Singing in the Rain

About seven years ago, I was saying goodbye to a Spanish family with whom I had spent the Christmas and New Years' holidays. One of the sons, Manuel, handed me a mix CD to take with me. It had no cover and no track listing, but he assured me that it was full of musica guay - cool music.

Six years later, I was jamming out to all the Spanish music I could with my new car stereo and I came to the last track on this CD. Then I played it again. Five times. Then I drove to Zac's house and made him sit in my car and listen to it. Then I Googled the chorus, found the artist, ordered the album and Zac and I were sitting pretty with our very own new-found Obscure Spanish Artist®.

When we arrived in South America, however, we started seeing the face and name of our Obscure Spanish Artist® everywhere. Turns out, Joaquin Sabina's got a couple of biographies written about him, a brand new album, and a highly publicized tour going on right now. 

First we lamented our unwitting mainstream-ness. Then we bought tickets to his Montevideo show. 

Sorry for the scarcity and crappy-ness of our photos. If you can't tell from the first picture, it was cold and raining cats and dogs. But the show was great! Even if everyone but the two fools in the back knew every single line of every single song. Ah, well. Obscurity is overrated. 

 

Tonight! Sabina y Serrat

Body Pump, Montevideo-style

Zac and I have joined the throngs of exercise-happy sun-worshippers here in Montevideo. This photo might not make it look like there are throngs, but believe me, that sidewalk fills up. 

We found a small park down the road with plenty of props for our makeshift workouts; on weekday mornings we share it with the moms and the babies. Sometimes, there's a group of men drinking mate and playing soccer at the field next door, but when they're gone, the goalpost makes an excellent pull-up bar. 

 

*Zac doing physical therapist approved assisted exercises*

It's fun, but our sorry asses aren't used to doing much these days so we are sore. Really, really sore. Good thing the only muscles we need the rest of the day are the ones used for beach-sittin' and beer-openin'!

Veronica

Veronica's a Uruguayan lawyer we met at the Expat Social Gathering last week. She and Zac spent the night speaking a mixture of Spanish, English, and hand signals. We decided some extracurricular language-practice was in order, so yesterday, we met up and took a walkabout through the city.

That last picture is of Artigas, the Hero of Montevideo (and probably all of Uruguay). His remains used to be buried under this statue, but Veronica told us, with a long face, that this new government has made "some changes". One of those was to move Artigas. We're not sure where he is now.

But! We did see his original baptism record from the 1700s and the baptismal font where his famous head was anointed. And Veronica told us the story of how with few people and even fewer resources, he fought off the Spaniards and the Portuguese to liberate Uruguay. (One of his tricks was to pour boiling oil over the advancing troops.) But the best part of the tale was when Veronica said, "he won because he was crazy." She said it in English, and Zac and I thought she misspoke - or at least chose a less-than-precise word - but then she elaborated. "He really was mentally unstable. They think that he was able to defeat the Spanish and Portuguese armies because he was too nuts to lose."

There are monuments to this madman everywhere. It makes me love Uruguay even more.

Our First Week in Uruguay

Tuesday

Hi. I’m sitting here in another muggy hostel with a warm beer and a pen that is threatening to run out of ink, trying to keep my mind off the incessant heat, the sweat beads that are running down the tip of my nose, and the mosquito who is bound and determined to get himself stuck inside the depths of my right ear. I know we talked about hostels before, but I probably left out some of their less romantic aspects: like they’re generally pretty warm in the summer, and people don’t shower much. But, you know, I get to drink as much beer as I want tonight, and don’t have to go to work tomorrow, so what the heck do I care? 

We arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay this morning – by boat, no less; and no, I didn’t puke my guts out – and we made it all the way from the port to a hostel without getting mugged (I think word got out about the fire in Joy’s eyes in Buenos Aires), and now we are winding down the evening with beer, wine, and absurd attempts at making each other laugh. 

Early morning on the ferry

After traveling in Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina (not to mention a kick-ass drive down the Alaska-Canada highway in the middle of December, and a pretty phenomenal wedding later that month) we have decided to take a break from planes, buses, boats, and wine tours for algunas semanas before we head up to Guatemala and then to the states to begin our western US tour in Florida. Yeah, I know, it probably makes more sense if you’re married. Wife says, “I think we need to start our tour of the western United States in Florida.” Husband says, “Okay, dear.” Even after only two months of marriage. Some might say we get trained quickly; I prefer to think of us as fast learners…

Anyhow, back to the beach. We’re here now, ready to find an apartment to stay in for a couple weeks. But we’ll stay tonight in this cozy hostel where I’m going to go find a cold beer, a new pen, and stick my head in the toilet until this damn mosquito drowns.

Wednesday

Hey! We found an apartment. An English man emailed us and said he was trying to fill a two-week vacancy gap, so he gave us a screaming deal until March 28^th. We’ll just have to find something else for the remaining two weeks because we don’t leave Uruguay until mid-April. That works for us; there are many different neighborhoods and beaches in Montevideo, so we’ll just mix it up a bit.

Tonight we’re going to celebrate our new apartment and our new ability to cook our own meals by going out to dinner, but first we have to wait for dinner-time, which in Uruguay, as in Argentina, is late. Most of the nice restaurants don’t even open until 8pm. And we heard that the good bars don’t start rolling until two or three in the morning – and close at 7am. I would be shocked and amazed if I were ever able to personally corroborate either one of those assertions.

985ml, to be exact.

I can, however, attest to the fact that Uruguay has big beers. It’s a little retarded how much beer I drink these days. I’ve gone from being the kid in the corner with his one-a-night 12 ounce bottle – complete with nipple – to sitting down in any restaurant we go to, waiving the waiter over, and saying, “me da la grande, por favor.” In fact, when we got to Buenos Aires, Joy, ever the great influence, talked me into ordering liters. It’s more beer than you think. And by the time we got done with dinner that first night in Buenos Aires with the bigger beers it was so late that I forgot to pee before bed. Big mistake. When I woke up later and staggered over to the toilet at two in the morning I found myself having to lean a hand against the wall after the first four and a half minutes because my legs were getting tired. “Should have sat down for this one,” I thought.

Thursday

This morning we started a small exercise regimen. It’s not much; I’m in really bad shape after my shoulder surgery and being on vacation for three months so I talked Joy into taking it easy on me. She drew up a nice little routine for the next couple of weeks that appears very manageable. It is also very consistent; each day says: “Beach, Beer, Run a little…; Beach, Beer, Run a little…”

The beach AND the running path.

Friday

Oh dear God in Heaven I promise to never take six months off from the gym ever again if you’ll just help my hamstrings and quads stop hurting enough to allow me to get off of this couch and make my way to the bathroom. I know they say that beer does not help with inflammation and lactic acid build-up and after this second liter I’m inclined to believe them. Hopefully I’ll be able to sit down once I get there – can you help me with that one too while we’re at it?

Okay, so I finally managed to get off the couch and now I’m trying to convince Joy that I am way too sore and a little too drunk to go to the Expat Social Dinner she RSVP’d us for tonight. She’s not yielding. Sometimes I really miss being a hermit.

But we went, and I, of course, survived. And while we’re walking home Joy asks me if I met the guy whose handshake resembles a limp, cold fish. “No,” I said, “And it’s a good thing too. It pisses me off so bad when people shake hands like that that it makes me want to pee in their faces.”

Saturday

Hoy es sabado, and I’ve resolved myself to not talking about peeing for the entire day. Of course, it’s better than talking about pooping, which has somehow become the center of many a conversation with my previously-discussed socialite brother-in-law. I would, however, love to talk about how incredibly awful my glutes, hammies, quads, calves, ankles, and feet feel in the off-chance that my lovely bride is feeling generous today and decides not to makes us run…along the beach…at sunrise. Yeah, I know I’m not getting much sympathy from you.

Nor from Joy, neither. She points out that besides jogging, we only have four things we have to do today, and three of those are eating. The fourth, predictably, is buying more beer.

Sunday

Joy loves dishwashers too.

Hey it’s Sunday! The essential end of our first week in Uruguay. It’s also the first week since entering Chile that we didn’t overrun our budget, and, congruently, the first week in which we have mostly eaten home-cooked meals. I love it. And Joy’s cooking, which is wonderful, and is almost worth the pain of having to listen to Jaime Oliver on the TV while Joy learns about how he cooks things in Britain or wherever the hell he’s at. I’ve also been reminded this week of how much I love dishwashers. Yes Mom, I know, no sympathy. I would really have a hard time making a case for some anyways seeing how these last few pages really do reflect the sum total of my activities this week – with the additional mentions of the one and a half novels I read, and the three times we went swimming in the ocean.

I am a little tired today, however, due to the neighbor’s car alarm that went off all night long. It goes off all day long too and you would think that he would get it fixed – if you had never been to South America, that is. It seems like we’ve been listening to car alarms non-stop since Quito. I wonder if the sound of a car alarm really draws anyone’s attention down here. I might test that theory and try to steal a car if I wasn’t so scared of driving on these roads. Montevideo doesn’t seem to be too bad but driving in many of the countries we’ve been to draws a close resemblance to a Death Race video game.

Anyways, by the time the sun came up this morning I was convinced that I needed to go find the owner of the current car in question and tell him what an idiot I think he is. I worry, though, that he might not understand English and that my true feelings will get softened in translation. I asked Joy to help me come up with a good Spanish phrase to use, but she just made me run again, so I’m sitting here with my dictionary trying to piece something together.

Besides that, it’s been a great week, and we’re hoping that the next will be just as good. We have stocked the fridge with food, and Joy has made sure I have enough dish soap. We also washed all our clothes today in preparation for the coming week whose agenda closely resembles the previous one’s: “Beach, Beer, Run a little…; Beach, Beer, Run a little…”

Fish and Apples

Almost two years ago, Zac told his mother we were packing up and moving to Uruguay. (She laughed and said, "have fun!") He was going to make our living selling fish and apples on the street corner, those being the only two words he knew in Spanish.

Obviously we didn't go at that time, but after a few dozen Alaskan adventures, a wedding in a barn, and three months in South America, we finally stepped off the ferry and set foot in Montevideo for the first time three days ago.

The first thing we noticed is that the entire city smells like a backyard barbeque. And it's situated on a peninsula-like bit of land, so you're either walking along the beach, towards the beach, or from the beach; in any case, it's never far away.

 

The best part is that Zac and I have rented an apartment just a few blocks from the beach for the next two weeks. It is lovely. We can buy groceries (produce!), do our own laundry in an actual machine, and hang out on the couch reading for as long as we want. I cook; Zac washes the dishes. And we've been waking up each morning to take a jog along the beachfront. I don't think it gets much better than this.

Tonight we're headed out to a "expat+Uruguayan social gathering" at a bar down the street. Till then, we're going to relax and later eat some leftovers(!). Zac will probably finish his book and I'll end up drinking the rest of this bottle of wine.

Buenos dias, Buenos Aires!

We didn't think we make a stop in Buenos Aires when we first conceived of this trip. (Something about the words "thirteen million people" makes Zac a little shaky.) But it was easier to go through than around, so we headed there for a pit-stop.

We couldn't really afford to do much more than walk around this enormous city, but that's okay, because the architecture, the wine, and the people-watching are fantastic here.

 

...and the coffee may come in tiny cups, but it sure is delicious!  

 

Hostel Livin'

We arrive! Backpacker-chic.

I reached a milestone the other day. A benchmark. A highpoint. A goal, of sorts, that I didn’t know I had. I became the dude in the hostel passed out on the couch with legs and arms askew and drool running down the side of his face while people came and went and either wondered how tired a person would have to be in order to sleep through the current commotion in the present stifling heat or simply smiled the knowing smile. 

“Epic,” Jeff Bridges’s voice keeps saying in my mind. 

Not really. But it definitely was a long proverbial way from the fluffy pillows and daily hot showers that my soft feet and I enjoyed before starting this rabbit-hunt.

Joy and I had just reached Mendoza, Argentina after riding the night-bus from Santiago, Chile – to where we had gotten after riding the day-bus from Curico – and, of course, spending the requisite hours on either end sitting on floors in crowded, hot bus stations. It was five-thirty in the morning, and thanks to a two-hour 2am customs and immigration stop, we were exhausted. Fortunately, Joy had emailed ahead to Mendoza and found a friendly hostel with a friendly couch. We showed up, rang the timbre by the locked security gate, introduced ourselves to the extremely nice guy manning the night-desk, followed him to the hostel’s sala de estar, dropped our backpacks on the floor, and collapsed onto the couch – where we woke four hours later to a crowded hostel and quickly wiped the drool off of our respective faces and tried to mash down our bus/couch hair.

Not our couch, but probably just as comfy.

It’s early March, and we had been in five countries and some 15-odd hostels before this one, but this was the first time I had managed to pass out in the lobby. I’ve seen it done plenty of times, especially by surfers – who, by the way, look in real life exactly the way they do in the movies: really blond, really tan, and really barefoot as they really carry those surfboards everywhere – and I’ve often marveled at their ability to relax to couch-drooling levels. In fact, it seems like everywhere we’ve been there has been someone passed out somewhere – except maybe in Mancora, where the surfers at our hostel were from Argentina, and were very loud – All. Night. Long.

Breakfast table, sans Nescafe

Hostel-living in general has been a new experience for me. Joy is pretty familiar with it; of course, she doesn’t have to battle the same kinds of “stick-in-the-ass” issues that I do (for example: she just warned me not to lean too close to her armpits). But I’m getting more used to it. (Meaningless side-note: even though I am failing miserably at learning this new language, my currently ever-translating mind really hates the use of “getting” and “used to” in the previous sentence, and wants to change it to “…I am becoming more accustomed to…”; however, I think such an edit might run counter to the larger “stickless-ass” point I‘m trying to make, so I’m going to leave it as-is; just don’t ask me to translate it). Every hostel we’ve been to has been a little different from the others, but they’ve all served desayuno (breakfast) – some better than others, and some with that dreadfully rotten creation that is Nescafe – and the people have all been very nice, both the people running the hostels and the other guests.

Hostels aren’t like the Holiday Inns and Ho-Jo’s I had grown accustomed to, where everyone else’s stick matches the one I used to have, and we’ve met a lot of very interesting people, although I’m sure I haven’t met near as many as I should have by now. Unlike my friend, Jon (shit- I mean “my brother-in-law”. It’s like I have a whole new family!), who can walk into any room and immediately become friends with everybody in it, I can usually leave a room two hours after entering it without anyone even knowing I was there. But the ones I have managed to talk to have been great. The natural camaraderie that exists in hostels that are generally full of other travelers makes breakfast conversations easy – even when there are three or four different languages involved – and interesting, especially when you meet someone who has just come from your next destination. And staying in these places has definitely exposed us to more of the language and culture than if we were always just holed up at a Hilton.

Another advantage of hostel-living is that there is usually good advice to be had regarding places to eat, hiking trails, and other inexpensive activities – not to mention the sage and invaluable advice on how to get to or from the bus station without getting mugged, pick-pocketed, or purse-snatched, and without Joy having to break a nail from punching someone who tries any of those things in the nose. And most of the hostels we’ve stayed at have been extremely helpful about storing our backpacks before or after late or early bus rides so that we don’t have to lug them around with us while we kill time (an ever-present part of backpacking – and another good reason to leave your stick at home), which to me is one of the most valuable services they provide.

Dorm beds and lockers

Price has also been a large factor in our decision to stay in hostels. Here, too, we likely share common ground with other budget travelers. Besides being such a better traveling experience than staying in hotels, it’s so much more economically feasible. Most hostels offer dorm room beds with a shared bathroom that are probably the best way to save money, but in the interest of full-disclosure, I should reveal that at my request we have stayed in private rooms everywhere we’ve been. Joy used to argue this point more vigorously in the beach towns with dorm-rooms full of half-naked surfers than she does now.

One hostel's tattered book exchange

Something else I have learned during this hostel-living journey is the value of used book exchanges. Most of the hostels have had them, in some form or another, which is a really good thing because it is not a pretty sight when Joy runs out of books to read. She starts reading entire menus from front to back before ordering a cup of coffee. She reads the shampoo bottle, the conditioner bottle, the soap wrapper, and the toothpaste tube, all while brushing her teeth – usually leaving toothpaste foam on the bathroom mirror, the faucet, the sink, and on the back of the toilet (don’t ask me). She starts picking up old newspapers out of the gutters and old candy bar wrappers out of the trash-can just to see what they might say. All quite endearing qualities, and her voracious appetite for reading is extraordinary, and very admirable, but everything just seems to flow so much more smoothly if there are enough new books around, something that the hostels are very helpful with.

Like couches. Those temporary beds for road-weary travelers who need a place to fall while their bodies catch up to the new turn of the earth’s axis, their minds try to remember which planet they’re on, and while the drool makes its slow journey from the corners of their mouths, down their cheeks, and drips off of one earlobe or the other. Epic.