Uruguay, I'm a guay cuatro - Más notas

The concert at Teatro Solís turned out to be sold out, so I got tickets for tomorrow's tango performance instead.  In the meantime, I thought I'd check in with some general musings and observations about Uruguay, Montevideo, and my time here.

Graffiti reading "Mujica is a murderer," painted over with "Mujica is President."

• I've become completely fascinated with one particular moment in Uruguayan history.  During the late 1960's and early 1970's, President Jorge Pacheco Areco, amid a labor and economic crisis, suspended many constitutional protections and instituted military rule.  The primary opposition came from the Tupamaro movement, a group of leftist guerillas looking to emulate the still-recent Cuban revolution.  Among other things, Areco's government tortured its opponents, and threw many of them in jail, often without due process.  Specifically, dissidents were imprisoned in the Punta Carretas prison.  However, in September 1971, 111 political prisoners (including the new President-elect, Jose Mujica) escaped through a tunnel they had dug under the wall.  Remarkably, there's a story of someone calling the police precinct to report the escape, informing the officer on the other end of the phone that 100 or so prisoners had just dug through his floor and left.  The officer responded that none of the guards had seen anyone trying to escape, and admonished the citizen not to waste police time with any pranks.  Presumably the officer was later fired.  Punta Carretas, it's worth noting, is now one of the nicest neighborhoods in Montevideo.  In one of the stranger metamorphoses I've heard of, the prison has been converted into a shopping mall.  As you can see from my pictures, Punta Carretas Shopping ("shopping" is the word for "mall") still retains a good deal of the original prison architecture.  At any rate, the story of the escape has grabbed my attention, so I've picked up a copy of Fuga de Punta Carretas, a book written by Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, one of the escapees.  I intend to make it the first book I read in Spanish, after I finish the book I'm currently reading in English.  And for any of my friends in the film world, I am certain that this would make an excellent Hollywood screenplay.

• I've decided to stay in Montevideo through Tuesday.  Not only will this give me the opportunity to see what Montevideo is like on a weekend, it will also allow me to attend Mujica's inauguration, which is at Plaza Independencia, a short walk from my school.  Apparently Hillary Clinton is expected to be in town, which should be cool to see.  From what I've heard, there are also likely to be a large number of parties and performances, something akin to the dozens of inaugural balls in the U.S.  To me, however, as well as to a number of Uruguayans, the most fascinating thing is that Mujica has managed to be elected at all.  It is important to note that the Tupamaros weren't political prisoners of the Nelson Mandela variety.  As a group, they were rather violent.  Many of them killed people.  Mujica himself was convicted of killing a police officer.  Moreover, the Communist dreams of the Tupamaros were never realized.  Instead, they become more moderate, and formed a legitimate political party on the left side of the spectrum.  So Mujica's election isn't the inevitable result of some steady stream of leaders forced on the country by the victors of the war.  In that light, I find it truly remarkable that Mujica was elected, by a 9 point margin no less, to represent many of the same people with whom he was once at war.  This is not, to be clear, a matter without controversy (as the picture above indicates).  There are plenty of locals who are uneasy with Mujica's progression from guerilla to statesman.  But on the whole, everyone I've met seems very excited about his potential as President.  As a side note, after his escape from prison, Mujica was shot six times by police and taken back into custody.  He was held for the next fourteen years.  Two of those years were spent at the bottom of a well.  As though that were not enough, I've also been told that the bullets were never removed.  So I think he's probably earned his new job.

• One of the results of the success of the Tupamaros (now part of the Frente Amplio or "Broad Front" party) is that a lot of Uruguay's policy has something of a leftward lean.  The primary example of this is the significant role of the state in many aspects of the lives of its citizens.  Sometimes this shows up in ways that are somewhat expected--e.g. that Antel, the energy company, is state owned.  Sometimes the effects are more subtle, such as in the case of Montevideo's lone amusement park--a river-side Coney Island type affair with some truly rickety attractions--which is state-run as well.  The thing that I find most impressive, however, is that every student in a public Uruguayan elementary school is given a state-issued laptop.  In addition to the usual hardware, the laptops are equipped with LoJack, which addresses any concerns of rampant theft that might otherwise spring up.  The first group of students are entering middle school with their laptops this year, and the program has been an overwhelming success.  Though it's obviously much easier to have government-mandated computers in a country of three million than in a country of 300 million, the United States could stand to take a lesson from Uruguay's efforts to ensure that its children aren't lapped by competetors in the internet age.

• As I've mentioned, the two major soccer teams here are Nacional and Peñarol.  As opposed to just saying "I'm a Nacional fan" or "I'm a Peñarol" fan, the fans of the two teams have special nicknames.  Fans of Nacional are "bolso," which stems from the pocket ("bolsillo" in Spanish) that historically adorned the Nacional jerseys.  Peñarol fans are "manya," which actually stems from the Italian word "mangiare," which means "to eat."  Peñarol fans were referred to by rivals as "manya mierda," which is a colorful term for people who eat excrement.  The Peñarol supporters decided to reclaim the term, and now proudly wear shirts declaring "soy manya."

• This isn't a particularly Uruguay-specific thing, but last weekend in Cabo Polonio marked the fifth different incorrect spelling of my name I've come across in this trip.  Spanish speakers have a really tough time both hearing and pronouncing the name Seth.  I'm not too bothered by it, having grown up with grandparents who called me "Set," but it is amusing to see the wide range of ways there apparently are to butcher a one-syllable name.  I'd already been Sef, Set, Sez (because in Spain, the "z" is used like the "th" in English), and Sed.  In Cabo Polonio, I received my newest moniker, Serth.  It's important to note that the pronunciation is using the Spanish version of the letter R, so it's not quite as far out there as it looks.  Still.  I'm excited to be at 5 names and still counting.

• I'd often heard that it was fairly easy for Portuguese speakers to learn Spanish and vice versa.  I have learned that this is pretty true.  In a very large number of cases, Portuguese sounds very much like Spanish with slightly different consonants.  On the trip to Colonia, most of our tour group was Brazilian, so the tour guide spoke in Portuguese much of the time, and I found that I could follow a lot of what was being said.  That said, Portuguese, to an English speaker, is a pretty bizarre sounding language.  There are a lot of "sh," "zh," and "ch" sounds.  I gave my Brazilian friends a hard time by claiming that I could translate Black Eyed Peas's "I Gotta Feeling" into Portuguese as follows: "I gotta feelin / that tonightch gonna be a goodch nightch / that tonightch gonna be a goodch nightch / that tonightch gonna be a goodch goodch nightch."  I also learned that the Portuguese word for iPod is spelled the same as in English, but pronounced, as you might expect, "i-potch."

• I've been spending a lot of class time lately practicing the subjunctive, which is a tense that doesn't really exist in English.  Or, to the extent that it does, we certainly don't have specific verb conjugations for it.  Subjunctive is used, among other things, to express a desire or a wish, and one of the forms of doing that is to say "Ojala que [subjunctive form of thing that you want to happen]."  This roughly translates as "I wish that [the thing will happen]."  Interestingly, however, it comes from Arabic, from the phrase "Inshallah," praying that a certain event will come to pass.  I had always noticed that Spanish contains a number of words that have a somewhat Arabic sound to them (e.g. the word for "carpet," which is "alfombra") but never managed to put together the fairly obvious fact that the Ottoman occupation of Spain influx of North African immigrants into Spain starting in the 8th century* had a significant linguistic impact.  For that reason, Spanish includes a number of words that are completely distinct from other Romantic languages--with the notable exception of Portuguese, because the Ottoman rule Arabic influence covered the entire Iberian Penninsula.  This was all explained to me last night by my friend Liz, so I thank her for that excellent contribution to my ever-expanding knowledge of random stuff.

• I'm hoping to get to one last murga show before I head off to Argentina, probably on Friday or Saturday.  If you're interested, I tracked down the website of the excellent murga group I saw perform two weeks ago, Queso Magro.

Tomorrow should be fun, as I'm hoping to explore some fun stuff down along the Rambla, including the state-run amusement park, before heading over to the tango show.  I suspect I won't have time to check in tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll be back before too long.  Until then, hasta luego.

Saludos,
Seth

* My father corrected me on this. Knowledge of random stuff expanded further.

Fotografía:

Montevideo

Uruguay, I'm a guay tres - Cabo Polonio is duned

I spent the weekend in Cabo Polonio, an isolated beach town along the eastern coast of Uruguay that is renowned for its sand dunes and laid-back style.  Because it's so far out on the coast, with dunes that get as high as some New York City brownstones, Cabo Polonio can only be reached by large 4x4 shuttles that run between the local bus stop and the town itself--normal cars can't traverse the road.  The isolation also means that the town is almost completely off the grid, in a literal sense: the lone electrical line powers the lighthouse, and nothing else.  As a result, it has developed into something of a hippie commune, where there are no schools or government services, and people go to live a life apart from the rest of civilization.

I should note at this point that Cabo Polonio was the first place I've been on this trip that didn't leave me thrilled and amazed, which might bother me some if it didn't also connote an absolutely stellar batting average in terms of (places I''ve visited that are jaw-droppingly awesome) divided by (places I've visited).  On the plus side, the natural beauty was spectacular, and it was pretty amazing to spend two nights in a place that is largely untouched by technology.  On the other end of the spectrum, I think that, between summer camp and college, I've seen enough drum circles to get me through a lifetime, so I didn't feel like the cultural experience offered me much of anything new.  So I left Cabo Polonio feeling pretty ambivalent--I was certainly glad I'd come to see what it had to offer, but at the same time thrilled to be heading out of town.

I traveled up to Cabo Polonio with my friends from school Adrian (from Switzerland) and Elisete (Brazil), and we were met the next day by Tuanny (Brazil), Pepe (Spain--he's not a student, just in Montevideo for work), and Hedda (Germany).  The night we got in, I actually loved the place.  First off, the truck ride out was a pretty uncommon experience, topped off by the last 10 minutes of it spent driving along the beach.  Moreover, we found a really lovely place to eat some dinner, and had quite an adventure finding our way around what pass for roads--really just paths of sand that don't have grass growing on them--with my tiny pocket LED flashlight.  The whole atmosphere of the place was as serene as could be, and I was pretty thrilled, notwithstanding the frankly unreasonable prices of the hostel we stayed at.  When we visited the lighthouse the next morning and looked across the water to a rocky island that was covered in sea lions--which were, unfortunately, more easily heard than seen--I started to understand the uniqueness of the place.

The dunes, which stretch for miles from the coastline, give one the feeling of having suddenly left the fairly developed comforts of Montevideo and arrived in the middle of the Sahara.  For no particular reason, I felt a burst of energy as we approached these massive mounds of sand, and took off running for the top of one.  Once my friends made their way to where I was--mostly confused by my reaction to a large plot of empty space--I sprinted off again to the next peak, just a bit to the West, and at a slightly higher elevation.  Crossing just over the crest, I found myself in a spot where neither my compatriots nor the ocean were visible, and where sand stretched out in every direction, patches of grass springing up in places, and the hazy outline of civilization painted on the horizon to the South.  The only clear evidence of human presence was the line of footprints that ended exactly where I stood.  The ocean was still audible, though not much more so than what you hear when you put your ear to a conch shell.  The experience left me with the feeling of an almost hyper-awareness of my surroundings, stemming from the total isolation of the place.  I'm not a particularly meditative fellow, but if ever there was a place to go and just exist, this was almost certainly it.

The illusion was unfortunately shattered for me when I began the walk back to my friends and I came across a large plastic crate sticking out of the sand.  If this were an isolated incident, I could have written it off, or at least let it go.  But it quickly became one of those situations where noticing one example of a thing attunes your senses to other examples of that thing, and I found myself coming across discarded sandals, containers, and even a glo-stick.  At this point I started to process the fact that Cabo Polonio, in spite of being so naturally unspoiled in so many ways, was at the same time one of the most neglected and exploited places I've been on this trip.  I had already picked up on what was quite frankly the foulest odor I've come across in a long time.  The infrastructure is just not set up to handle the sewage of the crowds that descend on the place for the music festivals and hippie vibe, to say nothing of the town's few thousand permanent residents in their shacks (with only rudimentary plumbing in the best cases).  The result is a distinctive stench evocative of a mountain of week-old dead snails.  And that, in combination with the truly pervasive issue of litter on the ground, led me to the realization that the culture that has sprung up in Cabo Polonio appears to be completely unsustainable. 

There is certainly something fascinating about witnessing a group of people espousing a lifestyle unaffected by social conventions, a lifestyle that is purportedly pure and unblemished, and being able to see clearly how blatantly hypocritical the whole operation is.  Cabo Polonio has the feel of a Bob Marley poster in a Wesleyan dorm room.  There were Jamaican flags all over the place, and our hostel proudly displayed red, green, and gold over its roof.  But as one sees all too often in the states, the embrace of Rastafarian culture is really just an excuse to smoke pot.  If that's your cup of tea, it's well within your rights--philosophically, if not necessarily legally.  But it has always rung hollow to me, sort of along the lines of claiming to be Jewish because you like to eat knishes.  I don't know a whole lot about the Rastafarian faith, but I'm fairly certain it gets sold short by the denizens of Cabo Polonio, who have created an entire community out of a characature of a legitimate religion.  As a result, the whole town feels like one big excuse to rail against society, smoke a bowl, and throw trash on the ground.  I realize that you can find this type of thing pretty much anywhere, and that I'm likely to encounter no end of it when I move to Berkeley in the Fall.  But to me, the issue isn't so much that this culture exists in Cabo Polonio, as that it is the only culture that exists in Cabo Polonio.  Moreover, it is a culture that is not only destructive to its habitat, but unlike what I saw in Costa Rica, for example, it is a culture that seems blissfully unaware of just how destructive it is.  As such, the situation seems unlikely to resolve itself anytime in the foreseeable future.


So, at the end, I came away from this excursion feeling completely astounded by a landscape that was unlike anything I've ever seen before, but utterly infuriated by its treatment at the hands of its inhabitants.  I do think that it was good for me to finally travel somewhere on this trip that I did not love, both because I always enjoy (ever so slightly) having something to complain about, and because it is, of course, important to remember that, even in the middle of the adventure of a lifetime, things don't always turn out as you hope.  The lesson, I suppose, is to take away the good things: a completely new experience, an excellent time with friends, and a little more knowledge about what's out there in the world.

Tomorrow night I'm going to a show at Teatro Solís, one of the oldest theaters in South America, to see a concert of Uruguayan folkloric songs performed by two singers and the Montevideo philharmonic orchestra.  From everything I've heard, it should be a pretty remarkable experience, so hopefully this time I'll manage to check in without letting two or three days slip by.  In the meantime, it's late here, even by Urugurayan standards, so I'm off to sleep.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Cabo Polonio

Uruguay, I'm a guay dos - Notas Rioplatenses

I thought I'd check in with some news and notes (Peter Gammons style) before I head off for a weekend in Cabo Polonio:

• I have more pictures up in my Montevideo album.

• This week I was given the assignment to give a presentation on the topic of my choosing.  I elected to explain the game of baseball to my teacher, Claudia, who came into things knowing literally nothing about the sport.  I've had this conversation with my brother before, but you really have no idea how complicated a game baseball is until you try to explain it to someone who's never seen it.  What was supposed to be a ten-minute presentation turned into a three-day seminar, at about 20 minutes per day.  By the end of the first day, I hadn't even gotten to such basic things as "how runs score."  At this point, however, Claudia seems to have at least some sense of the game, to the point that I was able to show her a video of a pretty sick curveball, and she understood what was going on.  Now I'm trying to hunt down video of Mookie Wilson's ten-pitch at bat in Game 6, just to fully demonstrate the game within a game that is the pitcher-batter interaction.  Man, I miss having a good Mets team to root for.

• Mullets are extremely popular in the Rio de la Plata region.  I have no good explanation for this.  It is probably the most common hairstyle for men.  I would try to grow one, but given my looming male-pattern baldness, I would look like a washed-up guitar teacher.

• One think I've noticed about studying the language is just how much easier it is to have a conversation with another non-native speaker.  Native Spanish speakers breeze through words and sentences at a speed that often makes it difficult to pick up.  If you think of the way you might speak English in the middle of an excited conversation, that's fairly analogous.  Add in the fact that words sometimes get so strung together as to be indistinguishable, and it makes it pretty tough.  So, as a result, my best Spanish conversations have been with people from Switzerland and Brazil, for the most part.

• Another funny thing about languages is the little idiosyncrasies that show up, in particular as it relates to names for things.  For example, I was extremely excited when someone told me about the marine wolves at Cabo Polonio.  Yes.  Marine wolves.  Badass right?  It turns out that's just what they call sea lions.  What amuses me is that the exact same conversation could happen in reverse with a Spanish speaker learning English--"you mean there are lions that swim in the water?!"  It turns out that this isn't the only example of this issue.  It seems to just be a problem when an animal doesn't have its own name, but rather a variation on the name of another animal (e.g. a sea lion is called a type of lion, even though it's not).  This issue came up again when our tour guide last weekend brought us to her friend's apartment at the top of Palacio Salvo to see the view.  She said she'd never brought a group there, so we would be her little Indian rabbits, or "conejitos Indios."  It's about as indirect a translation of "guinea pig" as can exist, but, as a name for the creature, it makes at least as much sense.

• The internet here is really slow.  Uruguay ranks 152nd in the world in download speed, well below every other country I'm visiting on this trip.

• The people here are just incredibly friendly.  Last night on the way back from a bar, I got into a conversation with the cab driver about politics.  He was telling me about how deeply passionate the entire country is, when it comes to political issues.  As we arrived at our destination, he gave me his phone number, and said that if I was interested in meeting a Uruguayan senator, he'd be happy too take me--the senators are obligated to take meetings with constituents.

That's all I really have for now.  Cabo Polonio is pretty remote.  It has some of the most intense sand dunes in the hemisphere--cars and buses can't drive through the town, so after the bus arrives, we'll have to take the local dune buggy service to our hostel.  I'm looking forward to seeing a whole lot of amazing natural beauty, eating some delicious fresh fish, and hopefully getting a peek at some marine wolves.  I'll be back Sunday, and I imagine I'll have something to say about Cabo Polonio at some point.

Saludos,

Seth

Co-lo-ni-a, Co-lo-ni-a, You border on the Rio de la Plata

I spent the weekend traveling to Colonia del Sacramento, generally just referred to as Colonia.  Colonia is the closest Uruguayan city to Buenos Aires, and is positioned right at the point where the Rio de la Plata starts to open into the ocean, so it was a desireable territory for much of its colonial history.  The Portuguese founded Colonia in 1680--the first European settlement in what is now Uruguay.  Due to its strategically advantageous location, Colonia spent the next 150 years as a colonial ping pong ball, changing sovereignty as follows: Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Liga Federal (a liberated region which would mostly eventually become Uruguay), Portugal, Brazil, and finally, in 1828, Uruguay.  As though this were insufficient evidence of its historical value, Colonia is also a UNESCO world heritage site.  So I was obviously excited to spend a day there and get a sense of the place.

Although a modern city has sprung up alongside the Barrio Antiguo (Old City), the original colonial pueblo maintains its historic charm.  Cobblestone streets wend their way around a series of low, old buildings, everything pulling you downhill towards the coastline.  The streetlamps are tinted with yellow glass, presumably intended to retain the feel of the oil lamps that used to light the passageways.  One thing that's sort of interesting about it is that you can tell whether a road was build by the Spanish or the Portuguese, depending on the layout of the cobblestone.  The Spanish cut stones into little cubes and rectangles that could easily fit together, making foot and carriage traffic a lot easier.  The Portuguese, it seems, just threw a bunch of rocks on the ground, maybe raked them a little, and said "Behold, a street!"  Seriously, the old Portuguese streets are comically haphazard in their construction, as you can see from some of the pictures.

These days, Colonia remains an object of much desire, except that it's sought by tourists instead of imperialists.  Seriously, the place was so packed to the gills with Argentines and Brazilians that prices at stores were listed in Argentine Pesos and Brazilian Reales before they were listed in Uruguayan Pesos.  When I tried to find a place to get some dinner on Saturday night, there were almost no tables available anywhere, because everyone had come into town for their Carnaval vacation--the weekend before Ash Wednesday is a four day weekend here, extending into Monday and Tuesday, although many people take the entire week off.  I did ultimately find a place to sit down and have some pasta* and a couple Pilsens before shuffling back to my quarters for the night.  Unfortunately, the table where I ate happened to be on the mosquito superhighway.  So, as I'm sitting in my room writing this, my legs are so thoroughly spotted with pepto-colored calamine lotion that they give me the appearance of a cow that almost certainly produces strawberry milk.

Colonia's history as a tourist mecca is almost as old as its history as an object of Iberian dispute.  In 1910, Argentine shipping magnate Nicolás Mihanovich set up a sort of Argentine equivalent of a Catskills retreat.  Real de San Carlos, in the northern part of Colonia, included a luxury hotel and casino, a horserace track, a bullfight ring, and a jai alai court.  As it turned out, though Mihanovich may have made the right gamble, he made it at precisely the wrong time, as bullfighting was banned by the Uruguayan government only two years later, and World War I left the entire operation bankrupt by 1917.  The Plaza de Toros still stands on the outskirts of town, an impressive piece of urban ruin, with its steel arches and girders visible through the crumbling brick.  The racetrack, as it happens, is still in use, although I did not make it there.  But, as anyone who watches Mad Men knows, jai alai remained "the next big thing" for at least another fifty years.

On the way to Colonia, our bus stopped briefly Nuevo Helvecia, known locally as Colonia Suiza ("Swiss Colony").  The name comes, as you might expect, from its origin as a Swiss colony in 1862.  For this reason, you get such comical street names as Calle Frau Vogel.  We did not see much of the town, but we did stop for about 20 minutes at the Granja Arenas collection museum, which includes the world's largest keyring collection, world's largest pencil collection, world's smallest pencil (which, not joking, I managed to miss), and some other world record that I didn't catch.  It was incredible, primarily because it's the sort of crap that you expect to see when you pull off at a highway rest stop in eastern Indiana.  It's really not what you think of when shuttling around such far-flung locales as the Región Rioplatense.  So, just as an anthropological experience, it was fascinating.  I will also add that, for a room with 13,600 keyrings, there were surprisingly few from professional sports teams.  I noticed, for example, that he did not have the Mets bottle-opener keyring I have in my room.  This strikes me as a good opportunity for expansion.  Similarly, he was lacking in keyrings associated with professional music acts, as I did not spot a single Meat Loaf key ring, like the one I used to have, but which I sadly lost to the ages.  On the plus side, they have a nice little gift shop, where they sell local cheeses and jams (Colonia Suiza is, not surprisingly, known for its cheeses).  I got a really nice block of a cheese that's somewhere between Swiss and Gouda, and some fig jam.  The gift shop also sells keyrings--presumably only duplicates of keyrings that already in the collection--so I picked up a Nacional keyring to keep my archaic Uruguayan keys on.

So, now I'm back in Montevideo, having enjoyed my trip and enjoying the fact that there seem to be fewer people here right now than there were in Colonia this weekend, even though this is a much bigger city.  But everyone has left for Carnaval, leaving the streets delightfully free for romping and roaming.  So I'm going to take my pink-tinted gams over to Punta Carretas, a lovely little neighborhood by the water, and eventually (probably closer to 9 or so), get myself some dinner.

Saludos,
Seth

*I've generally been of the opinion that eating Italian food as a tourist in any country other than Italy is cheating.  I'd thought it to be depriving oneself of a good local experience in favor of something both familiar and, generally, not as well-prepared.  I then realized that Uruguay has an extremely large Italian immigrant population--a lot of the same immigrants who fled Europe for the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries also had family who ended up here or in Argentina.  Once I embraced a willingness to try the pasta here, I discovered that it's actually incredible.  So I've now had pasta for three out of my last five meals.

Fotografía:

Colonia de Sacramento

Murga, She Wrote

As I mentioned at the end of my soccer post, last night's excellent adventure also included a trip to a Murga performance.  Murga is a Uruguayan style of theater that is performed during Carnaval.  The performers consist of a large group of singers--generally a chorus of about 20 people, usually men--and three drummers.  One of the singers also jumps out and conducts from time to time.  The groups are generally not professional performers, and are usually just a collection of people who know each other, often from the same neighborhood.  Each group writes an original piece--about 45 minutes in length--focusing on a general theme, and offering humorous commentary on the last year's events, and numerous inside jokes.  The music is original (although sometimes borrowed for humorous purposes), and there are short scenes sprinkled throughout.  For those of you who attended summer camp with me at French Woods, this is just like the Sing skit, but on a massively impressive scale.  In the month-long Uruguayan Carnaval, these groups perform their shows several times, and they are ultimately judged at the end, with one group being crowned the winner.

You may have noticed that the list of performers did not include any musicians other than the three drummers.  This is because, aside from the very occasional mixing in of a lone acoustic guitar, the singers perform with only percussive accompaniment.  This means that, for 45 minutes, the singers need to rely only on each other and themselves to maintain the proper pitch.  If this doesn't sound impressive, consider that they're also singing in at least two and often three-part harmony.  Moreover (for the musically-inclined among you), they regularly drop in really unexpected chords, Augmented 7's and madness like that.  I tried to catch some of it in the videos I shot, so hopefully they can give you some sense.  But, just in musical terms, the performance was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.  I definitely recommend scanning through some of the pictures and--especially--videos of the performance.  It doesn't quite do it justice, but I think you can get a feel for how remarkable it is that they can put this all together.

Perhaps equally impressive is that the groups manage to be funny, even to those of us who don't speak Spanish particularly well.  We saw two groups, both of them incredible and hilarious.  The second one in particular really managed to get its jokes across.  Their theme was "aquello," which roughly translates as "it," but is a general pronoun used to refer to something very far away.  It followed a group of people desperately searching everywhere (including in heaven) for aquello.  This seemed to be a significant part of the plan, as the trip to heaven set up a series of Michael Jackson jokes.  Lewis Black once said that Michael Jackson is a punchline, and you don't even really need a joke before it.  Any set-up will do (e.g. "two Jews walk into a bar." "Michael Jackson.").  This group made excellent use of that strategy.  The premise of that section revolved around Michael Jackson meeting someone in heaven--no one in my group was particularly sure who the other person was, but the logical guess would be a famous Uruguayan who died in the last year.  Although someone else thought it was old Michael Jackson meeting young Michael Jackson.  Hard to say.  At any rate, the jokes were still often clear and the performances (right down to the moonwalk) were excellent.  I also felt a nice little surge of glee when they started singing about Jackson to the tune of "New York, New York:"  "No es de New York.  No es de New York.  Es de Los Angeles...."  The other group focused its theme on "Secretos," including one character's particularly shameful admission that he wasn't planning to vote (voting is mandatory in Uruguay, punishable by a large fine).  So, clearly we managed to get a lot of the jokes that were made.  But even during the parts on which we were less clear, there was so much else to pull you in and invite you to listen.

In addition to the tremendous work that clearly goes into writing, rehearsing, and incorporating the often complicated choreography, the groups had stunning costumes, as you can see from the pictures above.  Both groups that we saw started the performance in one set of costumes, and then changed further along to set up for the big finale.  The finales seem to warrant very flashy costumes, as one group was sequined and rhinestoned to the point of nearly blinding the audience.  The second group elected to go with Sgt Pepper style satin military suits with epaulettes.  The word "finale" isn't really appropriate of course, because the show ends with the entire group continuing to sing their final song as they march off the stage and into the audience, where they walk around singing for another five minutes or so.

Another amazing thing about all of this is that these groups assemble their performances on a very limited budget.  Throughout the year they hold local fundraisers to get the costumes together and cover whatever other incidentals they might need--for example they show up for performances in buses.  Fortunately, the thing that really brings it together, I think, for the performers, is the crowd.  This was a Thursday night, albeit one during the summer, and the show ran from about 8pm to almost 2am.*  And the audience, in spite of all that, was completely into it from start to finish.  They got all the inside jokes we missed, and when each group finished, they went absolutely nuts.  The concession area--where the actors ended up once they stopped singing--was just mobbed with people wanting to talk to the performers, get autographs, take pictures, or just be part of the scene.

These performances take an entire year to put together, and countless hours of writing, creating, and rehearsing.  In the end, there is little reward but the pride in a job well done.  This entire Murga style is clearly a labor of love, brought about by a deep connection between a group of people and the culture that unites them.  Getting to witness it, even as an outsider, was a pretty incredible experience. 

With that, I will bid you goodnight, as it's after 1am here, and I have to get up early tomorrow to catch a bus to Colonia, an adorable historic down a couple hours west of here.  I'll have a post on Colonia in time.  Meanwhile, have a wonderful weekend.

Saludos,
Seth

*We arrived late because of the soccer game, and left at 12:30, which is why we only saw two groups perform.

Fotografía:
Murga Show

Center holds it. Holds it. Holds it.

Yesterday was one of those days one only really has while traveling in a foreign city.  I was originally expecting to write a post about the one incredible thing I had planned.  But, as happens sometimes, I stumbled into yet another equally-if-not-more incredible thing, so it looks like it will take two posts to properly address the awesomeness that was my Thursday night in Montevideo.

After morning classes, Liz, Matt, and I took in a nice shwarma lunch made by some very pleasant Armenian Uruguayans and then hopped in a cab to head over to Parque Central.  Unlike the Parque Central in Granada (or New York for that matter), this Parque Central is a soccer stadium. 

I have the good fortune to be in Uruguay for the start of the Copa Libertadores season.  Libertadores is the South American champions league, which has a structure that is likely familiar to those of you who know much about professional soccer.  For those who don't, the way that it works is this: Each country has its own league, and each league has several divisions (first division, second division, etc.).  At the end of a year, the top few teams in the lower divisions get to move up to a better division, while the worst teams move down.  So, if you imagine a universe in which the Nationals got moved down to the International League and the Durham Bulls moved up to the Majors, that gives you some sense.

The league champions from each of the countries--along with various runners-up--get to play in the Libertadores, which includes a total of 32 teams.  What's particularly interesting is that the leagues vary greatly in terms of quality.  Some leagues have excellent professional caliber teams (Brazil and Argentina, of course, among them).  In other countries the leagues might be won by a University team, as is the case in Chile, whose representative in Libertadores is U of Santiago.  Nacional, which won the Uruguayan Primera División last season, is one of three Uruguayan teams in this year's Libertadores.  Historically, they've also been one of the most successful teams, having won Libertadores 3 times.  They've also played more games in the league than any other team, due in large part to their 11 Primera División titles.

Uruguay has a very strong soccer tradition, including having both hosted and won the first world cup ever, in 1930.  In addition to Nacional's three Libertadores championships, Peñarol, the Yankees to Nacional's Red Sox--or maybe vice versa, depending on which league you're thinking about, has won Libertadores five times.  For this particular game, Nacional was hosting Deportivo Cuenca, from Ecuador.  It was Nacional's first game of the season and the fans were stoked.  So, needless to say, the experience was absolutely crazy.

First off, despite soccer's ho-hum reputation in the U.S., it is an extremely exciting and action-packed sport.  We managed to get seats in the second row--higher is often considered better, because the view from down in front is obstructed by a fence topped with barbed wire.  The players do not stop running the entire time, and the ball is literally constantly in motion.  Of course, the real action is on the short sides of the rectangle, behind the goals.  I have been to NBA playoff games, NFL playoff games, and World Series games.  I've watched a lot of sports on TV.  I have never seen fans as crazy as the Nacional fans behind the goals. 

The most obvious difference between sporting events I've attended and this one is the singing.  The fans, especially those behind the goal, spend literally the entire game--all 90 minutes of play, plus halftime, plus a decent amount of time before and after, singing team fight songs.  Half of them aren't even watching the game--they're just jumping around, playing drums, and going nuts.  Almost as impressive is the endless array of songs.  I lost count around 20.  I take some pride in knowing all the words to "Meet The Mets," including the verses ("Oh the butcher and the baker and the people on the street, where do they go? To meet the Mets!").  But these guys make me feel like I just learned a limerick only to see someone else reciting the Iliad in the original ancient Greek.  The singing doesn't die down for anything--even a goal by the opposition.  In the U.S., when the home team's pitcher gives up a home run, the crowd might go silent for a bit before regrouping.  Here, the singing just got louder, the fans either oblivious to the negative result, or just pushing right through it.

If that's the reaction to something bad, you can just imagine what happens when Nacional scores.  I managed to see this happen three times.  Some people light road flares (in the stands).  Others light fireworks (again, in the stands).  Some climb up to the very top of the 20-or-so foot fence behind the goal and scream with what I assume is excitement, but might well be an adverse reaction to rusty chain-link.

An additional interesting note is that there did not appear to be a scoreboard anywhere in the stadium.  I realize that soccer is an inherently low-scoring affair, but I'm impressed that they can genuinely rely on the crowd to keep track of the tally.  When the game ended with a 3-2 score in favor of Nacional, no one had to ask their neighbor what the result had been.  Granted, the scoring of one game matters a bit less in champions league soccer.  The concept is probably a bit strange to those of us who are accustomed to more common American sports, but the score from this match will be added to the score when Nacional visits Cuenca, and the combined tally will determine the winner.

The food (of course I have to mention it, even if just briefly) was also delicious.  There isn't really such a thing as an orderly line down here, so I had to elbow my way past at least one child and one elderly gentleman, but I got my chorizo on a bun, and it was completely worth it.  Add to that the churro I got from a vendor walking around, and I was in ballpark food heaven.  They don't sell beer at the stadium (a good idea, believe me), but one can easily swing by a nearby parilla for some Pilsen or Patricia before the game. 

So, we left the game at about 9, satisfied with the awesomeness of the experience (I mean that in the traditional sense of the word "awesome," as in "awe-inspiring").  We had a bit of trouble making up our minds as to what to do next, but ultimately settled on a trip over to the Teatro de Verano (Summer Theater) at Parque Rodó for a murga show, which might have been even cooler than the match.  More on that later, though, as right now it's 8:30, the sun will be down inside of an hour, and I need to find something to eat for dinner.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:
Montevideo Soccer Match

Uruguay, I'm a guay

Well, it's 10pm here in Montevideo, and the sky has been dark for about 45 minutes.  Time just exists in a different way here, and it's a thing I'm still trying to wrap my mind around.  In a place where you eat lunch at 2:30ish, dinner after 10, and where the sun sets around 9, I think the entire thing would make a lot more sense if everyone would just agree that it's two hours earlier than we're claiming.  Unfortunately, I seem to be alone in that idea.  Seriously, I'm getting up at the exact same time as I was in Costa Rica, but here it's called 4 hours later.

 
I didn't really know what to expect when I got here.  I'd only ever met one Uruguayan person, a Spanish teacher I had when I went to Peru for two weeks in March of 2005, and took classes there.  I took it as a good sign, however, when I woke up for my first morning and encountered Claudia, the very same Spanish teacher, who in the last five years has moved back to Uruguay and taken a job teaching Spanish here.  Seriously.  The only person I've ever known from this country happens to work at the very school I'm attending.  It's downright ridiculous.

It's a nice change of pace to be back in a real city, and all the more exciting that it's one in which it is summer and there are palm trees.  I have to say though, I have absolutely no idea how all of these people are not only alive, but apparently healthy.  The local specialty food, the chivito, is the kind of thing a cardiologist might dream about a few days after contracting malaria.  It consists of meat wrapped in ham, cheese, and bacon.  The entire thing is sauteed in either butter or olive oil, and served with an absolutely necessary side of greasy french fries.  More often than not, dinner is a steak.  Just a steak.  For what it's worth, I have seen vegetables.  I just haven't seen anyone eating them.

As with neighboring Argentina, almost everyone here drinks mate, almost all the time.  Mate (pronounced "MAH-tay") is a tea-like beverage made from a South American plant.  They fill a mate cup--usually a hollowed out gourd--with hot water and powdered mate leaves.  They then drink through a special straw called a bombilla, which resembles a hollow spoon with holes at the bottom.  The holes allow the water to seep through while filtering out the chunks of mate, thus letting the drinker imbibe only the tea.  It's a nifty little thing that I have tried before in the states, but have not yet gotten to test out here in actual mate-drinker land.  Oddly, they don't serve mate at restaurants or cafes.  People just bring their gourds with them wherever they go.  Today, however, I got a gourd, so tomorrow I'll be mate-ing it up, and I'll let you know how it goes.

I haven't gotten to explore the city a ton, but I've walked around a few areas and it's really nice.  There are parillas all over the place, which are restaurants where basically all the food is slow-grilled with indirect heat from a charcoal flame.  "Parilla" literally translates to "grill," so that makes sense.  One really cool thing here is the Mercado del Puerto, the port market, which is basically a shopping mall of parillas.  I had only been to the touristy outside, but today I took a pass through after lunch and it's amazing.  I was too full for anything other than a beer (the main local options are Patricia and Pilsen), but I expect to eat there more or less every day between now and when I leave.  In addition to fairly decent beer, the Uruguayans make some reasonably tasty red wine (I'm currently drinking a glass of Tannat-Merlot blend) and a concoction called medio y medio--literally "half and half," consisting of half white wine and half sparkling muscadine wine.  Medio y medio is possibly the sweetest thing I've ever consumed, but it's quite refreshing when it's 80 degrees out (apologies to my friends and family snowed in in the Northeast corridor).

Something I always enjoy noticing in other countries is what kind of businesses tend to combine in ways that we don't expect.  In the states, it's Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.  In Nicaragua it was hot dogs and coffee.  Here, it's pastries and liquor.  Yes, I've seen three different pastry shop / liquor stores here, with every indication being that there are others.  It's nice to be able to grab a dulce de leche filled croissant and a bottle of dulce de leche liquor at the same time.  In fairness, I haven't tried either yet, out of concern that all my teeth would spontaneously dissolve.  But it's good to know I have the option.  Of course, I've been spending those same calories on two ice cream cones a day, so maybe I'm not gaining a whole lot.  The ice cream here is incredible (although I've heard Argentine ice cream is even better).  Yesterday I had mascarpone ice cream.  Today I had breadfruit and something that was a swirl of cream, dulce de leche, and chocolate pieces.  Win.

I suppose I should also talk a little bit about the challenge of learning Spanish in the Rio de la Plata region (which is basically Uruguay and Argentina).  If you've ever heard an Argentine speak spanish, you know it's quite different from other types of Spanish.  It actually sounds beautiful, almost like a cross of Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, which makes sense given the immigrant backgrounds of the region.  The "ll" or "y" sounds, which in other places are something of a cross between an English "j" and "y," are instead pronounced the way we'd pronounce "sh" or even the "zh" sound, like the "j" in "Jacques."  So it's extremely difficult when you're accustomed to "Yo me llamo" being pronounced "jo may yah-mo" and instead hearing "sho may zhah-mo."  Moreover, Rioplatense Spanish uses the "Vos" form, and does so with much greater frequency than I found in Nicaragua.  "Vos" is used almost exclusively, with "tú" showing up in occasional formal circumstances, and "usted" largely reserved for VIPs.  The conjugations of most verbs are completely different when using "vos," so it's not an easy adjustment, and something I've never really learned before.  On the plus side, it's a fairly easy conjugation, as there are almost no irregular verbs (for those who speak the language, the verb "tener," for example, goes from "tu tienes" to "vos tenés."  The accent moves to the second syllable, but it is otherwise almost completely straightforward.  That said, one of the challenges I'm encountering is the incorporating and applying all the various types of Spanish I've been learning.  It's not really a big deal so long as one stays consistent, but it's tough to do that when you've gone from "tu" in Nicaragua to "usted" in Costa Rica to "vos" down here, so I frequently find myself botching pronouns.  In the long run I do think it will be better for my language skills, but for the moment it's a bit of a challenge.

Politics* here are also worth talking about.  I've been told by multiple people that Uruguayans are deeply passionate and interested in national politics.  The incumbent liberal party is very popular here, and their newest candidate, Pepe Mujica, was recently elected to the presidency (the incumbent, Tabaré Vázquez, can't run again for another five years, according to term limit laws).  Voting is mandatory.  If you do not vote, you are taxed.  In all honesty, this could make a very interesting subject should my graduate research take me more towards comparative politics.

Montevideo is sort of a hard city to pin down, although I've done my best here.  I've encountered a pretty broad range of opinions, pretty quickly.  Initially I met a number of people who mostly seemed to bash the city.  The primary complaint seemed to be that it has less to offer.  This strikes me a bit as choosing to go to Charleston, SC over New York, and complaining that Charleston isn't New York.  Certainly it's true, but that doesn't mean Charleston isn't a wonderful city in its own right.  It is, in fact, one of my favorites.  So I've withheld criticism of Montevideo, and I'm starting to think that was wise.  I'm really enjoying this city.  It doesn't have the bustle of a major city, or the active nightlife scene.  But it's a really pleasant and relaxing place with a lot of cool cultural traits and really beautiful areas.

Anyway, with that, I'm off to watch last night's Lost episode, and then head to bed.  Tomorrow, I'm hoping to make it to a soccer match.  The South American champions league is going on right now, and Nacional, one of the Uruguayan teams, is taking on Deportivo Cuenco, from Ecuador.  I'm planning to go with my new friends Matt, Liz, and Sam (a different Sam from the one in Central America), so hopefully we'll be able to get in and avoid any damage at the hands of riotous South American soccer crowds (note to my mother: don't worry, it's no more dangerous than a Mets game).

Saludos,
Seth

*For those who are wondering, Laura Chinchilla won the election in Costa Rica, and will be Costa Rica's first female president.

Fotografía:
Montevideo

Adiosta Rica

I'm writing this from about 30,000 feet above probably Ecuador or Colombia, en route to Montevideo, Uruguay.  The flight is about 7 hours, and, with Central America in my rearview, at least for a while, this seems like an opportune moment to try to synthesize my thoughts on my time there.

First let's start with Costa Rica.  I was talking last night with my brother Art, and he asked me to tell him about the place, and I found I had a tough time explaining it.  I think we can agree at this point that I rarely run out of things to say, so I found it a bit surprising, but the truth, I think, is that the real Costa Rica is less tangible to a tourist than the real Nicaragua was.  Costa Rica is a beautiful country, with excellent people and a strong cultural identity, to be sure.  However, it at times also feels like a country that has given its identity over to tourists and expats.  I was trying to articulate this idea to Art, and I think the best explanation I came up with for how Costa Rica differs from other countries is this: visiting another city or country necessarily puts you into the midst of that region's culture.  Its food, its music, its architecture, and its language are all things that you cannot avoid--not that you should want to--and that are just part of the experience of being a tourist.  In Costa Rica, it seems to me to be distinctly possible to visit the country, see a number of places and things, and never once encounter authentic Costa Rican culture.

Tico culture is certainly there--and it's great.  But you have to look for it much more than you do anywhere else I've ever been.  In places like Manuel Antonio, La Fortuna, and, from what I've heard, Jacó, it almost feels like the local culture has quietly moved out of the way to make room for tourist culture.  Even the popular tica refrain, "pura vida"--which literally translates to "pure life" but is used more like "no worries"--is emblazoned on every crappy mug, t-shirt, and stuffed animal you see, making it feel at times like a phrase that belongs more to the country's visitors than to its residents.  I suspect this issue will only continue to grow, as many locals get priced out of their homes in developing tourist hubs like Quepos.

This is, without question, one of the downsides of having a tourism-based economy, and of creating a place in which any traveler can feel at home.  The news is not all bad, of course.  Costa Rica is easily the most stable country in the region, with a good education system and a leading environmental research university.  Many of the people I met were college-educated, with a number of them having studies abroad in Europe.  The lack of a military has allowed Costa Rica to spend on public services far superior to those of their neighbors.  I spent two weeks there without once being panhandled--something I could never say about New York.  A recent ranking system devised by Yale and Columbia placed Costa Rica third in the world in environmentally sustainable policies.  As much as there are any number of tourist services that take advantage of the appeal of the phrase "eco-tourism," there are many more operations that really take the idea to heart, and try to preserve the natural beauty that draws so many of the people who make the economy run.  It would be nice to see outside developers catch up, however.

The Costa Rican political situation is also pretty complex.  The lack of a military has earned it respect in the region and the nickname "the Switzerland of Central America."  President Oscar Arias tried to negotiate a resolution to the Honduran coup last year, although he ultimately failed when the military refused to restore the old presidential government--sort of an important point in those negotiations, I imagine.  There are plenty of domestic issues, as well.  A few of the presidents between Arias's first Nobel-winning term and his current less successful one have been convicted on corruption charges, with another having fled to Europe to escape his own comeuppance.  Interestingly, he political system was a straight two-party system for years, until Ottón Solís mounted an credible third-party push four years ago, narrowly losing to Arias as the candidate of the left-leaning Citizen Action Party (PAC).  This year there are four candidates.  Laura Chinchilla represents Arias's incumbent party, the National Liberation Party (PLN), while the other establishment party, Unidad, tries to overcome all of its convicted former candidates.  Their candidate, Luis Fishman, is running under the amusing and telling slogan "el menos mal," or "the least bad."  The other two candidates, Solís and Otto Guevara, are the surging challengers.  Guevara, the candidate from the Libertarian Movement Party (ML) is a Harvard grad with the most right-leaning agenda in the group.  Of course, in this case, that just means that he recently abandoned his thoughts of privatizing the healthcare and education systems, and he wants to lower taxes.  What's also interesting is that, even with four candidates, virtually no one I talked to seemed particularly inspired by any of them, and a lot of them felt resigned to just voting for their usual party, because they didn't know what else to do.

At any rate, Costa Rica is clearly very different from Nicaragua.  Before I left, Nicaragua had been described to me as "Costa Rica without the excessive tourism."  There is some truth to this, in the sense that there are a lot of cultural similarities--they even argue over who invented gallo pinto--and a lot of the natural landscapes are similar.  But Costa Rica is, in truth, a developed country with no military and a functioning--if occasionally corrupt--democracy.  Nicaragua is, by contrast, still just beginning to climb out of the hole it found itself in by the end of the 1980s.  Relations with the U.S. and its revenue stream obviously have a lot to do with this, but a lot of it can also be traced to the fact that while Sandinistas and Contras were killing each other in the streets of Nicaragua, Costa Rica was spending money on social programs and infrastructure.  A socialist government like Managua's FSLN isn't going to be able to do a lot for the populace if it's spending most of its money on beefing up the military and consolidating power.  Costa Rica has also historically done a better job of utilizing its natural resources.  Even before tourism became king, pineapples, coffee, and palm oil took turns as staple exports.  Nicaragua has the ability to produce all of the same things, but has been stuck dealing with internal turmoil for too long to do anything about it.  So it is no surprise that the two countries are positioned as they are.

The truth is that Nicaragua and Costa Rica remind me a bit of estranged siblings.  They share a great deal, but there is a lingering animosity between them.  Nicas say ticos* are "muy fresa," and ticos blame Nicas for recent surges in crime in the northern part of the country.  Ticos also point out--rightfully although less self-consciously than might be warranted--that Nicaragua does a poor job of protecting its natural resources and landscapes.  Whatever, the case, the countries need to find a way to coexist, economically and physically.  Right now, some 20% of  Nicaraguans live abroad, most of them just across the border in their employment-rich southern neighbor.  Perhaps some combination of Costa Rican investment and Nicaraguan policy change (e.g. less military spending, improved education and environmental protection) would start them down that road.  For the time being, however, it seems a long way off.  As long as one brother remains the second poorest country in the hemisphere, and the other remains the favorite son of all the other countries in the neighborhood, we can expect to encounter these types of issues.

Anyway, with that I move on to South America, where I'll have to learn (again) how to conjugate verbs when I'm calling someone "vos."  I also happen to be arriving barely a week into the month-long festivities of Carnaval, about which I'm incredibly excited.  Uruguay is one of the most developed countries in South America, known largely for its beaches and small old-world style cities.  It is a common vacation destination for Argentinos and Brasileños alike.  I'll have to make friends again pretty much from scratch, so I'm going to leave my misanthropic tendencies at the door.  For the time being, however, I have about 4 hours to kill on this plane, so I'm going to read and maybe take a nap.  If past history is any guide, it may take me a few days on the ground before I get to check back in, so enjoy the Super Bowl, and I'll talk to you all soon.

Saludos,
Seth

*If you're wondering about the capitalization, "Nica" comes from the country name, whereas "tico" comes from the diminutive form used in Costa Rica's countryside, where, for example, a baby might be referred to as "el chiquitico."

Scholastic fantastic

I'm in Panama City, Panama for the night and thoroughly exhausted from a long day of mangrove-seeing, flying, and blogging, so I'm going to head to bed.  My flight tomorrow is 7.5 hours long, so with any luck I'll be able to use it to be semi-productive.

This does seem as good a time as any to plug the two schools where I've so far taken Spanish classes.  In Granada, Nicaragua Mia has an excellent and capable staff, and offers great cultural activities as well.  They set me up with a wonderful homestay, and were very helpful in my efforts to navigate Nica culture.

In Quepos / Manuel Antonio, Academia D'Amore has a small but highly qualified staff, connections to lots of local tours, and also set me up with an incredible host family.  They are very dedicated to their students' learning the language and the culture of Costa Rica--two things American tourists in the area often undervalue.

The philosophy is different between the two schools.  Nicaragua Mia emphasizes private lessons whereas D'Amore prefers small groups, so that students can learn to notice each other's errors and improve that way as well.  I don't know where I fall in this argument, as I think there is a lot of benefit to both approaches.  So, I'll just simply say that if you ever decide to go to one of these two places, I highly recommend the two schools above.

And with that, it's bedtime.  I'll leave you with the youtubed version of my video of the sloth outside my school.

Saludos,
Seth

I don't practice Santamaría

Lest anyone doubt Costa Rica's emergence as a sort of unofficial 51st state, I am currently sitting in Juan Santamaría International Airport in San Jose opposite a Church's Chicken and a Schlotzsky's Deli. Moreover, I partook of a Cinnabon about an hour ago (I hadn't had one years, and vacation calories don't count anyway).

Anyway, while I await my flight to Panama, where I'll be staying for less than 24 hours, I figured I'd take the opportunity to let you know that my Quepos album is now posted in its entirety, and that I have pictures up from last night's trip to the Wildlife Refuge run by hotel Sí, Como No, and this morning's boat trip around a mangrove swamp. Both were really amazing in completely different ways.

If you're wondering who Juan Santamaría is, by the way, he is a Costa Rican national hero, who was killed setting fire to the quarters of invading troops. Who was invading? William Walker, one time dictator of Nicaragua and the original "filibuster." With all the idiocy that's been going on in the senate in the last year, it's interesting to know that "filibuster" originally meant invading a foreign country as a private citizen. Walker hired an army (with covert US support) and invaded and controlled Nicaragua for years. As he was losing an uprising, he retreated, burning Granada to the ground, and placing a plaque that said "Here was Granada." Fortunately, the Nicas are more resilient than he realized, and built the city back to its original splendor. Walker then tried to invade Costa Rica, where Santamaría and others caught his troops off-guard by bringing the battle to them. After a decisive defeat here, Walker turned his attention to Honduras, where the populace decided he was sufficiently dickish to warrant his death by hanging.

They're announcing my flight now, so I'm going to get ready to board. I'll try to check in later with some final thoughts on Costa Rica, and all her pura vida wonder.

Saludos,

Seth

The Guy-O Más Gallo

There's a chain of electronics stores in Central America called El Gallo Más Gallo. Literally translated, this means "the rooster most rooster." More accurately, it's something like "the most macho rooster," because the word for rooster ("gallo") is also used to mean "tough."

One of my concerns before heading down here was the realization that in hot climates like the ones I have been and will continue to be visiting, scorpions are known to pop up from time to time. Most just give a really painful sting--though I've also heard of it giving people a metallic taste in their mouths for a few days, or giving them partial numbness. Occasionally, if not frequently, the stings can be fatal, especially if you turn out to be allergic to them.

I have no idea if I'm allergic to scorpion stings, but I was endowed by my creator(s) with a fairly acute sense of my own mortality. It's not so much that I'm afraid of death as that I would really greatly prefer to continue living. I'm only a month into this adventure, and there's a whole lot more that I want to see.

So, heading into this trip, I anticipated that I would likely experience my first face-to-exoskeleton encounter with a scorpion in the wild. And I truly had no idea whether I would stay calm and deal with it, or scream like Ned Flanders and run away. Score one for my animal instincts.

Last night, while packing up to leave Quepos (and subsequently, Costa Rica), I was pulling my shirts out of the dresser. To my surprise, I picked up my black cotton tee to reveal the friendly fellow pictured above, probably about three inches head-to-stinger. I should add that, although I had prepared myself for the probability that this trip would include a scorpion, I had not encountered one yet, and had in fact been told by my host family that they had never had one in the house in the many years they'd lived there. So this wasn't one of those "I should be careful in case there are scorpions" moments (of which I've had many). This was a "holy shit, that's a scorpion!" moment. My only immediate reaction was to say "whoah!" a little loudly--though fortunately not loud enough to wake Doña Haydee or Don Victor.

So, I looked at the little bastard, and thought for a moment. And I realized, well, obviously I need to kill it. But first, I totally have to take a picture. So, the last thing little Scorpius saw was a flash bulb immediately followed by a hiking shoe--a shoe guided by my swift right hand of justice. He squirmed after the first attempt (again, I didn't want to wake my hosts), so I gave him another shot.

I have to say, I'm not accustomed to killing a type of insect big enough to completely retain its shape after it meets its demise, so I stared at it good and long to see if it would move again. When it did not, I scooped it onto the sole of my shoe and flushed it down the toilet.

As you would expect, I spent the rest of my night shaking out every piece of clothing and luggage I had. I did not encounter any of his friends, although I did find several pieces of exoskeleton that he had shed in one of my luggage cubes (including an earlier version of his stinger).

We're not really sure where he came from. The best guess is that he snuck into my backpack somewhere and found his way into my luggage. He was there long enough to molt and grow a new exoskeleton, so it's hard to say when it would have happened. At any rate, I have by no means won the war. But today I hold my head high having won the first battle. Gallo Más Gallo, meet Guy-O Más Gallo.

Saludos,

Seth

Slothful

I ducked into a little smoothie place to escape the heat, enjoy a fan, and take advantage of the free wi-fi. I thought I'd use this opportunity to check in with some notes and thoughts. I'm off to Panama City for one night on Saturday, and then I have a seven and a half hour flight down to Montevideo, Uruguay on Sunday. The trip from here to there is the rough equivalent of crossing the U.S., distance-wise, so it's not a short one. Sadly, this means I'll be missing the Super Bowl. I will, however, be discovering exactly what South American airline food is like, so that's a plus.

Today's been a bit of a lazy day for me, which is what the title's all about. The Spanish word for sloth, "perezoso," is also the word for lazy. I realize that this is true in English as well, but for us "sloth" is a less common term. In Spanish, "perezoso" is the main word you use for lazy.

• Thought one is that I love fresh fish, and I will miss the abundance of that here. Mahi mahi being one of the cheaper items on the menu is a really amazing thing. Ceviche is everywhere, as is grilled fish, and it's just been heavenly. It allows me to convince myself that even with all the butter, it's still pretty healthy. It's almost certainly not, but shh, don't tell anyone.

• I got to try octopus ceviche at long last. It was really pretty tasty. Per my father's request, I posted pictures of it.

• Sloths are absolutely my new favorite animal. We had one show up at school today, a young one, and it was just preposterously and unreasonably munchkintastic. Seriously, I have no idea how evolution has permitted these animals to persist, because they move like molasses, but I'm so very glad they're still here. Interestingly, the mothers raise their young in a certain neighborhood, and then move away when the child reaches adulthood, leaving the child to continue living in an area with which they're familiar. I imagine that's the longest goodbye in the world, because it must just take a day for the mother sloth to get two trees over. Seriously, check out the Quepos album for pictures and videos.

• On the subject of adorable creatures, Junmei, the three year-old great granddaughter of my host parents refused to let me leave the house the other day until I used her scissors to cut her an elephant out of paper.

• I haven't mentioned this yet, but Costa Rica's presidential election is this Sunday. I've been very interested, watching a debate and discussing it with many of the ticos I know. However, I'm still having a hard time discerning the actual differences among the candidates. I'm sure there are some, but being so unfamiliar with the issues, it's really hard to tell. Based on things that have nothing at all to do with actual politics, I'm partial to Laura Chinchilla. In addition to having a last name that is the same as a pet I had in middle and high school, she has an extremely catchy theme song. She is also one of two sitting Vice Presidents under current president and Nobel laureate Oscar Arias. Other candidates are Ottón Solís, Luis Fishman (not the most Costa Rican name ever), and Otto Guevara. Laura started off as the bigtime frontrunner, but has lost a lot of ground to Guevara. She still leads the polls however, and seems poised to win on Sunday. I know that she has the vote of my host mother Doña Haydee.

• God bless the internet. The only TV I care about keeping up with is Lost, and I managed to watch the newest episode only a day after it aired. I also learned today that I'll be back home for the last episode, which makes me really happy, because I can watch it day of with other lunatics like me.

I think that's all for the moment. I'm gonna grab some dinner and figure out how to spend my last day here tomorrow.

Saludos,

Seth

Blogue Manuel Antonio

I've posted some pictures from yesterday's guided walk through the national park, available here. The guide showed me how to put my camera lens up to his telescope, so we got some pretty cool up-close pictures of animals, such as that above. We saw two sloths (one two-toed, one three-toed), several capuchin monkeys and howler monkeys, two nutria, some iguanas, and several spiders and birds.

There are also some new pictures from Quepos, including my sighting of several amazing scarlet macaws (above), as well as pics of the host fam, available here. This album should also include two sloth videos that apparently didn't upload properly before.

At some point I'll write some more about my experiences and thoughts on Costa Rica, in particular the comparison with their neighbors (and rivals) up in Nicaragua. But for the moment, I'm off to try some octopus ceviche.

UPDATE:

Apparently a sign saying "Special: Octopus Ceviche" actually means "we had octopus ceviche the last few days, but don't have any left, but haven't changed our sign." Bummer. I'm going to try again tomorrow. This is important, dammit.

Saludos,

Seth

Alemanas and Me

I wanted to devote a post to something I really wasn't expecting to give a lot of thought to before I left, but which has been popping up a bit lately. It is, I think, a lot more personal than most of my other posts so far, and it's not really about traveling, but I think a large part of this experience isn't just what I learn about the places I visit, but also what I learn about myself and the world in general. So, in that regard, I think something about self-discovery, which this is, is relevant. Anyway, I wanted to talk a little bit about my travel experience thus far as a Jewish person, and, specifically, as the grandson of holocaust survivors.

I don't feel the need to get into a great deal of detail here regarding my own relationship to Judiasm, as it's not actually that relevant, and it's not something that I've been reflecting on much during this trip. I think it suffices to say that I feel a deep cultural and familial tie to Jewish history, and I love the traditions. I generally believe that questions of theology are, as Barack Obama once put it, above my pay grade. But I adore the idea of Yom Kippur being a time to reflect on our own imperfections and possibilities for self-improvement, and nothing beats getting together with family and friends for a wonderful Passover seder, and a celebration of the great fortune of being free people. So in that regard, even though I do not follow most of the specific practices of Judaism (I really like bacon), it still has a lot to do with how I percieve myself. And, as noted, my maternal grandparents survived the holocaust, and lost nearly their entire families, which is the type of thing that tends to linger a bit in one's mind. So this is something I tend to think about a little when people here asks me why I have a Spanish last name.

Anyway, as I mentioned at the top, this is something I wasn't much expecting to confront on this trip, at least not in any kind of depth. But it has come up a couple of times, and came to a head a little bit last week, so it's been on my mind. Again, I don't much feel the need to get into the details because that's not the focal point for me, but I've had a couple of strange conversations. I'd just as soon skip specifics, but I spoke with two different people, one Nicaraguan and one American (a classmate), who made some fairly sweeping and unfounded generalizations about Jewish people. In particular, my classmate from the states seemed to believe that all Jewish people were spiteful, simply because his ex-wife's Jewish mother was. He qualified his statement by adding, "maybe it's just the poor ones." My response was "maybe she was just one person." Needless to say I was happy when it was decided that my Spanish skills were sufficiently superior to his that we should be in different classes.

So this had all been present in my mind, if not at the very front of it, for a little while. On top of all that, I spent a lot of time last week with three new friends, Anna and Olive, from Germany, and Valerie, from Switzerland. I mentioned to Sam, only half-jokingly, that I wondered what my grandparents would have thought about my having dinner in a group where half the conversation was in German. Of course, throughout my life I've had a variety of German friends, and my babysitter growing up was German. But I'll confess to the fact that the deeper history tends to linger in the back of my mind. It's something I can get past of course, but generally when I meet a new person and find out that they're German, I have to fight the instinct to cringe a little. It is extremely difficult for me to separate thoughts of Germany from the thought of my grandparents, and the unspeakable tragedies they endured.

So, flash forward to last Thursday night, when a few of us went to this beautiful apartment on the hill to hang out, have a few beers, and play guitar with David, the director of my Spanish school, and some of his friends. It's worth noting up front that David is a solid dude, and the woman on whom this story centers is not a friend of his. She was someone several chain links out from the hosts. Anyway, the night was a lot of fun--good people, great music, and general fun times. At a certain point in the evening, however, a thoroughly besotted woman in her 40's came over and started talking to me. She was asking about my guitar and making fairly normal conversation for a while. She then asked if I was Jewish, and when I said yes, she said "I knew it. I could tell." This in and of itself was something I didn't give much thought at the time. Blueish-green eyes aside, my face isn't exactly Aryan in appearance. As the woman continued talking, I began to find her aggressive drunk-talk unpleasant, and I decided to walk over to where my friends Ben, Anna, and Thomas were playing Bocce. Feeling snubbed, she became downright rude, and started saying a number of things that ranged from slightly insensitive to downright offensive, mostly about my being Jewish. She seemed to have been particularly bitter about her divorce from a Jewish man. How that had anything to do with me, of course, is beyond comprehension. Initially I engaged her, simply because the things she was saying were so absurd I was certain that she was joking. However, as she persisted, I grew weary of her, and I tried to withdraw from the situation.

Unfortunately, once someone like that gets going, they tend not to let up, so she grew louder, and I grew increasingly peeved. It was at this point that Anna had clearly had enough, and decided it was time to switch from passive-aggression to straight aggression. Anna started challenging the woman directly, pointing out the idiocy of everything she was saying, adding, "he's a good guy, so what does it matter if he's Jewish or Hindu or whatever? Why should someone's religion or culture matter to you at all?" For the next 20 minutes or so, I watched Anna pick apart (in her non-native language, no less) every single stupid thing this woman was saying. At this point, it was getting late, so my group decided it was time to head out anyway. But watching Anna take my side and go after this woman's misconceptions and prejudices made me consider my own.

As I thought about it, I realized that one can reasonably draw a parallel between the relationship of young Germans to the holocaust and that of young Americans to slavery and, more recently, Jim Crow. I look at the civil rights attrocities that went on in my country, and feel so utterly disconnected from that, and feel so firmly the need to distance myself from that type of thinking and behavior, and confront it when I see it. And I think the same is true of many young Germans with respect to the Holocaust. I asked Anna her take on this, and she agreed, noting that her education in Germany had involved a great deal of learning about various world religions, and strongly promoted the ideas of tolerance and equality. And for the most part, she told me this is something young Germans feel pretty fervently about. This is not to say, of course, either that racism is dead in the U.S. or that anti-Semetism is dead in Germany. But it certainly gives one a good deal of hope for the future. And I have to say, it was a pretty powerful moment for me when I realized that in my interactions with these lovely German girls, I was the one who was clinging (even if only slightly) to old prejudices.

So, on this particular front, I've come away with two important lessons. The first is, outside the bubble of the northeast, being Jewish can definitely mean being noticed as different, and idiots are everywhere. The second, much more important thing, is that although history is a profoundly powerful force--especially family history--it is undoubtedly worth making the effort to overcome it. Moreover, when you have to make multiple generational leaps just to mentally link a grudge to someone, it is just not right to bear that particular grudge with them. I'm doubtful that any kind of lasting peace is likely in my lifetime, but I am certain that blaming people for the actions of their ancestors is as fruitless as it is detrimental. So all that remains is the question I posed to Sam, regarding what my grandparents would think. Frankly, given the immense amount of love they held in their hearts, I feel pretty confident that they would have been proud of my ability to learn this lesson for myself, and happy to see me come out of the experience with some great new friends.