"You're a Gwaiii"

MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY – 3rd February 2010

Although I briefly mentioned the stifling heat and humidity of Buenos Aries, I should have put the 40° or whatever it was in some perspective by adding that it was heat of a magnitude foreign to even this part of the world – locals were just as uncomfortable as I was (leave alone the poor gringos walking around like looking like slow-boiled lobsters). It seems that unusual weather is very much in vogue across the world – my travels alone have featured devastating monsoons arriving a month or more late in western India, days of successive sunshine in Milford Sound running the normally gushing waterfalls dry in what is supposed to be the wet season, and all the while there’s been pandemonium back home with the winter to end all winters. Man-made global warming? There are more than enough people out there willing to argue about the cause, but everyone should have a read of an excellent commentary by Gregory Petsko (HT: CJ Harris) who beautifully compares the current state of the atmosphere with the hypothetical discovery of an asteroid heading for Earth. In the latter, people aren’t going to sit around arguing whether it is a natural phenomenon or not – natural or otherwise all that matters is doing something about it. Climate change presents exactly the same situation, but sadly politicians cannot, or will not, see it so.

This quite magnificently tangential turn on an otherwise focused introduction isn’t totally irrelevant, although its scant relevance can be fairly conclusively summarised along the lines of “it pissed it down with rain yesterday in Colonia, and it is pissing it down with rain here in Montevideo right now”.

Filling in a few blanks, I spent yesterday morning wandering around Colonia del Sacramento’s historic old town – its significance rests on its geographic situation just an hour across the Río de la Plata from the Spanish stronghold of Buenos Aries, making it the perfect location for the Portuguese to set up shop (i.e. build a base to smuggle goods). The fort, named Sacramento, was built on the adjacent island, and Colonia was established in 1680 as the colony for its inhabitants (hence the name). Although it switched hands between the Spanish and Portuguese several times over the centuries that followed, it has now been Spanish for the best part of 200 years and is unique in being a Portuguese settlement in Spanish Latin America, but its real beauty – and source of its UNESCO World Heritage status – is the preservation of its history in timeless cobbled streets and century old buildings.

Overcast skies and light drizzle were a bit of a nuisance, but it was still cool to get up close and personal with old structures like the City Gates and surrounding city wall (right), as well as the still-functioning lighthouse – the latter open for tourists to climb (and inadvertently, but repeatedly, smack their heads on a stairwell ceiling that gradually decreases in height as you ascend). It wasn’t long, however, before I was back at the hostel getting my things ready for departure – fellow Pembrokians Oli and Becca were arriving in Colonia by ferry at 1.30, leaving us just enough time for a bite to eat and general catch up before I had to dash down to the bus terminal for the 2 hour ride to Montevideo.

It’s fair to say I was still carrying a bit of lethargy from “The Longest Day”, and consequently remember absolutely nothing from the bus journey – I think I was asleep before we’d started moving, and woke as we ground to a halt in the sprawling mass of Montevideo’s central bus terminal. The “Red Hostel” was found easily enough by taxi, although it seems more than probable that I was subject to a special “gringo” tariff that charged me far more than it should have been – the 90 pesos (US$5) I forked out being about double the rate indicated in the LPG. The hostel was a good show though – powerful showers with complimentary towels and free shower gel (the latter being particularly useful when you have a tendency to forget yours in hostel showers around the world on an annoying regular basis), and a good little communal area that saw me befriend a motley crew of Aussies featuring Emma from Canberra, Luke from Melbourne, and latterly Scott and Mitch from Sydney. I opened a can of worms by bringing up the rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney, and with inter-Aussie banter in full flow we all sauntered into the city centre, accompanied by Barbára, also staying in the Red Hostel, but on a one week holiday from Buenos Aries. A good quality looking establishment in Piazza Matriz saw us dismantle some fine steak and a good quantity of pilsen beer, before we moved on to a bar on Bartolmé Mitre – ground zero of Montevideo’s nightlife. Plenty of banter, plenty of beers, and a good dancing session took us well into the early hours of the morning, and it would be several hours later that I recalled a university-esque walk home involving attempts at 3-man piggy backs and the standard issue bit of roadside food (possibly in the form of a burger, though details escape me).

This morning was a bit of a struggle, but I managed to wake up early enough to scoff down a good portion of free breakfast (something I’d failed to do in Colonia after getting woken by the staff at 11 in order to check out) – fresh fruit and strong coffee went down an absolute treat. The Aussie lads had departed (Scott and Mitch) or were in the process of departing (Luke), but myself, Barbara and another girl (from Spain, but living in Chile) made plans to hit the city’s beach before checking out the town in the afternoon. We made it approximately 25 steps to the beach before noticing a mammoth dark cloud coming our way, so went back inside and sacked off beach gear in favour of some culture in the Ciudad Vieja (Old City). It doesn’t take a genius to immediately notice all sorts of similarities to Europe, both architecturally and culturally, but while I would assume such imperatorial traits are found across most Latin American cities, what is interesting here is the extent and significance of Italian stylistic influence – buildings like the Teatro Solis would be more at home in Florence than Madrid. The Plaza Independiente is Montevideo’s most famous spot and the central focal point of the city, with the prancing statue of national hero José Artigas dominating the square (right) in front of the striking height of Palacio Salvo which, at 26 stories, was once South America’s tallest building. At the west end of the square is the Puerta de la Cuidadela (Gateway of the City), and seemed like a perfect place to Back the Bid...





Getting a coffee and a bite to eat turned out to be a bittersweet experience – the cute upstairs cafe we found had an interior that simply resonated with artistic style and contemporary chic... but the food and drink provided by the one-woman operation was both terrible and expensive in equal measure. More culture was in store though, with the city’s historical museum the next stop. Featuring the usual array of colonial and indigenous bits and pieces, its highlights in my eyes were its extensive and seriously impressive collection of oil paintings depicting scenes from colonial battles between European powers and other equally evocative imagery. The Museo Torres García, our next stop, offered art of a different kind in the form of the works of Montividean Joaquín Torres García. Known for abstract and cubist pieces, the displays follow his life as an artist: a circle around one gallery room takes you step by step from portraits of a most conventional form right the way though to lines and dots and “make what you will of this” shapes. I’m not particularly big on art, but I’m definitely a huge fan of Torres García – the fact that the sculpture on the right produced one of those “this really speaks to me” moments that I’m usually the first to parody says it all.

It wasn’t long before the heavens well and truly opened, and when it hadn’t ceased after some more substantial food on the Bartolmé Mitre we decided to cut our losses and grab a taxi home. However, rain in Uruguay is rare enough to bring things to a relative standstill when it begins – so getting a taxi immediately became next-to-impossible. After half an hour and getting ourselves thoroughly drenched first, we were on our way – now there’s time for a shower before dinner with Oli and Becca (who’ve followed 24 hours behind me to Montevideo and, just like in Colonia, appear to have brought crappy weather with them) and 8.15pm reporting time for my 9pm overnight bus to Porto Alegre, Brazil.