Offbeat Uruguay

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Offbeat Uruguay

At a first impression, Uruguay appears to be a highly practical and utilitarian country. Driving in from Argentina on the bus, I saw mile after mile of farmland, largely deserted apart from the occasional animal herd to supply the voracious demand for beef, to keep th parrillas and meat markets well stocked. The smaller towns trade on farm machinery, with numerous dealerships in tractors, harvesters and cattle trucks found on the outskirts of all settlements of any size. The road to Montevideo is a continuous trundle of heavy goods lorries, and once these reach their destination in the capital, their cargo is loaded onto one or other of the large container ships which trade along the east coast of South America.

The capital, Montevideo, also seems in many ways to be the epitome of a modern, developing economy. Fashionable retail outliets are found in the downtown area long Avenida 18 Julio, high tech consumer stores thrive in abundance, European music plays in many shops and the ever-present North American fast-food outlets are clearly in evidence.

Yet despite these appearances, there is a spirit of quirkiness in the country which seems to manifest itself at every opportunity. The hostel where I stayed was in a converted Colonial style building, painted bright blue and orange on the outside, with a spiral wrought iron staircase dominating the cente of the room inside. Several of my fellow residents in the hostel were sitting on orange and black leather chairs in front of a blazing fire, happily playing on a couple of guitars. They did not seem particularly concerned what the tune or the lyrics were - one man deciding to improvise a melody of his own based on the subject of his broken internet connection. Their musical efforts were complemented by the hostel radio, which seemed to be tuned into the Bob Marley station. As the last chords of No Woman No Cry faded to silence, I then heard the opening blast of Also Sprach Zarathustra from the CD player in one of the dormitories.

Once out of the hostel the following morning, I immediately noticed how many Uruguayans were carrying their mate pots with them. I had had the drink in Buenos Aires but only inmugs at the language school. Here people would walk the street with their pot of mate leaves in one hand and a flask of hot water in the other. The mate is not drunk directly from the pot, but through a metal straw that is attached to the pot.

No one seemed to be too busy not to have time for a mate. I had already found the pace of life in Buenos Aires was slower than London, and here things had slowed all the more. The streets were less crowded, there was not much of the late night life, and there seemed little reason for anyone to rush. Here, too, the city´s rubbish is collected in wooden carts drawn by horses - that amble slowly around the city centre amidst the taxis, cars and scooters. Occasionally junk and rubbish will fall off the back of the carts, but this too seems to bother no one. Outside the city´s main hospital, accidents were also slow: the drivers of the local ambulance (a rough and readily converted people carrier) were asleep in the front seats, waiting for their next emergency. An anonymous graffiti artist clearly found the relaxed and laid back atmosphere too apathetic by far, declaring ´In a city this indifferent, not even god knows where we is going´.

My day trip to Colonia further along the coast was also not without its unusual incidents. The town was originally founded several centuries ago for the purpose of smuggling contraband goods into Buenos Aires. The town has an impressive and atmospheric district of old houses and cobbled streets, making it a popular tourist destination. However, I had also chosen to visit on the day when the local secondary schools of the area were having some pageant or carnival. I had not realised this when I arrived, and only became aware of the fact as I was finishing my parrilla and was interrupted by the loud blast of a tannoy system.

As I went to investigate the nosie, I was met by the sight of hundreds of teenagers in various degrees of fancy dress - and around 30 decorated carnival floats. Here were children dressed as Romans (behind a giant Trojan horse), Chinese dragons, Willy Wonka and the Oompa Loompas, characters from the Flintstones, clowns, jugglers, planets of the solar system, magic mushrooms, dancing penguins, cowboys and marines. Music accompanied the floats, usually played from giant speaker systems on the back of 4*4 trucks - though one group was led by a fat man in a leather jacket on a motorcycle, with two giant megaphones attached to the front and rear of the bike to play the music.

The town itself was not without its own quirks and oddities alongside the pretty colonial setting. Unlike Buenos Aires, most of the town´s motorcyclists (and there were many) saw no need to wear helmets - whizzing bare-headed through the busy streets on tiny mopeds or 125s. In addition to the standard one pillion passenger, it was also not uncommon to see 3 or even 4 people on some bikes - in one instance what looked like 3 generations of the same familty, none helmeted, riding along on the same moped.

Other curiosities on the road were several vintage cars (one with a dog asleep in the front seat), golf buggies rented out to tourists to drive on the roads, a few quad bikes and several home made cars from kits.

Having become more atuned to the country´s oddities, I began noticing more on my return to Montevideo: a jazz band playing inside a cage in one of the plazas, a chessboard laid out in the street with human sized multi-coloured pieces, an intriguing modern art museum inclduing such exhibits as relics from a haunted hotel and a collection of tiny vials of tears hanging suspended from the ceiling.

The country was clearly proud of asserting its individuality. As I was leaving the city, I passed 2 parades: one a political rally for the president, accompanied by much banging of drums, waving of flags, and people standing up out of car windows as they moved along the street. The other was the beginnings of a gay pride march - this had not really got started, though a couple of floats and a rock music bus (Cristina Queen of the Pampas??) had arrived - all droped with large rainbow flags. The theme for the event was ´A Kiss is a Kiss´, and there were several posters and banners on display showing pictures of men and women kissing, men kissing men, and women kissing women. Not many marchers had turned up yet, but there were a few men dressed as cowboys and marines, while there was also a cluster of goth women around by the floats. Uruguay has traditiionally been more conservative than the more relaxed neighbour Argentina - leading most gay and lesbian people to migrate to Buenos Aires - though clearly there are also those who wish to remain and assert their individuality in their native city.

It was part of the offbeat nature of the city which made it rather difficult to read exactly where people were coming from. On my last day in montevideo, I was approached in the street by a man who initially just asked me the time. Once he realised I was English, he began relating his lfe story and explaininng that his wife was English. He asked me where I was going, and I told him I was going to lunch. He insisted on advising me of a good restaurant in the area and accompanied me to it.

Once inside he told me that he was a DJ who ran his won club in the city. His favourite music was 70s / 80s English rock music and kept singing extracts from songs at the table - including The Sex Pistols, Madness and Freddie Mercury.

He also started talking to me about the football and whether I had seen any of the world cup qualifiers, or whether I was interested in rugby. I tld him that I had been to see the football in Boca, and enjoyed the rugby in England. He said there was some rugby and football coming up, and that he could get me cheap tickets. I said I was leaving that evening, and he explained the games were today - rugby in the afternoon and football later. He could help me with the luggage in his car and make sure I got to the bus station on time.

I did quite like the idea of seeing some of the games, so asked him the cost - which he told me was U$ 240 - about US$ 12- so I said I was interested. He advised me that it was also possible for him to change some currency for me at good rates since I was leaving the country.

We finished lunch and began walking to the house of the friend where we could get the tickets. The man, who was originally Italian and had migrated to Uruguay abouyt 11 years ago, occasionally greeted people in the street and said he had provided tickets for them too.

I don´t know what triggered it off in my mind, but I was by now trying to suppress the thought that this man was actually rather too friendly, that his generosity might not be all that it seemed, and that I actually needed to be very careful indeed. This was quite hard, since it is encouraging to believe that people could be helpful and outgoing towards strangers. Still the man chattered away, but I was becoming more and more aware he sounded like a very dubious work associate from Brasil, who had proved to be a compelte charlatan. It was also occurring to me that football and rugby on the same day was very unlikely, and that also it was also on exactly the same day I happened to be leaving.

I asked the man about the price of the tickets again, and he said it was Arg$ 240, around $50 - a big increased from his earlier information. He said we were now at his friend´s house, and asked me to give him the Arg$240 plus a further US$ 50 of Uruguayan currency to change - all amounting to US$ 100 in total.

This arrangement, that I was hand over US$ 100 while he wandered off somewhere with it on the promise of returning with tickets and money firmly convinced me, and with a quick check of my wallet, I told him all my money was back at the hostel, having spent all my spare cash over lunch. It wasn´t - there was'plenty in my money belt, but I did not let him know that.

He insisted on walking back to the hostel with me, and even waited outside for quite some time before deciding to give up on me. I though the conman´s banter had actually been quite effective - but there was definitely something in the strangeness of the place which lent more credibility to the possibility of the truth of his words than there otherwise might have been.

This incident apart, Uruguay proved to be a welcome and unusual surprise: neither a simple tourist destination of beaches and pretty colonial towns, or a dull and unengaging industrial outfit or dockyard. Perhaps it was the transitory and ever-changing popullation that inevitably inhabit a port, or the unconventional nature of the country´s smuggling heritage that have created a place which thrives on the quirky. Either way, the country has a lasting appeal and an entirely different flavour to its neghbour Buneos Aires, lying only an hour or so away by boat on the other side of the River Plate.

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