entrails for my taste. Early in the meal we were joined by a long black dog we named Panqueque, the local word for a pancake that is more of a crepe and is usually served for dessert with dulce de leche and ice cream. He had sad intelligent eyes, bent ears, and a dignified habit of crossing his paws to look up at us as we ate. He soon ruined the dignity routine by sprawling in the cobblestone gutter by our table and covering himself in sawdust. We fed him most of our kidneys, liver, and blood sausage only when he sprawled out and ignored us, so as not to encourage begging.


Later in Colonia, Hilary and I rented rickety and nearly brakeless bikes and rode along the Rio de la Plata and out into the countyside. On our way back we stopped at a wonderful riverside watering hole and ate a giant chivito and drank a couple liters of Patricia (beer pretty much only comes in liters here). It was the kind of place Matt McGregor would love and we relaxed relentlessly. After awhile a couple came down the beach collecting shells, with two cute little dogs in tow. When they sat at a table, the littlest one, only a puppy, came over to us and we played with him a while. In Uruguay, it seems, people just assume that you like or are at least comfortable with dogs. There is no apologizing when they come up to you and demand attention. This dog was friendly and fluffy and adorable, and when the smallest conversation is an effort and often ends in confusion, it is nice to meet a dog who understands only pats and the occasional "bueno perro."


Panqueque and the little puppy were nice aquaintances, but we fell in love with Bizcocho when we visited the northern beach town of Punta del Diablo. We camped behind a hostel named El Diablo Tranquilo and played with quite a few canine hangers on our first night there. The following day we started walking along the beach to a historic fort in a national park to the north. We saw one of the dogs following a couple of surfers from the hostel. When the surfers went in the water the dog started to follow us. She ended up following us all the way to the fort which turned out to be about 10 miles away over endless beaches and through a deserted national park full of eucalyptus trees with enormous nests of squawking parrots. We were thinking of taking a bus back, but with Bizcocho with us we didn't think it was possible.


Bizcocho, named after the little sugary pastries and croissants sold in the numerous panaderias of Uruguay, was amazing. So little and so smiley, bouncing along the sand on her little legs and sending the shore birds wheeling into the sky, or bounding off through the underbrush after a rabbit with her tail curled tight, the longer hair of her ridgeline blowing in all directions, and her bent ears flopping around joyfully. Even she seemed to find it amusing when she was bit by some sort of beach bug which made her jump nearly four feet straight up in the air. She kept our energy from flagging with her enthusiasm. Only occasionally, when her panting would increase and she would start drinking the receding sea water did we find a piece of beach trash, fashion a bowl, and pour her some water out of our bottle.


Whenever we encountered others, which was rarely, she would go over and introduce herself. We overheard one man at the fort call her "precioso." One smiling soldier in the park, standing next to a sign with a picture of a dog with a big red line through it willfully ignored Bizcocho and another gruff one at the fort said she could come in but couldn't go in the barracks.


On the long walk back down the Playa Grande, if Bizcocho was half as hungry as I was she must have been famished. She found a huge old rubbery fish steak after we passed some fisherman. She was unable to make more than a tiny dent in it with her teeth, and licking it didn't seem to give her much satisfaction, but she insisted on trying to bring it home even though it was bigger than her head and she had to put it down every few minutes. I thought about taking it from her and chucking it in the ocean, but the sight of her proudly bouncing down the beach with it in her mouth was heartbreaking and I couldn't do it.


That night after a few beers and a surprisingly ruthless game of Uno with some human friends, I sat up for a while petting Bizcocho. I wanted her to sleep in the tent with us but Hilary nixed that idea. The next day she sat in the long grass near our tent as we struck it and followed us around as we got ready to leave. Goodbye was long and painful. I would love to have that little dog with us right now and to take her on our travels, but I imagine being a beach bum and a dog in Punta del Diablo, Uruguay is probably pretty heavenly and we couldn't have offered her anything better. Still we miss her.