The shopping mall is not only a metaphor for the Christmas season, but a melody.
Jingle bells ring from inside closed stores as a security pickup patrols and deliveries are made to the back door. Stores open at ten in the morning and stay open till ten in the evening.
Palm trees and oranges mark this territory as Southern California but this shopping mall could also be in Arizona or parts of Nevada, Texas, or even Florida. Malls, once a new concept, brought customers out of neighborhood stores to shop in retail fantasy lands, closed down mom and pop places that had higher prices but kept neighborhoods together. Malls gave big business a chance to grab market share, streamline operations, centralize and advertise their brand. They changed America.
Christmas is promoted here as far as my eyes can see. Windows have nativity scenes, garlands are draped over light poles, decorated trees have presents wrapped underneath, snowflakes are sprayed on windows.
The last time Los Angeles saw a real snowflake was when Hell froze over.
High on a ladder, a painter keeps up appearances.
In California, there is no room for wrinkles, sags, or cracks.
California dedicates herself to the pursuit of Dionysus and when Santa rolls into town with his reindeer, real soon, he will be wearing yellow speedo’s, a bright red stocking cap, and a pair of dark sunglasses that would make a gangster proud.
Half of the world is in winter with temps in the teens, or worse.
Here, it is seventies with humidity but the sun shines more often than it hides.
Jose, at the front desk, says it is busy in San Jose most of the year and his hotel has more visitors from France than anywhere else.This morning there is a large French group departing, part of a tour that will get on a bus and go somewhere else for a few days, then a new location, then another. Being a low cost provider, this hotel fills a need for tour generators who need to keep prices down to capture travelers and market share.
There is no reason this hotel formula wouldn’t work anywhere. You buy a few houses next to one another, plumb in bathrooms and other refinements, and presto – you have a hotel that is like staying in a house. The furnishings and decorations are colorful, indigenous, typical of Costa Rica. Even if you wouldn’t want to live in an old wooden house at home with bright paintings and door handles from the twenties, it makes perfect sense here.
If I could take this hotel home in my suitcase and get through Customs, I surely would.
It is simpler though to leave it and come visit when I have a hankering.
The perfect trip is where you return with less than you left with, have a full stomach, and don’t start something you don’t intend to finish.
If the grass isn’t always greener somewhere else, the weather is better.
Even though airline food is made for a small eater, in a miniature container with small utensils,it is appreciated.
The passenger seated next to me feels like talking, listening costs me nothing, and, at 30,000 feet up, since I’m not going anywhere except where this plane goes, I listen to my fellow traveler.
One pleasure of travel is meeting other people who are travelling too. Some people travel for business and have little choice about their trips. Other people travel because they like thrills and can pick their destinations. Some lucky people manage to combine both business and thrills.
Luis confides to me, as I peel back my lunch container’s cover, that he immigrated to the U.S. from Uruguay thirty years ago, and became an American. He self finances trips to Central and South America to take medical supplies to small towns and country folks who don’t have access to medical care. He runs medical training sessions for leaders, in little remote villages, so poor people learn to take care of their health crisis themselves.
When our plane reaches Lima, Luis transfers planes to make connections to San Salvador and New York.
On the runway, waiting for passengers to leave and others to board, I close my travel book on Uruguay and open the next Scotttreks chapter which will be Costa Rica.
Why, still stuck in this plane’s belly, waiting to lift into the air again, do I sometimes consider giving up a perfectly good life in my own country to be an outsider living in someone else’s country? Is there really a country better than the one I always return to?
After talking with Luis, another question, I ask myself, is why do some people feel such a heartwarming need to give back, while others just obsess on taking?
Tourist days come in all kinds of packages.
You are sleeping in strange rooms, surrounded by people you don’t know, eating food on the go that your stomach doesn’t recognize. There is television in a different language, obsessing with schedules, making connections, keeping up a big river ride on a little inner tube.
Your tourist day is as free as you want to make it, but limited. You don’t have friends here.You don’t work or have responsibilities. You are passing through. How involved you want to get depends on your mindset.
Standing at the hotel desk listening to three hotel employees talk is an education.They know enough English for me to understand what they are saying and I want to hear what they have to say.
Patricia is a hotel maid who lived in the U.S. but came back to Montevideo to be with family. Veronica is one step away from becoming a Doctor and is studying to re-take a final board oral exam that has to be passed before she can practice her passion. Virginia, another maid, speaks very little English but nods her head when she agrees. As a tourist, you don’t always have a chance to know people in a country you visit. People in the tourist industry are unappreciated Ambassadors for their country.
” It is hard, ” all agree. ” My paycheck, ” Patricia says, “doesn’t even pay my rent. Without family, it is really difficult. ”
Glowing reports about other countries often fall short. For people who hold Uruguay together by their daily work, economics is a daily rope climb in a daily obstacle course.
Even in Socialist countries, you still see people sleeping in the streets.
There is a security blanket here, but it has some holes.
To achieve what they want, people, around the world, still have to work hard, no matter what kind of government they have.
This coffee is cheap, but not the best.
You buy a dollar token at the hotel reception desk, drop the token in the coffee machine’s slot, slide your cup in position, choose your poison, push a button, and wait as a small drizzle of coffee fills your paper cup almost to the top. The machine knows when to cut off so coffee doesn’t go on the floor.
Things introduce themselves all the time. You go about your business, not thinking about much, or looking for anything, and then something comes your way like a present arranged by a benevolent cosmic force that knows you will be delighted. This bold colored sign by the coffee machine is such a present.
” Drink Coffee,” the sign exclaims, “you can sleep when you’re dead.”
While we are waiting for our expiration date, coffee makes the waiting tolerable.
This sign takes me back to the fifties when even the thought of traveling to Uruguay was no where in my mind. Uruguay was just a country on old stamps in my dad’s collection in a box in the garage.
When you sleep in your childhood crib, you don’t have a clue where fate and your feet will take you.
If i had known where I was going, when i was in school, I would have paid more attention.
Pocitos doesn’t awake until ten in the morning.
My first time past the little diner on the corner, a block from the beach, the sign in the window says Cerrado. Doubling back, Albierto is now in its place.
A plaque on the exterior says this establishment, in one form or another, has been open since 1910. A lot can go wrong in a century and surviving progress is not for sissies.
Seated, I do a leisurely check of my E-mails, send a couple of text messages.
My bill for a coffee and a small glass of water is seventy eight pesos. With a tip, the total is a hundred pesos, or somewhere south of five U.S. dollars. My bill is speared on a little nail, and, for a moment, seems to nail down Uruguay accurately.
What we all want is 1950’s prices to come back.
Saturdays start slow in Salto. Even hound dogs sleep in this morning, worn out from chasing girls all night.
On the Rio Uruguay, small boat Captains are pushing their fishing boats hard, taking two, three, four paying customers further up the river where dorado’s are waiting to be reeled in at ” La Zona” where fishing is excellent and many travelers like to go in their quest of trophy fish.
On the pier this morning, early, there is a photo shoot in progress with three young girls dancing, modeling swimsuits, posing for sexy photos and getting direction from an old, bald impressario wearing sunglasses. When the teens change costumes a matronly attendant holds up a coat for them that becomes their changing room.
Clowning around, their big boss balances on the back of one of the benches on the pier and dances while a film crew snaps shots and gives him appreciation.
The girls love it.
I don’t know what they are trying to sell so early in the day, but youth and sex sells most anything anytime.
Behind news, business and politics is always old men with lots of money and lots of connections.
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As in Montevideo, there are antiquated homes in Salto too.
This old casa, on a street off the main thoroughfare, is one that needs more care than it will ever get. While it waits for someone with a dream to fall in love with it, it is a garden shop – El Nuevo Vivero. Inside, plants and trees for sale are placed in empty rooms and since there is no roof on much of the building, rain waters them right where they stand.
The sign in front says the business is open on Saturdays and Mondays. This morning the front door is open and someone rustles inside. It is Wednesday.
A young man comes to the front door to see what I want and invites me to come inside to look at his business even though he is closed officially.
Guillermo is having mate first thing this morning and shows me some of his plants. He is wearing a Brazil soccer shirt and we laugh about that. People take soccer serious on this continent. How can you be a good Uruguay citizen and not wear a Uruguayan soccer shirt?
In the U.S., this place would be closed for code violations. Here, there is no harm, thus no foul.
When I leave the nursery, the ” Closed ” sign, in the front door, still hasn’t been replaced.
A business, it seems to me, that won’t open its doors for a customer, even when the closed sign is in their window, isn’t much of a business.
Guillermo, owner and caretaker of El Nuevo Vivero, has his finger on the pulses of both plants, and business.
There must be as many real estate sales offices in Punta Del Este as there are places for sale and rent.
No one stays put these days and for all the places here that has someone living in them, you still have plenty of places that are empty. This is a real estate broker’s paradise. Customers come down, fall in love, buy a place, move here, then lose their love and bail out. You get to sell a place over and over and over and you have nothing of yours at stake.
The area is seductive. It is clean, has shopping, has the beach, is easy to get around, is safe. The fact that it is expensive and is a resort community that expands in the good months and shrinks to a skeleton staff in the winter is easy to forget..
If you buy a place here are you going to live in it full time?
How much use will you get out of it?
Who will watch it when you are not here?
Is renting it practical?
Are property values going to rise or fall in the next few years so you don’t lose your reason for investment?
What is the government going to do that will impact the value of your investment, the income you might make from it, or whether you can sell it or not?
Is it really any different here than in Fort Lauderdale or Padre Island or San Diego, California?
If you are in business how are you going to survive lean months.
Wherever I go, real estate is for sale and people are either buying, selling or trading..
As far as I know, Gerardo is the most honest man on the planet and can, for a price,he will find you the castle of your dreams.
My dad was a realtor so I know there are honest ones on the planet.
The need to own a home is not going away anytime soon.
Punta Ballena is ten to fifteen miles outside of Punta Del Este.
The bus lets you off by a worn out spot on the highway’s shoulder and the driver points you across the highway towards an uphill winding road overlooking the ocean.
This is my first visit here.
Before, on the bus ride from Montevideo to Punta Del Este, I saw this view and wondered what people did in Uruguay to be able to make the money needed to live here? The reality is that many who live here bring money with them.The rich have play places all over the world.
It is understandable that nearly all the land with a view of the water has been sold and has a house on it. Across the street, in beautiful wooded, open areas, are Se Vende signs with phone numbers. There isn’t a hundred yards difference between the two pieces of land, but view adds up to extra millions of dollars in value.
If you have money, you don’t want to walk across the street to see the ocean.
If you have money, you think about things like this.
These two lovebirds, by our standards on the cost of an ocean view, from their front porch, are richer than all of us. put together.
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