Lazy Days in Uruguay

Wednesday, Feb. 16 (Part II)

Real San Carlos is an unusual complex of buildings from the early 1900s. It was built as a huge entertainment complex and included a hotel, a casino, a bull ring, a fronton court, and a horse racing track. All were built expensively and well. The owner brought people on excursions from Buenos Aires where gambling was prohitibited. here, they could bet at the bull ring, on the jai alai teams, on the horses, and at the casino games. The government placed a special tax on the excursions, however, and the enterprise failed when tourist quit coming. The bull ring was used only two years and couldn{t be revitalized later because bull fighting became outlawed in Uruguay. It now stands as a fantastic ironwork structure with a brick facade that is cracking and occasionally crumbling. The race track still hosts races. The fronton stadium is a massive unused brick and concrete building with broken glass panes. It stands forlorn and forsaken. Only the old hotel and casino buildings have been restored. They are now being used to house a polytechnical university.

On the way back, I took a different route to see the Church of San Bento, a small chapel from the 1800s. Then I cut back toward the beaches where there were larger crowds of bathers than when I first walked along there this morning.

I had a chivito for dinner. It is a Uruguayan sandwich much like the lomito in Argentina. On a 5-inch (12.5 cm) round bun, it has a thin layer of tender beef, slices of ham, a slice of cheese, a fried egg, butter, pickled vegetables, pimientos, peas, and mustard. It was not and juicy. I intended to bring it back to the room. Instead, I sat on a bench and ate the entire messy thing as the inner ingredients slid and tried to come out the bottom of the bun. Ummm!

Walking: 39,539 steps (31,556 aerobic steps), 1604 calories, 26.88 km (16 miles)

Thursday, Feb. 17

I am sitting in the plaza in the old part of town. It is 10:30. I have checked out of my hotel, but my bus doesn{t depart for 4 hours. I am going to relax and read. I am now reading The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. I am bout 1/3 of the way through it. I stop reading occasionally to watch the tourists and/or the birds. The trees in this park are full of parakeets which are constantly in motion and making noise this time of the morning.
_______
I ate lunch at a popular type of place here. It is a stainless steel portable kitchen that has been parked in a permanant location. There were four tables which had tablecloths on the sidewalk. I had a chivito again, but this one was better than the one yesterday. It was bigger and had more items inside (fried bacon and a picante mustard, for instance). It was delicious, but they are so messy to eat because of the juices from the meats and pickled vegetables and the melted cheese which tends to ooze out the bottom. They serve them in small plastic bags to catch it all.

The bus was not crowded at all. I didn´t have a seatmate except for the last 2 hours of the six-hour trip. He was a y9oung professional in a pink dress shirt and black slacks. I made notes about interesting things along the way:

1. Some rurual houses here have thatched roofs. In general, it is homes for the poor, but I saw one nice looking, larger brick home with one.

2. Two gauchos caught the bus from a small village and rade into the nearby town. Both had very dark skin from working in the sun. As the bus pulled up, they were rushing to put on shirts which they apparently do not normally wear. One buttoned 3-4 buttons and left the others loose. The other just grabbed the tails of the shirt, pulled them together, and tied them into a knot. Bot wore berets--one of knitted yarn and the other one of felt.

3. We passed some vinyards just north of Colonia, but none after that. The main vinyards are just north of Paysandú where I am now. The vines were very green, but I couldn´t tell from the bus whether they still had grapes or not.

4. There were many fields of sunflowers along the route. They were so beautiful. From a distance, they just looked like yellow fields, but as we approached them, their round faces were all standing facing the sun and glowing. Most of the fields were at that state of production, but we passed some where the plants had browned and were beginning to seed.

5. They don´t plow fields here. Daniel told me about it in Argentina. They just plant the seeds in the flat ground. Daniel said it is a more efficient way of planting and managing the fields. It certainly gives the planted fields a nice, smooth look.

6. We passed a couple of very nice golf resorts just outside of Carmelo. They were quite exclusive looking with facilities also for horseback riding, tennis, basketball, etc.

I arrived in Pasandú at 8:15 p.m. It is not dark until about 9:00. I had picked out 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices for places to stay. My first choice, a Victorian building transformed into a guest house, had no response at the door. My second choice was fine, so I was settled into a room before dark. I rushed out to buy some snacks and returned to the room for the night.

Friday, Feb. 18 (Part I)

Like in Argentina, no one has spoken English at any of the tourist offices here in Uruguay. It ha to hurt tourism. Sure, they get the people who pay $4000-5000 for a package trip of 2 weeks that includes an English speaking guide, but I bet those kinds of vacationers don´t make up more than about 10% of the travel business. I can see why Asia is so much more popular with independent travelers. Even the children who beg on the streets there can conduct a simple conversation in English. The tone I hear often here in South America in their response to my question of whether they speak English sounds to me as if they are offended that I would even ask and that they expect me to adapt to them if I want to be here. That´s fine, but the tourist dollars are an awful lot of money to just dismiss out of pride and contrariness!
______
It is 2:45 p.m. It has been a slow-paced, but nice, day so far. I started with a visit to the cathedral. It is from 1860, but was bombed in 1869 and parts had to be rebuilt. Today, it is rare for whole cities to be damaged by war. Many places like this which was in a disputed territory between the Spanish and the Portuguese, have known several periods of destruction. The loss of the World Trade Towers was terrible in what Bush laughingly calls a "war," but in a REAL war, most of Manhattan would have been damaged if not destroyed. Today, no one (expect for those who tick off the U.S. and are too weak to retaliate--Iraq, Grenada, Iraq again, etc.--and isolated regions of the world--Israel/Syria/Palestine, parts of Africa, Kosovo/Serbia/Croatia, etc.--really knows how horrible and destructive war really is.

Anyway, the organist was practicing while I was at the cathedral. I just sat, relaxed, and enjoyed myself slistening to the music. How much better a church visit is when there is music!

I bought my ticket for Salto for tomorrow, but it does not include an assigned seat. My guidebook says seats are sometimes unavailable when traveling northward from here. I assume I will be allowed to stand if there is no seat, since I have a ticket.

I visited the Historical Museum here. It was free and involved a guided tour. The lady was a young biology student who works part-time at the museum while doing a part-time, two-year, unpaid internship in a laboratory. Her English was weak, but I understood the history of the area. She spoke the best English of anyone I have met here in Uruguay so far.

I walked to another museum with gaucho exhibits, but it closes for siesta (as does most of the town). I will probably go back there this evening. Since it was closed, I walked back to town.

There are few restaurants in this town. I stopped at the busiest (and one of the more expensive ones). I had a chivito plate--a chivito sandwich (even better than the ones I have had before) with fried potatoes. I am ready for a change in diet, but there just wasn´t much choice available here.