Don´t Call It ´Sleeping In´

We woke up at about 9 a.m. on our last day in Uruguay and made it down to the hotel breakfast by 10 a.m. It is a measure of just how much we have grown accostomed to South Ameican time standards that waking up at 9 a.m. can by no means be called sleeping in. It´s just when you wake up around here. Steven Hatcher, back in Santiago, told me there is no such thing as the early bird in SA and I´ve found he was right. And so our whole day has adjusted. We eat lunch about 2 and don´t even start thinking about dinner until 8. Once, Laura suggested we eat at 7.30. We couldn´t even find anything that was open that early.

(Photos by Laura of Punta del Este)



We stayed in our hotel yesterday as long as possible, taking advantage of the noon checkout. We had a night bus to Brazil that left at 11 p.m. and would arrive in Porto Alegre at 10 a.m. Even though it was a semi-sleeper bus -- wide seats that recline almost all the way down -- it´s very hard for either of us to sleep on these things, and so even under the best circumstances we arrive bedraggled.

I can truly say I am sorry to leave Uruguay. Although it is likely the most obscure country I´ve been to, besides perhaps Swaziland and Lesotho, it has proven to be the calmest, safest, most relaxing place this side of Malawi.



One thing we have not written about is yerba mate.

Yerba mate is the national drink, I guess you´d call it, of Uruguay. They drink it in Chile, some, and they drink it in Argentina a lot, but no one drinks it like the Uruguayans.

Yerba mate is a drink that tasts kind of like cut grass and dead leaves, although some have generously tried to call it a sort of tea. Here´s how it works: everyone has their special mate mug. It looks like a coconut shell with silver lining on it, and occasionally carved inscriptions. They fill the mug up with the greenish yerba mate and pour in an ounce or so of water when they want a drink. The water is poured from a thermos that absolutely everyone has. Once the hot water is in they drink from a special silver spoon that has a sort of silt trap at the end of it.



It´s fascinating how hooked the nation is on this drink, especially when you consider the taste is, ah, acquired. Kids drink it. Old people drink it. College students drink it. Poor people drink it. Rich people drink it. Some offices have no mate rules, and the businessmen will come onto the sidewalk during their breaks to smoke and sip mate. Bus drivers drink it, people in the post office drink it, and people whizzing by on scooters are drinking it, all of them with the mug in one hand, the silver spoon sticking out of it, and the thermos under their arms.

Our two days in Punta del Este were darkened a bit by low clouds and fog, though we did qutie a bit of walking and some biking. The town is a peninsula with beaches broken by rocky headlands and all of if backdropped by posh low-rises, Mercedes dealers, sushi restaurants and the like. It´s an ``international beach resort,`` or so the guide book says, and if you´re into that sort of thing, great, but it was not really our thing. We did like watching the surfers, and the sea lions, but as far as beach towns go, we liked Pirapolis, an hour back toward Montevideo, more.

Our bus took us into Brazil in what is likely the strangest border crossing I´ve ever had. I actually slept through the whole thing. Normally, if the bus is heading through the border (as opposed to dropping you off and letting you walk through and catch another bus on the other side), the bus stops, all the lights come on, and everyone files off. But this time, when we got on the bus the attendant took our passports, and he ushered the passports, not the people, through formalities in Uruguay and Brazil. If there was any problem, apparently (Laura told me this, as she woke up) the officials came on the bus to take the person in question off and deal with them in the border office. Never before have I never personally had to be in attendance at a border crossing.

We are now in Torres, Brazil, on the southern coast. It´s palm trees and banana trees and a small cluster of skyrises and big dunes and two great headlands on either end. We are trying to keep tabs on the hurricane headed toward Houston, where most of my family lives, and also trying to keep abreast of the situation in Bolivia, where there appears to be a low-grade coup going on. We were planning to be in Bolivia in about two weeks, but now that is looking iffy. Local TV shows rioting and roadblocks, though it´s hard to determine exactly where that is going on and how serious it is. If anyone comes across any good stories on the current situation there, please email them to me at redpinecanyon@yahoo.com