You have heard about Nirvana.
Imagine my surprise when our tour bus pulls into the Hotel Nirvana driveway just outside Colonia Swiss in Uruguay. It is exactly what I have imagined Nirvana to be like, except we aren’t in the clouds.
We have stopped for a twenty minute break for rest room facilities and a cup of coffee or tea, and treats, which we don’t have to pay for because the cost is included in our tour ticket.
The Nirvana Resort and Spa seems to have those things that people with time and money like – a pool, a driving range, a spa, fine dining, rooms that are clean and cleaned by someone else.
The huge white structure doesn’t exactly look Swiss but is likely modeled after some famous European get away. The grounds are immaculate and reminds that people with money want things to look just as nice where they go as where they are from.
Everything here is watered, raked, manicured. The staff wears black pants and white shirts or black skirts and white blouses. The girl who patiently serves us hot chocolate must have made a million but chats amiably while she fixes another.
After twenty minutes we hustle back to our bus, heads counted to make sure we aren’t leaving anyone behind, and we push on to Colonia Del Sacramento, the crown jewel of this journey.
It is sad to leave Nirvana, but paradise is not cut out for all of us.
Walking the streets of the port district, you find hotels you might have stayed if you hadn’t rented a studio. It is human to comparison shop, wonder what that place or this place has to offer at what price.
The two hotels within a block and a half of my studio are the Don Botique Hotel and the AK Design hotel.
According to TripAdvisor, both establishments are clean, safe, well rated, offer free internet. The Don offers a regular breakfast while the AK has a Continental breakfast. Both places get good marks and both hotels have websites with visitor reviews. For the time I have been here, moving into high season, the price for a room for one adult for one night at the Don is $168.00 U.S. A night at the AK is $70.00 U.S. My studio is less than $30.00 U.S. per night.
When I throw open shutters and walk out onto my little balcony, I can see the Don.
For price,privacy, quiet, and flexibility, I like the view better from where I am standing.
There are plenty of dogs in this city, but thousands of cats too.
Cats don’t make a lot of noise, take up a lot of space, or make crazy demands. They live as they have for thousands of years – hunting, sleeping, making reproductions of themselves, adapting to human civilization for which they have no interest or care.
Walking the area around Independence Square, close to an area called The Centro, this gato catches my eye.
He is stretched out on a window ledge with bars on one side of him and closed windows on the other. It is certain he is asleep and his owner has closed windows before leaving the house. When this guy wakes and sees he is trapped he will just turn over and go back to sleep. For this moment he is in cat dreamland where cats have all the mice they want and are always successful in the hunt.
In the city, dogs and cats live with humans and have adapted. Now, dogs don’t do much hunting. But cats, when push comes to shove, can become fearsome predators. Whether they love the little tuna bits their owners spoon out of a can into a little dish for them is likely. Whether they like a fat mouse or a big bird is more than likely.
I don’t know where this big boy was all night, but this morning he isn’t going anywhere. When his owners return they will open the window. He will jump down and brush against their legs.
They will laugh and pet him and let him out into a little back yard in the middle of a big big city where he will wait in a corner for something flying, creeping, or crawling to come close enough, so he can appropriate it.
On my way to a lavenderia, electricians are installing a new electrical service to the front of a residential/commercial building on Main Street.
Like most of the homes in this neighborhood, there is a retail space on the bottom floor. Atop the retail space,accessible by a door and stairs, is an apartment.
In this refurbish, the retail space serves as a staging ground for conduit, PVC pipe, bags of mortar, tools and lunch boxes. In our modern times,all buildings have to have water, sewer and electrical capabilities meeting city codes. These building exteriors, protected by Historical Site designations, are brick or adobe plastered with a cement veneer and will stand for another hundred years if they are kept repaired.
Electric was provided, up to now, through the splicing of two large thick wires joined and carelessly wrapped with electricians tape dangling down the front of the building. After the new panel box is anchored and wire pulled through legal conduit, power will be reconnected.
Inside,new occupants will be able to power more gadgets from more places in each room, have power to run things that weren’t even imagined in the days this building was first built. When these buildings were built people were heating with fireplaces, lighting with candles. Horses and carriages were the rage.
It is a simple job, this installation of a new electrical service box.These guys have tools ,wear hard hats, and act like construction guys anywhere in the world.
Working construction for decades, it is hard for me to watch other people work without wanting to lend a hand.
Retirement is difficult if you are used to doing things.
When you travel you don’t take much with you. You have clothes, personal items, electronics, a book or two, some travel guides, a Passport and umbrella, and hope.
You hope you end up in safe, clean lodgings. You hope you see and do enough to justify the expense of the trip. You hope you don’t get sick. You hope you enjoy your time on the road in a different country where you don’t speak the language and move like a turtle trying to figure out when to safely stick out your head.
The studio apartment at Piedras 271, Apartment 104, Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, Uruguay is feeling like home.
In a new place, I try unfamiliar appliances, find the linens, get hot water, operate latches, locks and switches. Then i move outdoors and learn the new neighborhood. There are sandwiches in the frig. I have extra bottled water. The candle on the dining room table hasn’t been lit, but will. The bed behind the couch is a new room addition, added for my stay. Street noises are tolerable but people talk as they walk below, and, in the middle of the night, cats fight. Buses, a block and a half away, can take me anywhere in Montevideo I wish to go.
My apartment and I don’t have a long term commitment but we are getting along well thus far, like a new couple not upset by sleepwalking, dirty dishes in the sink, toilet seats left up.
Home starts to become home when you start to call it so.
The keys to my studio apartment are old fashioned.
One key opens the front door to the building. One key opens a security gate after you enter the front door. One key opens the front door of my unit 104 at 271 Piedras Street. The last key opens a door I don’t know about and don’t want to know about.
The key issue is that four keys look the same, four fit into my apartment front door lock, but only one opens the door.
Looking for something to mark the key that works for my apartment door lock, a tie for a bread bag looks it will work. It is white, easy to bend, sturdy enough to hold up to use. With a few twists, the key I need,for entry to my front door, is now recognizable and I don’t need to stand at my door bumbling like a burglar.
These days, keys are becoming obsolete.
Now doors are opened with cell phones, plastic cards, lifting your palm to a screen, having your face screened by a camera. Some doors require passwords punched out on a keypad. Some doors take several people with different codes to open.
One thing is certain.
Thieves will always be able to get in your home if they want too bad enough.
Making entry harder only saves you from the lazy ones.
The Palacio is, by the map, located in the heart of the Old City.
If you look at a map of Montevideo you see at least thirty points of interest in Ciudad Vieja and fewer as you move outward towards other barrios; Centro, Barrio Sur, Palermo, Aguada, Punta Carretas, Tres Cruces, Pocitos.
The dividing lines between the barrios are clearly defined but neighborhoods change as people move into them, establish themselves, then sell out and move to even more exclusive neighborhoods. Still, the Old City is a place to be if you are a lover of museums, architecture, and bustle.
The Palacio Taranco was created in the early 1900’s for a wealthy commercial businessman who came to Uruguay from Spain.
Designed by a well known architect of his day, Mr. Taranco’s Palace has high ceilings, fireplaces in every room, large windows that let in light when shutters are open, European tapestries, art, and hand crafted furnishings. These palaces always have libraries and pianos, sitting rooms and gardens. To walk in them you would think the owners were artists instead of businessmen.
A young lady at the information desk explains that this Palace was a family home and has been donated to the city. There are no charges to browse.
Going up a marble staircase to the second floor, I am moved back to an era when Montevideo was moving from horses and carriages to automobiles, and music was moving from ragtime to big band swing.
The Palacio is a step back in time and though the family that made this place a home has moved on to a more ethereal neighborhood, it appears they lived a comfortable life.
Living rich and being rich are not always two sides of the same coin.
For two days, hot water has not been working.
The landlord has been attentive, sent someone by who thought it might be something it wasn’t, then sends his maintenance man to troubleshoot.
Hugo comes prepared with a tape measure, apartment keys, an electrical voltage tester, screwdrivers, and instructions that if he can’t get it fixed it will require an electrician or plumber and no hot water for several more days.
Hugo, a short man, stands on a chair and tests power to the electrical box into which the electric hot water heater is plugged. It is getting juice to the box, but no juice through the switch to the hot water heater. He shows me the switch after he pulls it out of the electrical box.
“No bueno,” he says.
“Puede repairo?” I ask.
Hugo says he will be back in 15 minutes, takes the dead switch and leaves to a neighborhood ferreteria, comes back in thirty minutes and completes his job.
A green light comes on at the bottom of the hot water heater when he is done and indicates all systems are functioning properly.
I check the hot water fifteen minutes after he leaves to make sure I have hot water, and I do.
In this world, it is Hugo’s who keep wheels turning.
Cold showers, any time of the day, aren’t hot.
Next to the farmacia is a door that leads to an upstairs apartment that leads to a family that leads to a mom and dad that leads to a warm place for kids to grow up. When you look at a street of closed doors, faded or chipped or cobbled together, one never knows what is behind them. It is hard to guess what this schoolboy will see when the door to his home opens and he walks into his family bosom.
Kids don’t ask for a lot but they need a home, kind words and behaviors towards them, security, love, and a sense of belonging. These youngsters are brothers and sisters and they are, this afternoon, busy turning back into kids after school has spent all day trying to civilize them.
This afternoon this little boy knocks, peeps into a little slot where mail is dropped, yells out if anyone can open the door and let him inside?
He is excited and ready to dump his school stuff on his bed, then go out into the streets to play soccer with friends.
School isn’t for little boys anymore, but they still have to go.
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