It costs me six dollars to go by taxi from Ciudad Vieja in Montevideo to the Tres Cruces bus terminal in Montevideo, and only eleven dollars to ride a brand new air conditioned bus from Tres Cruces to Punta Del Este, one way, an hour and a half ride away.
Leaving the congestion of Montevideo, middle class neighborhoods whisk past, malls and industrial parks visible through the bus windows as we wind our way into the countryside. Cities look much the same the world around, once you leave tourist stops. Many tourists choose to just stick with guide book stuff, statues, museums, parks, national historical sights. However, we can design any kind of trip we want, linger if we wish, jump ahead when we get bored.
A trip, after all, is only as small or large as the inside of your skull and the limit on your credit card..
I am going to the beach and not shedding crocodile tears to leave big city Montevideo and all it’s big city bustle and bluster..
As our bus follows the highway out of town, buildings become scarce and cows start popping up like targets in a shooting gallery.
I’ll be back to urban Montevideo, but, right now, sand and surf is calling me with the crook of their little finger.
Changing venues is what travel is all about.
Deciding whether you like or dislike a venue is what you are all about.
My bus arrives at two fifteen in the afternoon in Punta Del Este and one of the bus cleaners finds my hat and brings it out to me at a taxi stand which is unbelievably kind.
A taxi driver pulls up quickly, loads me and my stuff, and whisks us all to the Hotel Playa Brava which is only a short cab ride from the bus terminal.
Unpacked and checked in at my new home, I take a short stair climb to the observation deck on the hotel roof.
The surf is just blocks away.The sky is blue, lighter than the blue water, diffused with light, clear, endless. Water stretches to the horizon where it meets sky and the line there is like a wall meeting a floor.
The owner of the Hotel Playa Brava, Juan Carlos, told me, in English, about a tourist bus I can take to see Punta Del Este sights as well as the famous sunset at Casa Vilaro.
This city is another room in the Uruguay mansion and it is light, airy, and contemporary.
From this rooftop I can see what pirate’s saw from their crows nest, scanning the horizon for land, hoping for ships flying Spanish flags filled with gold and silver.
While I’m not likely to find gold and silver here, except dangling on tourists necks, I am pleased to be in a place for real that used to be just an internet vacation dream.
Being from the desert, water always gets my full attention.
Punta Del Este, moving into its tourist season, is a movie set waiting for a movie crew.
It is hard to find fault with beach towns full of light, openness, a relaxed attitude and water in every direction, at the end of every street. This morning a few souls are on a little beach at the end of the street from Hotel Playa. The beach is named Emir Playa after a local family.
In Montevideo, streets are narrow and buildings tower like giants looking down shaking their fingers at those of us who dare to move without the proper password. Here, I can breath.
Going from the big city to the beach feels like ditching a heavy jacket and changing into a pair of swim trunks.
This is a reputed playground for the rich and well connected but the season hasn’t started yet and I’m one of the few out walking today.
Whether I will be viewed by others on the street, as rich and famous, is unlikely, but how exactly do you tell a person is rich by looking at them in just their swimming trunks? When you strip away all their jewelry, clothes, cars, perfumes, makeup, how do you really know that who you think you see is really how they are?
I expect to be seen as a senior tourista, healthy enough to walk, not on a schedule, with enough time and money, in the correct proportions, to see the world, going where the winds blow me.
How people see us, strangely enough, is quite often how we actually are.
Reading between the lines is, apparently, not as difficult as it first seems.
There are car wrecks every minute, somewhere in the world.
This is the first one that almost hits me.
Taking a walk down the Rambla, this accident happens on the roadway at a spot I just passed. I hear braking,turn, and watch a white delivery van moving crazily down one lane of traffic, swerving, balanced on two wheels, looking like it will hit parked cars on the curbside, which it does. It is like a stunt man driving in the movies except this is an average Joe who is going to be lucky if he walks away without a scratch.
People converge on the accident scene to make sure the drivers are okay, talk about what they see or didn’t see, who is responsible and who isn’t, and wait for police. I don’t know what caused the accident but the cops will take interviews, pictures, piece together a truth that will be torn apart by lawyers if it goes to court.
A police car almost loses control as it passes me with lights and sirens operating, dodges a car that doesn’t get out of their way, does a U-turn, then shuts down the roadway at one end of the accident scene. An ambulance,already here,tends to an older man in a small car involved in the accident.
The one they need to check on is the working man who climbs out of the upside down delivery van and slaps himself on the top of his forehead with two hands, lucky to be alive.
This could have been a disaster instead of a photo op.
This is my next to last day in Montevideo, and, it looks as if it it didn’t come too soon.
Travel is not always safe.
A picture is worth a thousand words, some say, so here are fifteen thousand words.
Colonia Del Sacramento, new and old, is quiet, peaceful, scenic, and makes for rambling, sightseeing, day dreaming. There are many Europeans who come here to live and the entire city population is under 30,000. Here, on one small boulevard, is an Apple store so you know that new has conquered old.
This town dates back to the 1600’s and some of its original still standing buildings are churches and whorehouses which speaks volumes about human motivations and needs.
This old town, full of history, is like old people sitting on the front porch watching people passing by and with-holding judgment.
There is enough history here that eccentricity can be tolerated.
This jewel is how Montevideo used to be before it got too big for its britches.
The first two or three antique cars I see here seem like anomalies.
After four or five, though, I wonder if this place attracts people who love old cars, or just turns them that way?
Walking around stone paved streets of this old city, one sees old cars parked under carports, in driveways, along alleys, abandoned on curb sides, even acting as giant flower pots in vacant lots. Some of these transports appear to be running while others have long ago given up their ghost.
One flashy vehicle in a residential driveway features a couple of fish who could be right out of the book “Wind in the Willows” except that there are no fish in that whimsy, just a loony amphibian. A red 60’s VW is parked in front of an office building. Around town, still driving, I see rust buckets that spit out dirty exhaust but still get their un-self conscious drivers from point A to point B.
Old cars in this older town are excessively big, heavy, generous with big metal bumpers and shiny chrome. When you turn on their radios you hear big bands, early Elvis, Hank Williams. These bad boys are big lumbering dinosaurs that wear their hearts on their sleeves and I especially love it when their engines growl, pop open their hood and see real distributor caps. These antique cars were made when Detroit was King and are still licensed and ready to roll.
Old cars and old cities go well together.
I’ve never been in a hurry to erase the past but these old cars suggest that the hands on the town clock are moving in the wrong direction.
Going back to the past, I am continually reminded, in Colonia Del Sacramento, that looking backwards doesn’t always have to be painful.
The first stop on our day trip is a farm and museum off Route 1 that takes you from Montevideo to Colonia Del Sacramento through some of the best vineyards and cattle country in Uruguay. The Museo and farm are the creation of Emilio Arenas who not only has a world record pencil collection but sells cheeses, jams and jellies, in his little country store.
People collect anything. It can be ashtrays, matchbook covers, ceramic animals, music, books.The list is endless. Most collections,though,never end up in world record territory.They end up on shelves in the living room, or occupy a garage or shop where no one but the addict can be affected by his compulsion. In his case, Emilio’s pencil collection is the world’s biggest and brings customers to buy in his gift shop.
Out in the yard, not far from our tour bus, I sit in a chair under a shade tree and let the world zip by.
It is comforting to be in the countryside and dream about staying in a little house surrounded by chickens and goats and a milk cow. At night a window will be open and the stars will look like little pencil pricks of light, white sparkling dots on a black canvas.
Next time back, Emilio will get a pencil from New Mexico from me.
He will always find a place for one more.
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.
The lighthouse on the tip of the peninsula offers the best view of the town .It is one of the sights I came to see by joining a tour group at a local Montevideo hotel.
The lighthouse stairs are almost straight up and a two hundred and fifty pound man has trouble getting all the way to the top because of the narrowness of the spiraling passage. You keep winding up and up and up, holding to a thick piece of insulated wire threaded through eye bolts anchored in the lighthouse’s interior concrete walls.
At the first landing, you can get out onto a deck and walk around the perimeter of the lighthouse, but I keep moving to where stairs end and the dormant cyclops light sleeps this morning.
There is a 360 degree view of Colonia Del Sacramento with a different vista through each of the windows of the lighthouse.
There is a harbor on one side of the light. Fishing boats are moored there and a long wooden pier juts out into the waters of the Rio Plata river.
Another view from the lighthouse is the city of Colonia Del Sacramento This old city was founded in the late 1600’s by the Portuguese and they and the Spanish fought for several hundred years to see who would control the area and its waters. There is, according to Pat, a World War 2 German ship sunk in the harbor by a Captain who didn’t want to surrender his ship.
It must look like this from the crows nest on pirate ships where a half rum addled pirate with a knife in his belt scanned the seas for big fat merchant ships carrying gold. It had to have been a hard dangerous life to risk yourself for uncertain wages, a bottle of rum and a civilization that only had a curse and hangman’s noose for you when your feet touched dry land.
Our tour operators give us a few hours before we head back to Montevideo, so I go back down the stairway, much faster than I ascended.
This is a World Heritage city that lives up to its press.
There are still sun drenched places in this world untouched by terror and conflict, places where the past and present hold hands and dance into their future.
Colonia Del Sacramento is a place where the best of Europe and Latin America got married and are happy as a bride and groom cutting cake and sipping champagne.
When you travel it takes half a day to do what you do at home in thirty minutes.
At home you drive to Best Buy to get your electronics, order your stuff on line and it is shipped to you at half the price in a couple of days.
When you travel you go forth on buying missions and aren’t sure whether you are going to find what you need. You know that in a big city like Montevideo, where everyone is playing with gadgets, there must be shops selling accessories. You just don’t exactly know where they are and whether you can communicate what you need.
I take the old battery out of my language translator so they can give me the same thing new. My screen protector is still on my phone but its edges are frayed and it falls off every time the phone comes in or out of my right pants pocket.
This electronics shop is on Sarandi Street before Constitution Plaza. It doesn’t have huge window displays and you have to be buzzed in through the front doors by a guy working the counter. Inside, I show him my dead battery and he finds a replacement. He has the screen protector too.
Buzzed out of the store, I take a moment to get its location into my memory.
When in Uruguay, you do it the way Uruguayans do.
This store has a humble exterior but inside they had what I needed, when I needed it.
Finding stuff I need in a new place is gratifying, but it is the stuff I need that I can’t buy that causes me the most heartbreak.
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