Advertisement
Published: December 29th 2008
Edit Blog Post
As I´ve been traveling there have been a few things that I didn´t expect to see that I´ve now been able to check off the imaginary list of things to do: dinosaur footprints, cave paintings, playing with dynamite... Now, I´m lucky enough to say that I can add "See a naked man do jumping-jacks."
We set out for Colonia early in the morning the day after Christmas. We left Burton behind in Buenos Aires as he had pick up Anne from the airport and was going to show her around the town for a few days. We jumped on the ferry in fairly ragged shape from the night before and enjoyed the few hours of rest it took to cross the Rio Plata. We got in, checked in, and then checked out the city. It is a quaint place with a beautiful old town: cobble-stone streets lined with old buildings in various states of disrepair, Portuguese colonial fortifications along the waterfront, and several of the oldest churches in Uruguay. It is very picturesque and all within a tiny little area. It was exactly what we needed, something to do but without any strenuous effort. And, what made it even better,
for whatever reason, the weather in Uruguay is tremendously more bearable than the scorching heat in B.A. While the weather is warm enough to make you get up a serious sweat in the sun, there is a constant cool breeze and the shade is cool enough to sit around reading in for hours. It was a beautiful afternoon and we appreciated taking it easy after wearing ourselves thin the week before.
The next day we headed over to Montevideo. As the capital of Uruguay, it is a much larger city than Colonia, but much smaller than B.A., and much more manageable. However, over the weekend at this time of year it is a ghost town; everyone empties out of the city for the nearby beaches. So, it was a little odd. We walked around the city center where every shop was closed, and checked out the old town area. We walked along the enormous river front boardwalk and went over to the Mercado Puerto, where people can get their taste of some of the country´s fantastic beef exports. We met up with our friend Ali, who we had traveled with in El Calafate and Torres del Paine, for his
last night before flying to Colombia. In general, though, we simply took a relaxed pace still recovering and resting up before New Years.
The most memorable event of the two cities, and by far one of the most memorable of the entire trip, was the "Modern Ballet" performance we checked out at Teatre Solis, the largest theatre in Uruguay, on our second night in MVD. As we walked by the theatre, we thought it might be interesting to get a little culture that evening; it would be something different and unexpected. It most definitely was that! It had been described as a modern dance performance, with a minor bit of nudity. The other option was Pinocchio. We showed up and were shown to our seats in the small, 120 person theatre. They gave us the play bill and we were a little taken aback by the photo on the cover of a naked male´s legs with a microphone chord tangled around him. We got a bit of an idea of what was to come...
A few minutes later, after a lot of speculation and laughter on what was about to happen between the four of us, three performers,
two males and one female, came out onto the stage, which was a blindingly brightly lit room with a white floor and three white canvassed walls. They took a piece of paper each, put it on a wall far away from one another, placed three microphones, with chords, on the floor, and lined up in front of the crowd where they proceeded to stare at us for several minutes. There wasn´t a noise in the theatre, no music, no sound from the performers, just a few uncomfortable rustles and snickers from the crowd. Then the performers started twitching, popping open their mouths, and flopping onto the floor uncontrollably to the sound of nothing but loud feedback from the microphones. Every so often they would go to their pieces of paper and read what they were to do next. They just kept going about pushing one another around, falling on the floor and playing dead, and standing in the corners of the room looking at one another. Sometimes they were fully clothed, sometimes they were not so clothed, sometimes they were fairly naked, and sometimes they were completely naked. We saw way more hairy butts than we had hoped.
The
weirdest part of the show came when one man rubbed the other´s pubic hair into the raw microphone. What the hell is that? Right? He actually unscrewed the wire meshing just to amplify the sound. I guess it made an artistic difference. Then, he pursued to move straight up to the other man´s eyes (not exactly sanitary) and pull his eyelids off of his eyes and snap them back. He did this directly into the mic, because we were all wondering what that would sound like. Then, after consulting their play chart yet again, they decided it was time for one guy to do naked jumping-jacks while the others ran around on their hands and knees. It was all topped off by a triple decker naked sandwich and a warm round of applause by the audience. We couldn´t get out of their fast enough to finally break out in the laughter we had all been holding in for the last hour. I guess "Modern Uruguayan Ballet" isn´t for us. As Drew said upon leaving, I´ve never held a "what the f$%&! expression for so long." Anyway, we went and had a few beers over a round of poker after that;
Old Cars
I had no idea there were so many old cars in Uruguay we needed to reassert our manhood.
The next day Eric and Drew took off for La Paloma. I waited another day doing pretty much nothing more than I needed as my friends were getting in the following afternoon. We are all looking forward to the beaches and a week in one spot doing nothing but lathering on the suntan lotion, taking siestas, swimming in the waves, and playing a little beer pong at night.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.157s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0934s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Julie
non-member comment
EEEWWWW!
Hi Kyle. I'm not sure you needed to go all the way to Uruguay to take in that disturbing performance. I think I saw something similar on my way to work in downtown Flint a couple of weeks ago! Oh, and I think I'll skip this entry when filling my little students in on your latest adventure. They LOVE my Kyle stories, and have your postcards taped all over the classroom! You're the best! Stay safe...and apparently away from Uraguayan ballet performers. Love you! Julie