Regardless of where I travel, one of the most asked questions I get is – “Do they have a McDonald’s?”
There is a McDonald’s in Montevideo, Uruguay. It wasn’t sought out, isn’t on my list of important things to do, but it is a cultural landmark that marks the landing of American habits to every corner of the world.
This McDonald’s is not flashy but the familiar arches beckon me to come closer. Employees wear uniforms just like they do at home, freshly washed and ironed. Coffee is made in an expresso machine and costs two dollars a cup, cheap for Montevideo.
Sitting outside, at one of the benches under a grove of trees, I feel right at home.
We Americans have landed and planted our flag.
Wherever I go; There we are.
In worn areas of most world mega-cities, there is street art, some commissioned, some spontaneous.
This art can occupy an entire wall like our sixteen foot lady. It can be part of a series of images on a parking lot wall like our two faced head. Street art has no pretensions. It doesn’t care about frames, security guards, tickets or reviews.
Street art is a delight. Street music is a delight. Street food is delicious. Street people are full of edges and angles. Street talk is coarse and poetic.
Art and artists fight around the world to move into public places so the public can enjoy their muse. Gallery walls are too small, too exclusive.
What is sad is so few of these people walking and driving past pause and admire the images, touch them,or have arguments about them.
You can look at this street art for free, as long as you want. You can linger. You can scratch your head. You can laugh at the boldness.You can even write your name on the wall if you wish.
Why are people, these days, too busy to stop and look at what is right in front of them?
When you are looking for produce in the Port area you are not near the grand shopping palaces you visit in the United States.
Groceries in the U.S. display well groomed produce as you walk down waxed shiny floors,choose fruit and vegetables from clean bins with sprinklers that mist to make sure the product always looks fresh.There are plastic bags to wrap your choices and stocked product is carefully unpacked from boxes and inspected with blemished items thrown out. You would never suspect vegetables came out of the dirt, or fruits came off trees from the way they are lovingly presented.
In Montevideo, around the Port, there are small fruit and produce stands on the streets. Tourists and residents buy out of these wooden boxes under tarps that protect from too much sun and rain.
Uruguay is famous for wines and beef production, and has one of the world’s largest underground aquifers, but citrus, fruits, and other vegetables are shipped in from Central America, South America and beyond.
This stand has basics – cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, chili’s, lettuce, potatoes.
There is something comforting about buying bananas, apples, carrots and lettuce out of beaten up, chipped, scarred wooden boxes. The beauty is you only have to walk a block to buy what you need.
I’ve been told that you should, in foreign places, eat only things you can peel so I’m careful about my purchases.
Time, that moves too fast the older you get, slows to a more comfortable clip when you have to walk to do your shopping.
“We were in the eighties last week,” Jesper tells me, pouring us a Monday afternoon cup of coffee at his desk in a Ciudad Vieja office close to the Port. He talks about the old city versus the new city, how he and his wife are now moving into commercial sales in addition to property management.The studio where I stay for this journey is owned by one of his clients and Jesper manages it as a favor.
The old city of Montevideo, he says, is a hub of economic activity, a place where ships bring goods, government buildings abound, museums are on most every street and lawyers, accountants and young professionals snap up every place that is renovated. This Port area has been neglected but his investment group is bringing people and business back to the neighborhood.
“I am from Denmark,” he continues, “and my wife is from Argentina. She is in New York on business …”
The office is spacious. There is art on the wall and Gabriella told me, when I walked in, in English and Spanish and hand gestures,that a woman will be in to clean my rented studio on Friday, the 7th.
I pay my rent and settle in for this piece of my journey, get a receipt, and catch my bearings.
Travelling and weather hold hands like high school sweethearts.
” Call me if you have any problems, ” my new landlord says.
I leave feeling like he really means it.
Money might not make the world go round, but it provides lubrication .
Looking for an ATM to get cash to pay for my rented vacation studio in Ciudad Vieja, I have apprehension.
Banks and credit card companies have been told Scott will be out of the country. They have been given names of the countries I will be visiting and have authorized the cards to be used. ATM’s are blood transfusions to the withering traveler. If you don’t have money, you are going to the mat in a place where you have no friends, don’t speak the language, can’t read the street signs.
This machine asks what language I prefer, asks whether I want dollars or Pesos, asks whether funds are coming from savings, checking, or credit card.
I go through each step but the transaction is cancelled. People are in line behind me so I take my card and myself for a walk. Why is this not working?
It hits me like a brick that I wasn’t prompted to enter my card’s password.
This next try I punch in my password before I hit ” continuar ” and follow instructions, to the end.
It is the right solution because the machine spits out hundred dollar bills that are so crisp that Ben Franklin must be printing inside the ATM,as I wait.
ATM’s are a three letter word I like. It is amazing that a machine in a foreign country will give me money even though it doesn’t know me from Adam..
ATM’s are as close to a money tree as us guys are likely to get.
After an eight hour wait at the Miami International Airport, I board a plane this Saturday evening and safely get off the ground for Montevideo, Uruguay.
Scheduled to arrive Sunday around eleven, our plane does, and we leave our transport this morning and form yet another line to go through Customs.
This night flight has been a mix of crying babies, lights going on and off, flight attendants moving up and down the aisles passing out pillows and eye shades. One guesses any group of people can be difficult and flight attendants are needed because there are hundreds of passengers on this red eye flight from Miami.
Customs in Montevideo goes rapidly. All you need is your Passport. They don’t ask for proof of a return flight, only ask how long I will be here and where I am staying. Getting checked bags is a breeze. Having to register my I Phone is a bit odd, but I do it.
Uruguay is now more than a shape on a world map. It is not a country on the tip of everyone’s tongue and is near the bottom of the alphabet, not far from Zimbabwe. Uruguay sounds like something you can catch in Africa, but I didn’t need shots to get in and the country comes well praised.
Without a flag to plant, or anyone to meet, I have arrived.
Weary, I will curl up in the crook of the U in Uruguay and hold the letter tightly till sleep covers me like a warm blanket.
South Beach is like beaches in the Caribbean.
The sand is white and grainy and blue beach umbrellas blow in the wind like the tops of stir sticks in one’s Pina Colada.
Some brave souls wade in the water even though it is cold this time of year. Bodies are spread under the sun trying to become a different color than they were born. This Saturday afternoon there is plenty of beach to occupy and lifeguards are so nonchalant that one has his feet up in the window of the lifeguard shack, his eyes looking at the plywood ceiling instead of the ocean.
A walk on the beach hooks me up with couples, kids, turistas, gawkers, and local vendors like Dave the water guy making a living off strangers who have washed up on shore and have credit cards and cash stowed away in their socks and bras.
It is a festive scene, and, as a small plane pulls an advertisement in the sky behind it, I trek up and down the beach in levis and a pair of hiking boots – feeling a little overdressed.
There are photo op’s galore.
The one, not taken advantage of, is a Latina sprawled on the beach, topless, tanned, not at all worried about nipple burn. She is bold and is probably one of the few to have a good enough physique to get away with wanting the world to see all of her. Her girlfriend, tanning next to her, looks mean enough to scare the junkyard dog.
Walking this afternoon, I have come, have seen, and have been conquered by narcissism bleeding like a cut finger.
I am a tourist with no responsibilities, no ambitions, and no agenda except blending in like the ingredients of your favorite margarita.
There is much concern in this country about skin damage.
There is, on this beach, a lot of skin that will be damaged and this is a perfect poster for a Dermatology convention in Miami Beach.
Two big bodies are prone on the sand, turning their backs to the world and telling it to go to hell.They have claimed their part of the beach but there is still room left for the rest of us on a day like today.
The sun is warm, the breezes are cooling.
What else would one want to do on a balmy afternoon than lay on the sand and show the world their best side?
For all I know, people who live, visit and work in South Beach look this way all the time.
It is the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday and skies are threatening rain.
One side of Ocean Drive is dedicated to tourists and locals who want to walk, ride bikes, stroll hand in hand down a concrete promenade that parallels the Atlantic Ocean. The other side of the street is left to those who want to eat, drink and be merry. This afternoon there are cobwebs and skeletons as far as my eye can see. You can bet this scene will be crackling this Halloween night – like a light bulb in a power surge. The girls are already being party girls but an older man takes the cake when he strolls down the sidewalk flaunting his bare butt.
It is all in bad spirit and even hardened old timers seem pleased with this guy’s boldness, chuckling and saying ” this is messed up. ”
Girls, loving him, chase our bad boy down the sidewalk and pose with him while their boyfriends take their picture with him.
What this says about their relationships is suitable for Cosmopolitan, or discussion on ” The View. ” This experience gives new meaning to the phrase ” End Times. ”
Oceans, at the end of land masses,seem to bring the crazy out of people.
I order a drink to meet this place half way.
Catching a taxi to the beach is the quickest way to get there from the Hotel Element.
For thirty bucks each way, I get a local taxi drivers music, pictures of his familia swinging from the rear view mirror, a few questions in Spanish to see if i speak his language, a driving style that saves time for phone calls, deciding which horse race to bet, or checking in with Baby Mama.
“Ocean Drive is over there.” Raul says as he turns a corner and pulls into a parking pullout not far from the Atlantic ocean.There is a green belt parallel to the ocean with sand paths leading through palm trees to the beach. The green belt also has walkways for casual strolling, roller blades and bicycles.
“If you go one block that way you hit Collins Street, ” Raul instructs me. “The food is cheaper there , because, you know, it isn’t close to the ocean.”
Raul taps his finger in the air as he talks, like he is conducting a salsa symphony.
Leaving the cab, I hike down Ocean Drive, immersed in Art Deco architecture that you find in Miami Beach, Havana, Los Angeles, all warm places on an ocean’s edge.
According to Wikipedia, Art Deco is famous for eyebrows, rounded corners, flat roofs, themes in threes, banding or racing stripes, columns, glass blocks, etched glass and portholes.
Enjoying a place I never planned to be, on someone else’s dime, is looking like more than traveler’s luck.
Why I am here, and not somewhere else, is always an enigma wrapped in a conundrum?
It isn’t fifteen minutes until my toes are in the ocean.
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