Punta del Este: Part II

Secondly (and on a much lighter tone) that him and his daughter Magdalena Páez, would make the day of three young tourists.

Let me explain the chain of events that unraveled the day we met Carlos and Magdalena Páez.

That day, we decided to make the very much tourist-approved pilgrimage to Casapueblo, a mad piece of architecture that Mr Páez Vilaró had spent 60 years constructing with his own hands. Having spent three days with, let's face it, practically no running water or functioning electricity, and having baked for three full days under the uruguayan sun with cocktails in our hands, our mental capacities had become questionable. Maybe I should have seen it coming when we started drooling over the houses on our way there. Maybe it became evident when I started babbling about China with Mr Páez Vilaró and thought I might be ever-so-cool if I got him to sign the print of a beetle(?!).

No.

It became certain once we started having the following conversation with our friend Shannon after sunset. She came to us with the peculiar proposition:
"So, I just met this really nice woman who said she wanted to take us somewhere...I didn't quite catch where, but it's close, two blocks from here, she'll take us in her car..."
"Ohhhh. Maybe she'll cook us dinner. And even drive us home."
"Ohhhhhh. Maybe she lives in one of those amazing houses and will ask us to stay overnight!" (at this point, our friend Casie had reach an early stage of dilusion).
"Oh great, let's go!"

Yes. Let's go with god-knows-who to god-knows-where to do god-knows-what. Everybody knows that's how great adventures start.

With our analytic abilities washed away with some more cocktails, our driver's identity only dawned on us by the time we were safely buckled up in the car. ("Is she the artist's daughter?!")

All our questioning and very subtle whispering and gesticulating was put to a stop when we saw what was in front of us.

It was a hut. A giant hut. Shaped out of mud-ish clay and capped by a straw roof with, god knows how, large iridescent stones encased into the seemingly unstable walls. And inside the hut, in an impressive circular room, was a group of women sat in a semi-circle facing another blonde specimen with quartz bowls of all sizes carefully laid out in front of her.

Different thoughts crossed my head at once:
1. Holy shit. We've landed in a sect and they're gona try to brainwash us into believing that cancer can be cured if you touch those bowls.
2. Fuck. We're at some weird hippie village and they're gona throw stones at us once they realize we're some capitalist brats. AND I'm asian so that can't be good.
3. Maybe they'll still keep us for dinner?

Before I knew it, I was lying down in the dark surrounded by salt lamps, trying hard to close my eyes and listen to the deep vibrations that were echoing across the room. The bowls, it turned out, were called tibetan cuencos, musical instruments used to produce relaxing and spiritually enlightening sounds. And it did cross my entire body, reverberated in my head and made me sigh of contentment. (According to the blonde lady, they're also meant to erm release negative ions which are good for you because you see, you get too much positive ion from computers, oh and that aligns you to the planet and the stars. My chemistry teacher would probably stab his eyes if he read this but hey, it's a pretty good shot at a scientific explanation.)

After that, they did keep us for laughs, some singing by some amazingly nuts brazilian woman and most, of all:

Dinner. They even had dessert. Best night ever.

End of the day, our intuitions were pretty damn spot on, nah?


photos taken from wikipedia and octagono de ago facebook pages

Punta del Este: Part I

(c) photo form the National Geographic

Carlos Páez Vilaró was born in 1923 in Montevideo, Uruguay. A renowned Uruguayan murallist/painter/sculptor, his art has been primarily driven by the complexity of African culture and by the influences of his Latin American roots. He has led a fascinating life - roaming all parts of Africa and the world in general, meeting politicians, befriending Brigitte Bardot, presenting a movie at Cannes Festival, nearly getting killed several times during his travels...no, truly, very few can claim that they have Lived like he has.

What Mr Vilaró could probably never have fathomed though are the following:

Firstly that one of his sons, Carlitos Páez Vilaró, would be one of the 16 survivors of the infamous Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash in 1972.

Remember that movie with Ethan Hawke, Alive? It tells the story of those who spent 72 days fighting for survival in the Andes. It's an incredible tale of courage and a gruesome account of cannibalism, death and desperation.

To what extent can a human being go to to fight for life? It seems that these days, we have become more and more interested by the question of survival. Because mother nature has been fucking the world royally over? Does that make us more responsive to stories of miraculous endurance? There's that movie 127 hours and more coming, articles about the man who survived two tsunamis, war horror accounts...
At the end of the day, how much willpower does it take for one to keep on fighting in the most extreme conditions?

"In fact, our survival had become a matter of national pride. Our ordeal was being celebrated as a glorious adventure… I didn't know how to explain to them that there was no glory in those mountains. It was all ugliness and fear and desperation, and the obscenity of watching so many innocent people die." - Nando Parrado, Miracle of the Andes

And are we going to far sometimes in celebrating those victories over death?

A couple of observations from the past weeks...

Exploring a new place always leads to surprising discoveries. Some conclusions you reach the hard way (eg. Constitucion is quite the unsafe neighbourhood...). Some you more or less ease into (eg. Argentines do not go to work/arrive late when it rains?!...). Either way, good or bad, these little daily moments of shock are part of what makes the entire experience exciting, refreshing and unique.

I deduced the following:

1. San Telmo/Constitucion are authentic, raw and historical neighbourhoods to explore in broad daylight. Not to live in, or stroll about when the sun has set.
I mean, let's face it, I should've known from the first day - the broken glass and wood, the garbage everywhere, the drunken pervy grandpas and the topless chavs smoking up in the smelly streets...yes, that was definitely a big hint. The nice gentleman climbing onto my balcony in the middle of the night was just the confirmation. I sort of chuckled nervously when a cab driver asked me "so erm...why do you live here?"

2. Girl/Guy relationships are definitely twisted. It casts a light on a brand new dimension of tension, confusion and intensity. Since the female sex thrives on drama, this is the place to be to direct your own telenovela ladies!
a. Girl/Guy friendships does not seem to exist for argentines.
b. Constant cheating is a socially acceptable act: why wait to find out your boy was shagging some other lustful latina when you could be having a piece of fun on the side too? Quite the vicious circle.

3. Every single time it rains here, you feel like it's the apocalypse, that you ought to befriend some douche named Noah and buy "How to Build an Ark for Dummies" with him.
The sewage system is so dreadful that within three hours of heavy rainfall, streets can actually be flooded. As in, water up to the knee and water up to car windows. One could argue though that having to swim back home after a night out is the perfect way to sober up.
This would also probably explain why it is acceptable to be very late/not show up to work when it is drizzling outside. Of course.

4. Chinese people here all work in supermarkets.
I go to get my groceries and the cashier will be asking me "Oh herro, so you work here?" "Yeah, in the centre." "You count money? People give you food, you count money?"
I duno, I kind of want to explain to him that my yellowness is deceiving. I can now make empanadas (cf. photo) but after all these years, the closest I've come to making a dumpling was dumping a bunch of frozen ones into some boiling water.

Some memories of the past week...

Starting to write a travel blog is something I've been toying with for quite a while now - it was suggested to me by my old IB headmistress and a handful of friends. I was quite uneasy with the idea at first. Truth is, I haven't written anything in years and it is slightly strange that english is now the language I feel more at ease with, as if all my french and my "frenchness" was slowly slipping away the longer time flows by and the more I trod on foreign land. That said, there are some memories that I wish to share, some experiences that cannot be described properly unless they are captured raw and fresh at the right moment.

It's been a couple of years now that I've desperately been trying to relive that unique feeling of mingled awe, silent wonderment and nostalgia that I was overwhelmed with when I first set foot in South America. Roaming Chili and Bolivia with friends from university brought it back with a pang and I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it on the (erm, slightly unsafe...) roads of Tibet.

Patagonia, however, has to go down as a completely distinctive experience in my books. Maybe because I was completely alone for the first time and was free to experience the joys of "people whoring" whenever I felt like it. Maybe that solitude makes you appreciate the entire emotional spectrum covered by a moment of fulfillment and happiness. Fuck knows. But what's certain is that when you feel absurdly tiny, you do open your eyes wider and wrap yourself completely in that overpowering beauty before you.

And it is asphyxiating.