This morning, I walk down Calle Uruguay, all the way to the Rio Uruguay.
This river separates Argentina and Uruguay. Though it isn’t the Mississippi or the Nile, or the Amazon, it meets the rock test. If a body of water is so big you can’t throw a rock across it, it becomes a river. The rivers, long ago, were the original freeways and big paddle wheels moving up and down the Mississippi are still romantic. Mark Twain, as great a writer as he is, looked fondly back on his days as a riverboat captain as some of his happiest.
Walking down Uruguay Street is an easy walk and when you come upon the river you are surprised there are so few craft on it. There is a new pier that lets me walk out over the river. A lady walking her dog takes a few snapshots this morning but no one else, but us, is on the pier. A ferry chugs past taking people to Argentina – those who have their papers in order.
I spy a fisherman docking his small boat on the river bank and hold up my phone to ask permission to take his photo.
He stands up in his boat, lifts two huge catfish he has caught and gives me a thumbs up. People here are so friendly you wish some of it could be spread around the world. His catfish are so big I can see their whiskers from the bridge I’m standing on.
“Go catch some more,” I shout across the river to him.
He doesn’t understand English, but he knows what I am saying.
Big fish give you bragging rights.
One of them is worth more than ten little ones, even if they don’t taste half as good.
Marijuana is legal in Uruguay.
You don’t see much of it on the streets. A few surfers under palm trees indulge themselves, the pungent smell immediately detectable. You see tourists enjoying the herb in public, flaunting authorities. However, the real national addiction here is Mate, a natural tea.
Juan Carlos owns the Hotel Playa Brava in Punta Del Este. This afternoon he is talking with a hotel guest and I snap a quick picture of him and his Mate. You can’t visit this country without seeing citizens walking while holding a strange shaped little pot filled with green tea, a long curved silver spoon through which they sip the tea, and a thermos of hot water with which they fill their pot throughout the day.
Juan explains that the tea has a calming effect if you drink it all day and it is used in this entire region. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay all have their distinctive brand and one country wouldn’t be caught drinking the tea of another country.
Juan Carlos enjoys his Mate.
Marijuana gets all the attention. But here, Mate is the drug of choice.
There is a Beverly Hills of Punta Del Este, Uruguay.
They call it a barrio, like other barrios, but, the houses are immense, the yards larger, the privacy maintained, and no clunkers are allowed on the streets.
The Beverly Hills barrio of Punta Del Este is located on Los Arrayanes calle and is in rolling and wooded land. The estates have wrought iron, brick, security gates, and three car garages. My taxi driver says there is money in Uruguay and much of it comes from Argentina and Brazil, two richer neighbors who like the peacefulness of Uruguay and the tolerance of its people.
The Ralli museum is one of five in the world built by Harry and Martine Recanati who love Latin American art and want to have a place to show it to people. There is no charge to enter their museum and you are free to enjoy the building, art, and exterior courtyards to your heart’s content.
There are works here by Salvatore Dali and Andrew Calder. There are also works by lesser known artists from Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay, Mexico and Argentina.
Dali, in retrospect, is more grounded than I thought and his skills, in many mediums, are first rate.
Calder is a little too airy.
D’Souza doesn’t need an entire room.
Female artists have lots to say and are given too small a place to say it.
I wonder whether the folks that live in this Beverly Hills barrio walk to the gallery or have a chauffeur bring them?
Some of them, I would wager, have originals by these artists hanging in their grand rooms and come to openings here just for the free wine, cheese and crackers.
Punta Del Este is still a ghost town this time of year, in November.
This town by the ocean comes alive in December, January, February and March. Prices go up, locals rent out their homes for triple prices, hotels make enough in a few months to make it the rest of the year when weather is less sunny and people don’t want to go to the beach. I have been told April is a good time to visit too. You can see the town getting ready now for high season. A McDonald’s is opening and workmen are repairing broken tiles in sidewalks in front of shops.
Today,surfers,who wear black wet suits, patiently paddle out towards the bigger waves breaking further off shore.
Off Emir beach, there are as many as thirty surfers in the ocean. I follow their bobbing heads, black wet suits, arms and legs paddling towards shore as a good wave catches them from behind,prompting them to stand up on their surfboards and hold out their arms for balance, riding all the way to the beach if they are lucky.
There are sun lovers on Emir beach who spend most of the day face up/ face down on towels, lounge chairs, or just plain sand. They wear sunscreen and bake. They drink and eat, listen to music, visit with friends and family. But, always, they concentrate on getting darker.
Wall sitters, where I sit today, hang out and watch who is wiping out in the waves, watch bikinis, joke around, and move as slowly as possible.
The beach today is full of vacationing families who have come to enjoy the Christmas holiday season together with many more to show up here in the next few months.
People are drawn to the beach like iron particles being attracted by a huge magnet.
I am, I freely admit, one of these particles.
It would take a bigger magnet to remove me from my wall seat this morning because I don’t, at this precise moment, have any place I would rather be.
When you come towards the end of the winding road that leads you from the highway to the water, you look down and see a turnaround where buses and cars are parked and people are standing on stone walls taking snapshots of the ocean for their scrapbooks.
I am looking for a white pueblo styled house, ” Casa Pueblo” built somewhere on this peninsula.
Not seeing it, I backtrack and ask a lady with her daughter where the Casa Pueblo is? The woman points and moves her hand a little to the right, pointing over a hill I can’t see through.
I walk back down the winding road, go further than I had before, and spy a smaller road cutting away to the right from this main road. A few more steps and I see white adobe style walls that can only be the famous Casa Pueblo built on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
There are vehicles parked along both sides of the narrow road leading up to its entry and people are trekking towards the National Monument like ants following a jungle trail.
Casa Pueblo is home and studio of Carlos Paez Vilaro, Uruguay’s most famous artist.
Whereas art can be done quickly, building takes more time. There are engineering problems, aesthetic questions, debates about whether concrete and wood can do the things you are asking them to do. In New Mexico, as well as here, materials are touched by hands. Cement is mixed and poured by the wheelbarrow load. Walls are plastered with hand tools and left uneven and undulating.
Wandering up and down stairs through the home and studio and gift shop and hotel and museo, inside and out, there are unexpected turns and twists.
For the longest time it is very comfortable for me just to sit on the back observation deck and look at the water below me change colors. I can stand at the deck railing and look at hotel guests in bikinis trying to get brown when the sun is behind a cloud.
Men’s minds are not all made the same way but if my house was built to fit my mind’s interior it would look a lot like this.
Most of us have castles in our minds, but we just can’t afford to buy them, or build them.
Drawing is about lines.
You have straight lines, curved lines, and a combination of both. With line you begin reproducing what you see, then drawing what you imagine, then making something new that hasn’t been seen before. Something must have snapped as Carlos put pencil on paper, chalk on paper, paint on canvas, clay on the wheel, murals on big city walls around the world.
In his work you see Picasso and the influence of ancient cultures of South and Central America – the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans. You see the influence of African masks and Ancient Greek sculptures. Art fed him like a farmer eating from his own garden.
Some of the works in the gift shop are not to my taste, but that means little. There are many foods but you don’t have to like them all to make them good for someone.
Vilaro’s older works are surprisingly as inquisitive as the early ones since age seems to diminish chance taking and creativity.
I like it here. This place resonates like a ringing dinner bell as the sun goes down and candles are lit on white tablecloths.
Casa Pueblo is one of the must see sights in Uruguay.
The house is the art studio and home of one of Uruguay’s most famous artists – Carlos Paez Vilaro. His biography calls him an abstract artist, painter, potter, sculptor, muralist, writer, composer, and constructor. He was born in 1923 in Montevideo and started drawing in 1939 at the ripe old age of 19. From humble beginnings, he created his life, as he found his way to live it, with friends all over the world.
The Casa Pueblo is, in his own words, “His fight against straight lines.”
The home he made in Punta Ballena, in the 1950’s, then a very remote place in Uruguay, was later expanded to include a museum, gift shop, restaurant, gallery, and studio. On film, in a sitting room at the entry to the historical site, the artist tells of his early life, his travels around the world. Coming from poverty, he identified with struggles for independence and was involved in music and culture of the barrios. He made films and played music. He was a Renaissance Man.
These photos present him as a young man, and then an older man. One of his sons commented, at the time of his death, that “I hope he rests in peace. I’ve never seen a guy who works that much, and I mean it. He worked up until yesterday.”
On the film, the artist calls work his peace.
Give thanks to artists because they are explorers with candles who show us the way in the dark.
Steve is my age.
He is standing on a ladder in work clothes scrubbing graffiti off pieces of slate glued to a concrete wall. We both agree it is a stupid place to put slate – stucco, or plaster painted, would make more sense. Still, vandals have marked the wall and the manager has to have it removed and Steve is the man hired to do it.
He tells me he is from Uruguay but migrated to the U.S., lived and worked there twenty five years. He came back to Uruguay because he still has a daughter here. For now, he works as a maintenance man for this apartment building but back in the states maintains large resort hotels and keeps commercial kitchens running.
“My wife went back last month,” he tells me, as he washes off graffiti. “I want to go back and drive my truck. I love it. I like Miami. My son has a construction business and a big house I can stay in .”
The conversation confirms that Uruguayans know all about the United States . A young man at the bus station , who spent five years trying to become a legal U.S. citizen, but couldn’t get accepted, expressed his belief that getting ahead is tough in Uruguay and immigration is a way to move up economic ladders.
“In the U.S.,” he said, “it is different. People think ahead.” Here, if your family is not important, you have difficulties.”
Graffiti is on the move around the world and is Punta Del Este’s a canary in a coal mine.
If they catch the culprits, Steve is pretty sure they won’t do a thing to them.
The cost of keeping people locked up has killed more than one government budget.
Lunch is hours away but a foreman is already buying food for his troops before it rolls around
A sale unfolds as I stand on the sidewalk in front of a construction site and watch sandwiches and sweets go into a five gallon bucket. A stooped figure is retrieving orders from shelves in the back of a little van and the subs he pulls out look big to me.
“What you got in there? ”
The young man, bearded, points at two front rows of sub sandwiches, and a back row of desserts.
“Did you make them,” I ask?
“No, I have a supplier.”
“How much for the big subs?”
“In U.S. dollars, six.”
“What’s your name?”
“Edgardo.”
We shake and make a sandwich deal for tomorrow morning same time, same place since I didn’t bring any money on this stroll. He wants to give me a sandwich now and I pay tomorrow but I don’t want to do that because there is lots of static that can get between now and tomorrow. It is nice that he trusts me enough to make such an offer.
I don’t see a permit but I don’t need one because his business is popular, and, for that reason alone, advertises itself.
Helping local small business guys is high on my list of things to do, even when I’m traveling. .
When I work construction I eat out of concession trucks when they are close by at home.
I can’t make this sandwich for what he sell’s them for, and, even if I bought from his supplier, I’d have to walk there and convince them to sell to me.
Paying people for their time and money is never a bad idea.
I appreciate being paid for my knowledge, skills, and service too.
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
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