Cheymus, a fellow Canadian from Victoria, and myself were bound for Campos do Jordao, a mountain city to which Sao Paulo’s residents flock for winter weekends. There’s no snow to be found or anything, but it’s a breath of fresh air from sandwiched Sao Paulo and there must be some Swiss or German influence as all the architecture is quite different from the typical Spanish or Portugese-colonial vintage we’d been drinking in lately. Our bus arrived an hour after it was supposed to and Bruna and Cristina were waiting at the bus station for us. It is a small but nice-feeling thing to be waited for on arrival and we walked to Cristina’s car to stow our bags and then went looking around the town. Strawberries dipped in milk chocolate on a skewer, anybody? I could have just eaten the gourmet sweets around the place but there was another treat on tap: microbrewed beer by Baden Baden. We tried four of their varieties and found each to be well-crafted and imminently drinkable. As well, we shared some tapas and watched flocks of Brazilians on their long-weekend milling around the place. The girls are such good company and time flew by very quickly before we loaded into Cristina’s car and drove 20 minutes out of town to the much more quiet San Antonio do Pinhal. It was late enough that I dozed off on the ride back and then we got to our Pousada (bed and breakfast) and crashed.
The next day the girls had all planned out for us: we were going to go fishing and eat what we caught. Then in the afternoon we’d climb a stone. This is the description from Bruna who couldn’t find the English word for what she’d wanted to say: karst. We slept in as there was no creepy Chilean dude making funny noises in the dorm and writing hate-poetry for you to find in the nights. The view out the patio of the town and valley below was nice and I definitely felt happy with my decision to be a little more vacationing and a little less touristing. So we got breakfast a bit late and enjoyed every minute of it. Three different cakes, breads, meats, cheeses, desserts, freshly squeezed orange juice and grape juices awaited. It got to be late enough that we, unfortunately, missed out on the fish part of the day and went to meet the hostel owner who was going to take us on a walk to the ‘mountain-top’ (the revised description). We were wearing jeans and t-shirts and were not dressed properly for what was to come: a hot hike/climb to the top of a huge karst upthrust overlooking the valley. The name of this, by the way, was Pedra do Baú and is worth a visit if you have time in the area. But we made due and although Bruna herself was ready to throw in the towel at several points she pressed on and our host told us we were his first group to all make it up. After about an hour hiking uphill through jungle and palms (with fresh bananas to keep us going) we got to the base of the stone and then it was climb-time. Someone had been good enough to basically drill a ladder into the stone and we climbed but it wasn’t exactly for the fearful and Cristina lost her glasses which went skidding by me faster than I could react.
From the top you could see miles in all directions and we walked to a place where the stone actually overhangs the valley floor below and took a bunch of photos there before descending again. The restaurant at the base had an all-you-can eat buffet for 17 reals that was hard to resist and we watched the sunset and ate some more Brazilian cuisine before heading back to San Antonio. A band was playing in the town below and you could hear it as though they were in the other room which saved us going out to see them, although we probably wouldn’t have anyway: they were pretty bad. We did go out and have some lasagne and invent a new way of thanking someone in Portugese: obri. Why say obrigado when the first syllable is still available as a word?? I’m trying to spread this similar to my attempts to spread “mismo mismo” through Spanish-speaking Latin America. Results have been mixed. So far. Cristina let Cheymus drive his car back which was good since we later learned that her eyesight isn’t all that great and night driving is probably not the safest thing.
And before we knew it the weekend was over. We had another great breakfast and chatted with a Brazilian couple that was also staying there and with whom we’d climbed Bao and then drove into Campos do Jordao to get our bus tickets. There were no busses to Paraty which I’d hoped would be my next destination so the options were backtrack to Sao Paulo (me? Backtrack?! Never!!) or just go to Rio and maybe do some trips out of there. Cheymus was up for it as well so the two of us said goodbye to our lovely Brazilian friends and boarded the bus. I have to admit I was surprised at how quickly I was attached to our little foursome and how sad I was to see them disappear as the bus sped off, but that is something I should be used to by now. As I ride this bus for Rio, my final stop in South America (save some day trips and expeditions to the surrounding areas) I am reminded of all the great people I’ve had the chance to get to know on this trip and in spite of knowing better from past trips, am hoping that I will at least meet up again with a few of them.
It was a long bus ride from Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina into Sao Paulo, a city of 11 million and the heart of Brazil’s economic power. I sat in the back of the bus so that my reclining seat could serve as a cabinet of sorts against the back of the bus for my backpack while I dozed. Unfortunately, there was a rather odd guy who kept moving around and for some time sat across from me in the opposite row and I didn’t trust this cabinet idea as a safety precaution so I kept the bag at my feet, looped around my legs. It didn’t help that I’d really entered Brazil, couldn’t communicate or understand the locals, and had dialled up my paranoia levels according to the amount of crime in Rio particularly. Not that Sao Paulo is exempt from this: in fact, red light robberies are apparently so common (according to fear-mongering Lonely Planet) that it is legal to only slow down at a red and proceed if the way is clear. That should be a law everywhere regardless of robberies but I digress. The bus was about 15 hours and on it I met – briefly – a fellow Canadian named Cheymus. When we arrived he was even more lost than I was as his Cuban companion was going to stay at a friend’s and he had nowhere to go. So he followed me to Vila Madalena hostel. Their website mentioned taking a bus and looking at the metro lines it seemed we’d be doing a lot of backtracking but our attempts at finding a bus to board failed miserably in Portugese-Spanish and we ended up taking the metro there.
The hostel was 12 blocks or so from the metro but thankfully most of that was downhill. The price I had gotten – a pretty fair 18 reals/night or $9 – had been a web promotion and Cheymus had to pay 35 which appears to be a standard price here in Brazil. Ouch! On the plus side, the hostel was located in a pretty safe area and aside from the trek to the metro which could be avoided with a 3 real bus was close to a number of cool sights that might not ordinarily be on the tourist trail. The breakfast was definitely worth waking up for with toast, cheese, fruits, pineapple juice not to mention tea and hot chocolate. But the best part was its quirky but very helpful owner, who was an encyclopaedia of information on things to see. Sao Paulo isn’t somewhere that a lot of tourists linger because there aren’t many ‘sights’ per se but it is a very cultured city and art galleries are everywhere not to mention a $150,000 public art display of graffiti. I had further help from Priscilla, the Brazilian girl I had watched the Argentina-Mexico game with in Buenos Aires, and it turned out that Cheymus had also made some Sao Paulo friends in Buenos Aires so after we arrived we made some calls and plans to meet up with them that evening.
Of course there was still the issue of hunger. We hadn’t eaten since lunch the previous day which was about 24 hours ago and in an effort to cut down on prices a bit we took a trip to the market and bought enough pasta, sauce, and sausage to last us for a couple lunches. I don’t cook much backpacking because I tend to visit cheap countries, travel alone (it can be just as pricey to cook for one as to go to restaurants), and mostly enjoy trying local foods and flavours. Well now there were two of us in an expensive country so we did cook. I have to say the first day was decent, but the second day I made the pasta I tinkered with the sauce by throwing in some garlic, Tabasco, and actually a bit of soy as well and it made a huge difference. We also watched the Uruguay-Holland game and I was disappointed to say the least. Uruguay fought hard to the end but just didn’t make it, which would also be the verdict for their third place battle against Germany. Then we met up with Cheymus’ friends, Christina and Bruna and the three of us waited for Priscilla to come by. The five of us headed out to one of Priscilla’s friends’ birthdays and had a great night visiting with my new friends and catching up with Priscilla.
The next day I made that legenday aforementioned pasta by myself – Cheymus was meeting up with Christina who, truth be told, was the only reason he was in Brazil at all for a day in the park. I planned to do some exploring but I had too many things hanging over my head to be taken care of so I spent the day lounging and writing emails to organize my next few weeks back home as well as catch up on emails and things I hadn’t replied to for too long. I watched the Spain-Germany game and was pleased to see that at least SOME Spanish speaking country was still in contention. It was the first time I’d watched Spain since the first round against Switzerland and I think I had commented that they had some talented players that couldn’t play together but what a difference there was now. They were a well-oiled machine. As I write this on a bus to Rio they are playing in the world cup final with Holland and if I can make a prediction I think that Spain will make history today again. We went out that night again with Bruna and Christina – Priscilla would be busy for the rest of my stay with her work. The girls actually treated us (despite protests and almost entering a wrestling match over the bill) to dinner and then we took them out for drinks. We have now been in Sao Paulo two days and spent our evenings with great locals for both with not a tourisy thing to be seen. I get an impression that Brazil will be a different experience especially coming at the end of the trip and I may even venture into vacation land and spend a few days on a beach somewhere before I come home.
The girls were off to a small town called San Antonio do Pinhal for the weekend and we had talked the night prior about possibly meeting up with them there. But they left Friday and I still had some exploring to do of the city. I went and looked around the area where our hostel was with Cheymus and came to the street where three of the top graffiti artists in the world (two of which are Brazilian) were paid $150,000 US to paint the whole alley. You remember me saying that, right? The results were impressive to say the least. Speaking of which, our hostel has a wall where various travelers can paint remembrances. Cheymus has an artistic bent and painted a guy leaning against one of the pillars silhouetted in black with a maple leaf for a head and a cut-away of a beating red Brazil where his heart is (that idea was my contribution to the project). He also painted a cat which symbolised Christina (it’s her nickname) and a clover leaf which both of them have tattooed. I thought it was actually a pretty cool piece to leave behind for future visitors to see and was glad I could offer anything to it at all. Now I’m just waiting for Lonely Planet to add it to the “must see in Brazil” highlights. Aside from this, we cruised up a restaurant street and I later went to a place which I thought was art galleries but was instead boutique shopping and bought a replacement pair of flip-flops from Havaiana HQ where they also had a cool display of the World Cup showdown with every country’s team having its own sandals. Alas, I couldn’t find Greece sandals or even Argentina ones but I did pick up Brazil’s.
It is an interesting fact that many of these cities have districts for their wares. The street we walked along, Teodoro, to get to our hostel was lined with music equipment shops (yes, I did stop and play some piano) for example. There is a street of international restaurants owing to the fact that so many businesses headquarter their South American operations here. We strolled along that but I decided to try something local instead and got a very Central American rice, beans (they were palatable!), and breaded chicken plate. The price was right. We also visited the cemetery that is at the door of our hostel and while it didn’t compare to Recoleta there were some nice pieces amidst the cookie cutter bronze statues. We met up with his Cuban friend and I wound up cooking them a teriyaki stir fry that was actually decent considering that I really hadn’t done a stir-fry before. Carmelized onions, chopped peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, beef, and linguini noodles basically, nothing too fancy but it definitely got the job done. We also bought two bottles of wine one of which was smashed on opening and then went out to Bruna’s favourite bar in her absence for a few more drinks.
We had searched the night before for accommodation in San Antonio and had come up with nothing but we decided to go and take our chances anyway. After breakfast we checked out and headed to the bus station only to find the next bus was not until 4:30. So we made lemons into lemonade, locked up our bags, and headed downtown to explore. I had heard about the famous mortadella sandwiches at the market from our hostel owner and we were both ready for lunch so we headed there first. It was as excellent as you can imagine, freshly shaved, grilled, and topped with melted cheese. I doubt it is even legal in Canada to serve such a heart-stopping sandwich but man was it good. All it lacked was a pickle. We wandered the downtown area a bit, money in the soles of our shoes for safety as d been warned about security, and found it felt as safe as anywhere else we’d been. Some dodgy people to be sure but no threats real or even perceived anywhere. I called Bruna to see if they had spotted a “Vacancy” sign or heard rumour of space in the town to find that the Pousada (bed and breakfast) owner had managed to squeeze in a spot for Cheymus and I. Spirits buoyed by the knowledge that we wouldn’t be sleeping on the streets, we headed back to the bus station and towards a resort mountain town for what would be an excellent weekend.
Paraguay glowed pink out my window as the sun was setting on my stay in Argentina. I was on a bus for the final stop in the Spanish speaking countries and my final border crossing before flying home. The destination was one of the main reasons I was in South America to begin with: Iguazu Falls. They lie on the border of Argentina and Brazil, an impressive middleman between the two South American superpowers much as Niagara separates Canada and the United States in North America. But while Niagara has a reputation for a soft romantic setting, Iguazu is all Latin: dramatic, passionate, and beautiful. I’m getting ahead of myself. I arrived a little after dark in Puerto Iguazu, a surprisingly decent little town on the Argentina side of things. The surprise is because it could be so much more over-developed and ruined entirely but it remains small and easily navigable aside from a few traffic circles with three too many spurs. The Marcopolo hostel had been recommended to me, but their prices were ridiculous: 60/night! So I turned my back and walked to another Che Legarto which had the benefit of having some friends I’d met in other travels: Neil and Ruth whom I met in Panama. Although I hadn’t loved the Che Legarto in Montevideo, this one was a pleasant find, reasonably priced at 35 and best of all had excellent meals included for only 15. Or maybe the best of all was that I was in a dorm room with three friendly girls that I hung out with that night. Either way, it was a great place to stay.
Dinner that night, and I think every night at this hostel, was an altogether delicious combination of vegetables, pastas, and meats. Grilled steaks, delicious chicken, chimmichurri beef, would normally be highlights, but I was so starved for greenery that I filled up my first plate with all salads and veggies. The second plate was meats. And the third course was, actually, three bottles of wine split between myself and the girls. I left to chat with Neil and Ruth for a bit then invited them back to our table and the five of us hit the town for a pretty fun night out. The next morning came a bit early but I was on a bus with Neil and Ruth (everybody else left that day) for the Argentina side of Iguazu. Now I guess it’s finally time to get into all that flowery but inept description of Iguazu. Well, I won’t. Stunning, awesome, incredible, magnificent, jaw-dropping, unbelievable, these are all my favourite words to describe beautiful things. My Spanish vocabulary has other words, but they too are insufficient. When you enter you walk through a jungle path. Butterflies are everywhere and quite happy to land on you until the next patch of flowers comes along. Birds, perhaps as a result, are everywhere too. When I saw a toucan just walking towards the falls I knew it was going to be a good day.
But you never hear about the nature around the falls even though it is clearly an impressive and very alive ecosystem. The reason is because the falls themselves are so superlative that anything else seems pale in comparison. I suspect that if the Spanish conquistadors had found El Dorado waiting to be plundered at the foot of the falls they might have been too distracted by the beauty around them to remember it. Certainly there are hints that El Dorado could exist there, if Leprechauns are to be believed: there are rainbows everywhere. It is my belief that all the rainbows in all the world actually do end here, although I suspect there are more rainbows on display at an given moment in Iguazu than all the rest of the world put together. Another interesting tidbit that I’d like to research further is that apparently Paraguay had a waterfall that was even more impressive (I fail to imagine a way that this could be possible) than Iguazu but when they built what is now the world’s second largest dam they submerged the whole thing. Now that’s about the saddest thing I’ve heard although at least it does power all of Paraguay and 25% of Brazil. Anyway, Iguazu has not been flooded over in our search for power and in fact has been surprisingly undeveloped and left as a natural park which separates it quite nicely from Niagara falls casinos and hotels and Buffalos spoiling the view.
On the Argentina side you can walk above several of the falls, take a train to the Devil’s throat to witness the sheer volume of water and resulting mist, and also go below the falls not to mention take a boat to an island and hike to some great viewpoints. This is Disneyland for nature lovers. There are something like 270 waterfalls in this one confined area stretching in all directions and as far as (and further than) you can see all at once. They cascade along cliffs fringed in greenery halfway down, pool, and then cascade the other half just as beautifully. Rocks and tropical trees frame your view and, well, I’m gushing again, but that’s what the falls do to you: they leave you a giggling, giddy, jabbering mess, albeit one smiling and swaying as you float through the park. After the Argentina side, we came back and had another in-hostel dinner with a couple bottles of wine – my last cheap wine on this trip, I’m sure – and called it an early night. I was seriously considering staying another day in this hostel and in Argentina because of the price and that I had run myself ragged in addition to needing to get caught up on all this blog stuff and the 350 photos I had taken that day (which, to be fair, include multiple takes of 12-photo panoramas). But I didn’t stay.
Nope, the next day was a bit of a milestone. I crossed my last border on this expedition along the Pan American highway and left Spanish, which I had spent the last 8 months working on and practicing, behind. Portugese, as I recalled it from my time in Portugal some years ago, was anything but an easy language to navigate. In Portugal I’d gotten by largely on my French skills but those have waned and I was hoping it would be even easier to get by with my much better Spanish skills but this too was a lie. Certainly, what little I understand from their speech comes from my knowledge of Spanish, but speaking it is another matter altogether. The language is a mix of Spanish and French spoken with a German accent although I’m sure several ethnicities would find this description objectionable and I have not had this much of a problem with language barrier in a country since China although it’s probably accentuated by how well I was getting by in Spanish that I now can not only not have conversations with locals (unless they speak Spanish or English) but I can hardly ask the basic questions. Foz do Iguassu is the city on the Brazilian side of the falls and at 300,000 people it’s too large to have the personality of small and cute Puerto Iguazu. But you don’t really need to spend any time here, you just go in the morning, cross, spend 2-3 hours at the Brazilian side of the falls and either cross back or get a bus and continue your journey.
For those requiring a visa to enter Brazil that would rather not go through the hassle or pay the bucks ($65 for Canadians, $135 for Americans) just to see that side of the falls, at the time of writing it was quite possible though still risky to cross without ever officially ‘entering’ Brazil. On the public busses most of the people don’t even disembark to officially enter Brazil and get stamped in (you will need to for Argentina tohugh). We did so, of course, because I’m flying out of Rio, but friends of mine went in and spent the days at the falls then came back without getting stamped out of Brazil no problem. I’m not recommending it for legal reasons, but it’s quite possible from what I’ve seen. And it IS worth seeing the Brazil side, visa or no. Even though there is much less to occupy your day on the Brazil side (they should make some of the alternative paths, etc free) the views of Iguazu are more sweeping and even after a full and tiring day on the Argentina side, breath-taking. I’m often asked to choose one side and I cannot. You simply have to bite the bullet and accept that you will need two days to see the most beautiful place in the world and to pay two admissions. I would definitely do Brazil second if you can but then again I don’t know that you would be disappointed in either direction.
So, what is the Brazilian side all about? Well, in this case you ride a bus from the park entrance on a long road in where – rather disconcertingly in these countries – the driver wears a seatbelt! The most deadly roads in South America, nah, what’s the point? But here in the park where the only traffic is passing another of the shuttle busses at low speed, you must wear them. The Brazil side felt a little like a waterfall Disneyland. The bus would announce in three languages (Portugese, Spanish, English) the next stop which aside from the walk to the falls, was not included. So the Brazil side was sparse but with stations and other optional excursions that should be included but are not. Any annoyance you may feel at this – and I really didn’t – is forgotten when you first see the falls again. Aside from many sweeping views there is a platform that offers water wonderland vistas including the one that actually started me looking into South America two years ago. This was another milestone: one of the main reasons I was here was now something I would hereafter talk about in the past tense. There was a sadness to leaving the Brazil falls that didn’t just come from seeing winding down a trip: I don’t think I will see something this beautiful again in my life. But I WILL have many more adventures the first of which starts this evening as I navigate my way into the Portugese heartland and make my way by bus 18 hours to Sao Paulo.
After the painless (aside from the price of the taxi!) border crossing from Salto, Uruguay back into Argentina I guess I expected more. More than to be be dumped under an underpass with an encouraging pat on the shoulder and "good luck" at 9 at night to wait for a bus that should come through around 10:30. But that's what happened. There was a police checkstop set up there, though for what purpose I couldn't gather as they seemed to let most pass without a blink. I went and told them I was supposed to get on a Kurtz bus at 10:30 for San Ignacio and could they please stop it? A grunt that I chose to mean yes. And then I asked where I could wait, hoping to be invited in to the trailer and away from the pesky mosquitoes already buzzing around here. They pointed me instead to a patch of gravel off the shoulder 20m or so away from where they were 'working'. So I sat outside for almost two hours in the dark watching and getting up from my improvised backpack-seat on the gravel at any set of headlights that looked promising. The police had abandoned their post around 10 leaving me even more uncertain that my bus would stop. Finally I saw the bus and thought I could make out Kurtz and he was already getting ready slowing down so I had nothing to worry about but threw my backpack in the luggage compartment and hopped aboard for my overnight 9 hour trip to San Ignacio de Mini.
I arrived around 7 AM and after leaving my backpack at the friendly HI hostel here (and washing up) I went to explore the ruins of the nearby Jesuit Mission which were my reason for this stopover. I almost didn't do it but I was glad I did; I beat the crowds that stay in nearby Posada and watched the crumbling red sandstone facade glow in the morning light for a while before I remembered my camera. The whole place is laid out in a
cross pattern with the church at the top of the cross and residences, pantries, and so on on either side. I wandered the old church ruins and struggled at times to take photos around the restorative infrastructure. One guard noticed my plight and brought me into a restricted area to get what he thought was the best angle for the door (and he was right). It was a nice morning with just me and the birds chirping and the mission being slowly overgrown with trees and vines and I just wandered aimlessly around enjoying the bit of peace after the week's hectic pace until the tour groups started to pour in. That I took as my cue to exit and went to a nearby restaurant where I sat at the table beside a French couple and we had some beer, snacks, and watched the Argentina-Holland quarter-final.
It was a sad day for Argentina as Holland kept increasing their score one goal at a time and a frustrating day as the Holland players really poured on the acting skills. WHY is there not a penalty for clear fakery. My thought is that if you delay the game, you're out of the game. So feel free to lay there and pretend to be hurt until you get the call you want from the ref; you can miraculously hop back to life as soon as the judgement is made but you will hop to life on the sidelines. Better yet, I think if you fake an injury someone - preferably me - should be allowed to inflict that actual injury upon you. It really destroys what is otherwise a great sport. The first and second goals (Holland, Argentina) were both rockets from about 30m out that clocked in around 100 km/h and it seemed like it would be a good game until Argentina gave up two more goals and lost any ambition whatsoever. But there can be no controversy: Argentina lost an embarrassing defeat to the Dutch and only one team is left to represent South America... Uruguay. I got on the next bus after the game, still wearing my Messi jersey and rode the five hours to somewhere that could make the most passionate soccer fan smile on a day like this. I was heading to Iguazu falls, which really is the reason I'm here in South America at all: one friend's photo of this place inspired me to investigate this part of the world and spawned this whole trip. I can't convey my excitement to be arriving finally at this second-last milestone of my trip.
I was in the old district of Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital at a hostel called Che Legarto right in Independence Plaza. I had no idea what to expect of the city and somehow I had a very eastern European feeling almost immediately on the bus in that didn’t lessen with my time there. As one of the guys at the hostel spelled out my options for the evening - tango here, free; salsa there, free; great food everywhere, not so free – I began to have visions of Budapest, which longtime readers will know is one of my favourite cities in the world. Unfortunately, I had one key problem here which was that I didn’t have a very lively hostel with people interested in seeing what the city had on offer so I turned in desperation to a site of have used from time to time for some great travel experiences: Couchsurfing. I chatted with a girl named Daina but she was too tired to hit the town that night and we made plans for the next day instead if she wasn’t too busy. Then I took the hostelier’s advice and headed to Las Tres Bambalinas for a pretty reasonable cut of ribs and free live music. So alone and missing my recently departed friends or not, I had a pretty good night that first night and enjoyed just sitting back and people watching for a bit. I brought Charles Dickens with me as company but he didn’t say a word.
The next morning I set out to explore the city, or rather the old city. I didn’t manage to get to any of the other areas outside Ciudad Vieja in my stay here unfortunately. And to be honest it seemed like a city with a lot of potential that never really got there or at least was left to decay like the autumn leaves falling everywhere around me. Perhaps in the summer, when tourist season kicks in and Argentines flock to the beautiful beaches and coastline (which I would also be missing on this trip) things would be different. I wandered and watched and got some nice random shots of people and things but not much by way of landmarks or anything. I suppose that’s not such a bad thing in the end. My favourite stop for the day was the Port Market. When you enter there are wood-coal grills everywhere with various meats and things slowly cooking over a red glow. I decided that I would have to eat here and it was a good decision. They’re all more or less the same price but I decided on La Chacra de Puerto and had a delicious steak (well, three cuts) that I could barely finish nevermind the fries and bread and dips. But I finished it all anyway, it was that good. It was July 1 and I was hoping to do something interesting for Canada Day but aside from finding that somebody had put up a Canadian flag in Independence Square I had nothing to report.
The clouds were breaking up slightly and I was hoping to get some fantastic sunset photos but they didn’t clear enough to get that nice glow I was looking for. Still I set up the tripod and got some nice shots of the flag-lowering ceremony which I happened on entirely by accident and of the nearby theatre and a less nearby fountain. I chatted with Daina and also was invited to another event by a different couchsurfer – a get together/dinner at Las Tres Bambalinas, the same place I’d been last night. So I decided to go there and meet them and then meet up with Daina when their meeting was done. But I couldn’t find them through two strolls in the bar and gave up eventually to call Daina. She gave me instructions to take a bus but I waited for that bus forever and it never came. I called her back and she offered, quite nicely, to have someone come and pick me up but it was quite a distance and I not only felt bad but also was a little annoyed at myself that none of my plans had worked and thus in a bad mood on top of being tired and having to be up at 5:30 AM the next morning to head to Salto. My reason for rushing was to be somewhere before 3:30 PM when the Uruguay-Ghana quarter final game started and close to a border so I could be in Argentina the next day for their 11 AM quarter final against Holland. I could have stayed in Montevideo for the game the next day and then crossed back to Buenos Aires but the ferries are pricey and not timed well for this on top of which I wanted to see a bit more of Uruguay, however rushed. So I went to sleep without having met either of the people nice enough to try to meet up with me while I was in their town.
I was up early and got a bus at 6 AM to the bus station. I managed to take the most frustratingly slow driver in all of Latin America. He would wait 15 seconds at green lights and almost never shifted – no lie – out of second gear. He’d just lumber slowly down the street and I almost got out and walked thinking I’d be faster. Somehow I managed to arrive just in time to buy my ticket and hop on the 6:30 bus. The ride to Salto through the Uruguay countryside was uneventful. It was flat, green, and full of farms, reminding me of a scaled-down Saskatchewan in spring time. I got into Salto around 1:00 and immediately set to work sorting out a bus across the border that night into Argentina. There was a 10:30 bus from Concordia Aceso but I had to leave at 9 with a private ‘taxi’ of sorts that would take me across the border to wait. The taxi, it turned out, would cost as much as the overnight 8-hour bus and there were no options. In the end it probably would have been cheaper to stay in Montevideo and then go back to Buenos Aires and then head north but that is a side effect of going into the unknown and off the beaten track. The next operation was finding a place to watch the game: everybody told me to stay and watch in the bus station but I wasn’t having that. The tourist info guy (who must have the most boring job in the world in this place) made some phone calls and told me that everything – EVERYthing – was closed for the game. Nobody was bothering to open their businesses in the afternoon and who could blame them? There would be nobody around to buy anything. Even restaurants although he eventually found ONE that was staying open to show the game. Perfect.
I did a bit of exploring of Salto and made my way to the town centre from the bus station. There wasn’t much here to see: you could see Argentina across the river but even the park along that side was derelict and full of people confusing me for an ATM. The post office, in fact, was probably the nicest building in the city though it did have some plazas that could be beautiful with some work and a church/fountain that was nice. But I hadn’t yet discovered the best part of Salto when I decided I should get a spot at this restaurant before the game started: its people. It started when I got in: the restaurant was totally full but the waiter went out of his way to come up with an alternative and got me a stool to sit at the counter. Not much but you’d be surprised how often people just say no, sorry, we can’t help and send you on their way down here. I ordered some pasta (cheap and I only had so many Uruguay pesos to spend before I left the country that night) and a beer and settled in my stool. When the chorizo I got to start came out a table of students behind me told me I shouldn’t eat alone and invited me to sit at their great spots and watch the game with them. So we all watched a nail-biter of a game and I found myself having a Uruguay flag painted on my face which was no problem as I was cheering for them anyway. When Ghana scored to take a 1-0 lead the atmosphere cooled but nobody appeared to have given up. And when Uruguay tied 1-1, the restaurant went nuts. People standing on chairs, tables, jumping, hugging, kissing; you’d think we were in a bar. The tension was just as great with a tied game as the clock ticked down on an intense overtime and Ghana and Uruguay both had great chances.
Then came the penalty kicks which were so intense that I saw some fans with watering eyes on their knees praying and crossing fingers. Both teams scored the first two goals but Ghana missed its third which resulted in a scream so loud that I’m sure I heard a glass shatter. And when, finally, Uruguay scored that last goal which meant that Ghana couldn’t catch up, the restaurant cleared 130 dB easily. It just as quickly emptied out and by the time I’d paid my bill and headed out as well, there were already parades of cars, bikes, and flags going down the street. Soon, it was wall-wall people and impossible to move almost anywhere. Not only were the intersections packed but the whole street and several streets in various directions as well. People waving banners from atop traffic lights, jeeps, banners, beers, all screaming and honking and blowing their horns in unison made this a celebration to remember and one that topped even the Argentina ones I’d seen so far. I met some people in the streets that were likewise very friendly and could tell I was a foreigner. I suddenly felt sad to be leaving so soon, which seemed a common theme for Uruguay but I was booked and paid for so I made my way to the bus terminal and headed overnight to San Igancio de Mini where I would spend the early morning looking at Jesuit ruins. That is, after running through customs and then being dropped at an underpass in the dark with two police officers and a lot more mosquitoes to wait for over an hour, worrying that as the police had stopped halting traffic I might not be able to get my bus onwards to San Ignacio.
