The crane must be fifty feet tall.
” She comes from Europe,” the man in the hard hat tells me as he walks over.
“Que donde esta?”
“Estados Unitos, Nuevo Mexico …”.
He holds a small orange box in his hand with buttons. As he pushes buttons the crane lifts a load of cement in a metal bucket. The bucket was attached moments ago by men who have since disappeared into the building to work on plumbing, wiring, plastering, clean up. The building is seventy percent done and then the real job of filling it with paying tenants begins.
“Is constuction bueno aqui?” I ask.
“Medio,” he says, and, in English, tells me that Uruguay is doing well from immigration.
“You are playing video games,” I joke.
“Si,” he smiles, “but I need to be careful. Mucho responsibilidad.”
He wishes me a good day and returns to his job.
New buildings are a good economic sign.
Uruguay is one of the more prosperous countries in South America and Punta Del Este is a playground for people of means.
With cheap money, the mantra becomes, ” Build it, and they will come. ”
I’m thankful for people who still know how to build things.
I like to watch buildings go up, one floor at a time, and hum along with the tangos playing on construction worker’s radios
The influence of the Catholic church is everywhere in South America.
There is a church near most squares and church bells can be seen and heard from most anywhere in most cities,towns or villages. Huge wooden doors open in the morning and stay open until dark. People come and go, take off their hats, kneel in the pews, say prayers for themselves and people they don’t know.
The normal thing I do when I travel is not to look in guide books before I leave the house. My norm is to start walking, discover,then research. Chance creates the possibility for surprise , and, when I strike out without a destination in mind, I find things of interest that aren’t in the guide books.
It is quite by chance that I find the Cathedral San Fernando in Maldonado.
Turning a corner, I have to say this church is the most renovated and pristine church I have seen in Uruguay. The pinkish color of these exterior walls stands in contrast to the blue sky, and the statue holding the cross at the top of the building looking down at me, as I come closer, has the same effect on me that statues of Zeus had for the Greeks. The cathedral, I learn inside, has an interesting history.
It was begun in 1801 and inaugurated in 1895 by a local man – Montevideo archbishop Mariano Soler, who was born in nearby San Carlos.
The Cathedral features the Virgin Del Carmen salvaged from a sunken ship off the nearby Isla de Lobos in 1829. It also has a dying Christ figure inside that washed ashore from unknown sources and found a home here.
The interior of the church gives a sense of what churches should convey – how small we are and how big the world is,how this universe was created by something much greater than us. As guests, in someone else’s house – we shouldn’t dirty the linens.
I sit in a pew and listen to silence.
I leave feeling better, and worse.
Jose Artigas is to Uruguay what George Washington is to the United States.
You see enough statues in enough places and finally you wonder about the men behind them. You do a little research and discover that Jose Artigas is a real person with a real history. Some of his history has been romanticized, but he played a huge part in Uruguay achieving its independence from Spain. Born in Buenos Aires, he spent the last years of his life exiled in Paraguay, but he is the man that people of Uruguay salute as their national hero.
As a boy from a wealthy family ,who settled in Uruguay, Artigas was sent to church to learn religious studies but refused to accept the discipline and dropped out of the school. At 12, he was sent to work on family farms and became close to the gaucho way of life.That stuck with him through his life and when, at 86, he felt he was going to die, he asked to be placed in the saddle of a horse so he could die there, which he did.
In his early days he had a price on his head for cattle smuggling and got a pardon in exchange for joining the military. He escaped capture several times, and made life and death decisions in his role as a military General fighting for Independence.
This compound, in Maldonado, occupies a city block and holds remnants of what used to house Artigas and his troops, men who were loyal to him to the end.
What is odd is that the kid who didn’t like discipline turned into a man who lived discipline, made rules, and had them enforced.
Men of substance often do things they don’t want to do, and live by rules they don’t like.
Discipline and success are not strangers.
The beach at Piriapolis is paralleled by a walkway for pedestrians and sightseers, as well as locals taking a lunch break in their vehicles with the doors open to give the breezes a better chance to cool them.
A point of interest on the Rambla is a long row of white lion statues. They look out of place, at first, but they grow on me.There are not many new statues being built these days. Stalin and Mao had their pictures on schoolroom walls, but, these days, statues speak of antiquity and people seem far too eager to tear down their old history.
On the waterfront by the beach stands the huge Argentine Hotel that dates back decades.
On a trip inside to reconnoiter the hotel casino, and use the rest room, I am greeted by a great swimming pool, immense dining halls, hundreds of rooms on multiple floors. Reviews on Trip Adviser are mixed. Some say the hotel is old, moldy, and smells. Others say it is a nostalgic trip back to the early part of last century. Some say the rooms aren’t clean. Others say the staff is attentive. After perusing a few dozen reviews, the accepted three star rating seems to be the opinion held by the majority. I like to remember that I can have a great time in a place no one likes, and be bored to death in a place everyone loves.
Piriapolis is an older, more genteel version of Punta Del Este – a seaside resort town waiting for Christmas visitors to make it bloom again, as it used too.
It appears to be a destination for middle class travelers on a middle class budget.
These days, it is hard too say, we are too enlightened for statues of lions and old hotels.
We would rather wear our culture on our T shirts and use our cell phones.
Even during the day, when trekking, this window stays open.
In Punta Del Este, there is always the sound of crashing waves in my hotel room.
Each morning a salt smelling breeze wakes me up.
Every evening, exterior lights of taller and more sumptuous places light up the street outside, but these fine hotels ,apartments and condos don’t have any better view of the ocean than I do from this modest second floor crow’s nest.
There are objects, people and experiences you see every day on a trip that become anchors, holding you steady, keeping you from drifting.
This open window, by the sea, has become, quickly, one of my favorite anchors.
This day is spent in a small town that offers beach, shopping, a boardwalk,surrounded by hills and wooded areas, somewhat off well trod tourist tracks.
To get here we pull off Route 1 out of Punta Del Este and cut through gorgeous hills and grasslands with cows, fields of yellow flowers, a few white puffs of clouds on an otherwise blue sky tablecloth, small farm homes set back from the road.
Piriapolis is a destination where you can relax and put away pretensions.
There are peculiar houses in Piriapolis. There are homes with thatched roofs, sculptured walls, A frames, California bungalows, ranch homes, and even hippie hangouts with VW buses in the drive. One lady has a black winding staircase in her front yard that lets her go up to her roof to hang her clothes out to dry.
Dogs greet me as I walk through their neighborhoods and only half of the hounds are energetic enough to bark.
It is comfortable here,a hint of California in the middle of Dorothy’s Kansas.
I look for Toto and spot him asleep on a cushion in a front porch rocking chair. His head leans against a small pillow and a blanket knitted just for the length of his body lets me know that he is loved.
Piriapolis is a good shoe for the person it fits.
Piriapolis is a small Uruguayan town an hour bus ride from Punta Del Este.
A one way ticket on the bus lines COT, or COPSA, runs ten dollars. This is one of those side trips that gives a bigger vision of the country.The beaches at Punta Del Este are well spoken of but the beaches in Piriapolis are smaller, more accessible, with calmer waves.
Walking a wide boardwalk that runs parallel to the beach, I look down and see, peeking out of the sand, the head of a young woman. Her body is completely buried. I don’t know if she is asleep or her partner covered her while she was awake? I don’t know if she protested?
He is about to pounce when he looks up and sees me. I point at my camera. He kneels down and gives me a thumbs up.
It is a beautiful day and this couple has time to do whatever they choose. He chooses to cover her up like a kid playing in the sandbox and she chooses to let herself be covered up because it means he is paying her the attention she wants.
They have the beach to themselves.
Precious moments whiz past our heads all day, like bullets. A few hit us hard enough to be remembered,and, even fewer, get written down.
Right across from the bus terminal in Punta Del Este at Parada 1, Bravo Beach, is ” The Hand.”
It is difficult not to see the outside beach sculpture if you are anywhere near it. The” Hand” is only the tips of three fingers and a thumb rising out of the sand, but the fingers motion to you to come closer.
This sculpture was created in 1982 by a Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrazabel as part of an art competition and it wasn’t, at first, his most favored project.
It has remained here, since then, intact.
The fingers rise out of the sand higher than most people stand.
The art work has been called “Men Emerging to Life,” “Monument of the Fingers,” “Monument to the Drowned,” “The Hand.” The artist didn’t like the third title much, according to Wikipedia, but once your works are on their own you can’t say much about how they are received and what is done to them.
This afternoon visitors pose, touch the fingers and hang out.
One morning, the Hand might rise from the sand a bit more, exposing its massive wrist.
We would then need a ladder to climb up to pose for our picture sitting in the huge open palm. .
From any angle I look, I can see that the ” Hand ” will always be a manicurist’s dream job.
Artists always make us pay attention when we start to drift into numbing routine.
The noise draws you. With stands visible, and walls keeping people out, this spectacle is a city road race. There are cameras and cameramen strategically placed and, in retrospect, the best way to see the race is to see it on television.
Despite what Juan Carlos says, the cars are loud and there is the smell of burning fuel. I get a General pass in the nosebleed section, way around on the opposite end of the track from where I buy my ticket, and show the little blue band wrapped around my wrist to a gate guard in the D section.The stands are full and a warm up car is leading all competitors around the track in a get to know you lap.
Fans are ready for action, standing at the rail, lounging in chairs in grass areas near the grandstands. There are portable toilets, a food concession, parking, and if you want shade you can find it under the grandstands. It is a long oval track and sheet metal walls containing it are tall enough that you can’t see the race unless you are looking down from a second story balcony of one of the hotels across the street.
My ticket calls the race the Grand Prix of Punta Del Este .
Beautiful models get out of a van. They are gorgeous. All made up and dressed in official racing outfits, they are walking to the finish line till a winner is declared and then they will get their pictures taken for the newspapers and honor the winner with multiple hugs and kisses.
Kisses are powerful motivators.
I haven’t been to Greek islands but they must be similar to this place.
Following the Rambla past the port, past expensive homes, you reach the end of the Punta Del Este peninsula. At the end is a parking lot with exercise equipment, two mermaids, a flagpole with a Uruguayan flag flying, and an old man standing perilously close to incoming waves as he tries to fish rough waters while a friend watches.
These two mermaids are made from a concrete mix but they have been damaged. The tail of one has been severed from her body. There are limbs missing from both .
The statues look alive from a distance and you have to watch to make sure they aren’t moving to realize they are just sculptures. You can walk up to them and that is their problem. It doesn’t take much alcohol for someone to get carried away and vent frustration on two Goddesses who can’t fight back because a workman has anchored their tails in concrete.
The two old men fishing are being bold. Wind is kicking up waves and the one who is fishing is very close to being caught in one and becoming whisked out to sea.
At the end of land, I look for Neptune to rise out of the water with his seaweed fouled trident and demand to know what offerings I am making.
I haven’t been to Greek islands but it is easy to see how they came to have Gods and Goddesses.
There are forces in this universe we don’t control.
Building temples and worshiping God’s is not a bad precaution.
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