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
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