We arrived in the capital just after 9:30pm and were greeted by the most beautiful bus station we have visited yet. It is located in the cities largest mall complete with food court and cheap sun glass kiosks! We grabbed a taxi to Red Hostel and had a bit of an issue with our cabby as he came up the stairs after we paid him and claimed we owed him more money. The hostel is located in a spacious apartment building with large common room and wood burning fireplace. Sarah shuddered throughout the evening, complaining about the ridiculous cold temperatures we were experiencing. We lay in bed for over an hour in the dark reliving several of our funniest trip experiences thus far, and reiterating to ourselves how much we missed Buenos Aires.
In the morning I sat by the fire and continued to read through The Picture of Dorian Gray. I munched on baguette lathered in Dulce de Leche with slices of banana. I realized Canada needs to start adopting caramel and banana sandwiches as they are so fantastic with morning espresso. I read over a few lines of the book over and over and decided I rather fancied them. A fantastic description of the importance of embarrassing youth by Oscar Wilde: ¨We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!” I checked my email and received some endearing emails from friends reminding me that I was with them in spirit at graduation ceremony. I had totally forgotten about graduation all together and it kind of made me a bit sad to realize I was going to miss the festivities.
Sarah was feeling the cramp today and the weather was rather nauseating. The cold, clammy polluted variety. We walked up the main street that cuts through town, July 18 Ave. We walked past the municipal building which has an open square and a huge bronze statue of Michelangelo’s David. We walked another thirteen or so blocks passing by the National Library where you can find more bronze statues featuring Dante and Socrates. It seems that Montevideo is trying to grasp onto the high culture of the Renaissance and antiquity. My impression of the city is that it is an untidy and unimpressive smaller version of Buenos Aires. For every ten ugly buildings there may be one old colonial building worth glancing up at. The streets are full of cheap dollar store market vendors selling Spider Man balloons and underwear featuring Minnie and Mickey Mouse. I presume that is why so many people from Uruguay immigrate to Buenos Aires as it is so much more impressive. The people of Uruguay take Mate even more serious than their Argentine counterparts. The streets are littered with used Mate tea leaves which sort of look like dried hay and grass which have been soaked in coffee. I would much rather step in Mate then fresh dog shit any day, so I
consider this cultural difference commendable.
We arrived at the bus station to discover our transport alternatives to Iguazu Falls. The following is a list of our discovered alternatives as we came across them, ending in our chosen method of travel.
1) A ten hour bus north west to the city of Salto Uruguay. We would then need to cross the border and try and find a bus to Iguazu from here. Another twelve hours or so.
2) A ten hour bus to Rosario Argentina located four hours north of Buenos Aires and west of Montevideo. The next bus left on Thursday at noon. We would sit on a bus all day for ten hours and were not certain if any direct buses would get us to Iguazu.
3) A ferry company leaves daily from Montevideo to Buenos Aires. The duration of the trip is 23 hours. Sarah and I thought the lady was joking, heck no.
4) Our final and chosen method of transit to Iguazu Falls: A four hour ferry ride to Buenos Aires taking the more expensive ferry carrier.
We leave on Thursday at noon arriving in BA just before 5pm. We will spend one more night at Chillhouse (I am excited to drop in on everyone). We intend on spending Thursday night at La Cabrera the ever so elegant steak house we were unable to eat at on Sunday night. Basically we are taking a ferry all the way back to BA for a fine steak dinner, who doesn’t! We will leave the following night for a 17 hour night bus to Puerto Iguazu. If you didn’t already guess, figuring this all out was incredibly stressful and irritating. These falls better be fantastic. Apparently Mrs. Roosevelt saw Iguazu and was quoted as saying “Poor Niagara.” Sarah and I were exhausted after buying our tickets so grabbed some McD’s and gobbled up a McBacon, fries and Fanta before walking back down the main street in the newly developed
sunny weather.
I read more of Oscar Wilde’s novella and when dinner time chimed in our stomachs we walked out into the dark and searched for a supermarket. After much misdirection on the part of many an unhelpful local we finally made it to the “biggest supermarket” in this part of the city. We were seriously unimpressed with the selection. Half of the supermarket was actually a dollar store quality clothing store. I actually get somewhat of a kick out of having very little food options when trying to make dinner. It forces me to be really creative. I really couldn´t believe how bad the selection is here for food stuffs. I realized how lucky we are at home to have such great diversity at our tables. I closed my eyes in the checkout line and envisioned running into the Whole Foods at home, falling to my knees with tears running down my face. I started to list all of the food items I can get at home but not here, the list was exhaustive to say the least. As we walked back to the hostel I glanced back at the statue of Michelangelo´s David and had to laugh. We were so far from the gastronomic opulence of Florence it wasn´t even funny. We ended up eating a huge pot of creamed polenta with tomatoes, garlic, onion and Parmesan cheese (our one luxury item). We stacked a few fried eggs on the side and
were good to go.
We watched the film Meet Joe Black with folks from Sacramento, Amsterdam and Hamburg. It was determined that Brad Pitt is mind numbingly gorgeous in the film. I toiled over a few life decisions as I had received some news about a graduate program in Australia. I also looked into a certificate program taught at U of T for an international Fromagire certificate. Right now I have no clue what I am doing in the fall when I get home but hopefully it will all
work itself out nicely.
In the morning we walked to the Old Town district called Ciudad Vieja. I have never seen so many equestrian monuments on a thirty minute walk. We walked down to the pier and sat there very unimpressed. We were sitting in the touristy part of the capital and it was rather gross. Sarah moaned, “this pier sucks” and I couldn’t have agreed anymore. The pier was dotted with dog shit and garbage as well as a few dying palm trees. We had another “where on earth are we” moment as we walked down the coast by the dock yards where huge cargo holds were being loaded onto ships via crane. A group of young men were playing football and the ball flew over the fence, over the highway right to our feet. I wasn’t about to kick the ball back to them and display my poor skill level. They yelled at us as we passed which was rather thrilling.
We arrived at the Mercado del Puerto which is an old train station with a clock tower in the center of the building. Upon entering the old building, restaurant salesman rush at you with menus, chirping at you to eat at their parilla. It became somewhat of a joke as we would be saying no thank you to one man while several other restaurant spokespeople would be lining up to talk to us next in hopes of luring us to their establishment. The place was full of huge open air parilla bbq’s grilling up whole pig carcass, steaks, sausage and roasted vegetables. We walked back up the main street and had a rather disheveled teenager come up to us and ask if we wanted any Marijuana. The people of Montevideo are so inviting! We walked through a street full of art vendors and sat at a park bench staring at a four story water fountain outfitted with centaurs and dragons. We chatted about several What If scenarios such as:
If you had to be any land animal for a day what would it be?
Sarah: Jaguar
Andrew: a Newt
If you had to be any animal in the sea for a day what would it be:
Sarah: Dolphin (this was her accepted choice after mermaid was deemed invalid)
Andrew: Sea Cow aka Manatee
If you had to be any animal in the air for a day what would it be:
Sarah: Pterodactyl
Andrew: flying squirrel (this was my accepted choice after “killer whale falling from the sky” was deemed invalid).
We walked into Don Peperone, a three story restaurant filled with Mahogany tables and perked with the sounds of cool jazz. We decided our best bet was the all-you-can-eat buffet for seven dollars! We were given a glass of white wine and several stops at the sprawling table. We munched on fried chicken, mushroom steak, apple walnut salad, onion tart, ham and cheese tart, rice, corn, spring rolls, croquettes, pasta and finished the meal with a fruit salad, chocolate mousse and a peach meringue pie. Sarah told fascinating stories about her drama teacher Mr.Campbell from high school. Mr. Campbell is Neve Campbell’s father and would tell fascinating stories about his daughter, Hollywood and her lover at the moment John Cusack. We walked back to the hostel and spent our last night sitting by the crackling fire reading more enchanting literature and watching the tremendous film Fahrenheit 9-11. Before heading to bed I researched the new Michael Moore film coming out in theaters this June called Sicko. The tag line for the film is great, “A comedy about 45 million people with no health care in the richest country on earth.” Fantastic.
