Montevideo: Just Another Bullshit Town

After 2 hours on the ferry over Rio de la Plata and another 2.5 on a bus through the Uruguayan countryside, we arrived in Montevideo in the rain.  The Buenos Aires sister city I expected, with comparable if miniaturized suburban-poverty sprawl, throbbing downtown, multitude of neighborhoods with welcoming corner bars, did not exist.  Instead, the city looked more like what it is: a regular medium-sized city in a regular South American country.  The skyline propped up one recognizable skyscraper.  In the main square of downtown, there stood a Radisson that took its saddest traits from a utilitarian designer from the 1960s.  The Lonely Planet guide we'd brought along boasted of a hip strip of bars only 2 blocks from our hotel--the "strip" of four bars and a closed restaurant, however, didn't quite match the 2007 description from L.P.  We left early the next day, after a walk along the rambla by the water and a lunch of chivitos, without feeling like we'd missed anything.

Before it seems as though Montevideo is a total waste of time, it isn't.  Not that I recommend taking the hours-long bus trip unless you're backpacking up to Brazil---I don't.  But at the end of that little strip of bars, there's an Irish pub called "The Shannon."  On the menu in that pub are dozens of domestic crap beers, imported Irish and German brews, and some local artisan drafts.  One of these locals is the "Shannon Dunkel" brewed by Cerveza Davok.  After Argentina, I didn't have much faith in local microbrews.  While the Argentine micros are easy to drink, they're always 5 taste-decibels lower than they should be.  But the Shannon Dunkel was solid.  A thick, stoutish dark ale, creamy head at the top of the 500-mL pint.  It's no Vanilla Bourbon Stout, but it satisfied my ache for a decent draft, and afterward I didn't feel as though I'd just drunk two bowls of oatmeal.

From Montevideo we backtracked to Colonia del Sacramento, the ferry stop from Buenos Aires and a Disneyland version of old colonial Uruguay.  In Old Town, the buildings are kept in their antique, villagey state, standing squat along the cobblestones.  Just beyond them is the beachy coast of the Rio de la Plata, all of it overlooked by the white tower of the Bastion de San Miguel.  Even though it's a tourist trap, it's beautiful.  We drank a bottle of white wine at a restaurant overlooking the water, then bought another bottle to drink on the beach as the sun went down.  On Thursday, the beaches were nearly empty.  The water was warm and shallow, soft sand stretching 100 meters into the river.  If you're in Buenos Aires, it's worth the ferry ride.  Colonia is quiet.  It's small enough to walk leisurely across in 15 minutes.  It's everything BsAs isn't.  I couldn't stay there---I  missed my work, my neighborhood, the cheap wine, Luna.  But it offered time to catch my breath & relieved, for now, the itch to travel.

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Post-script:  The blog has been neglected because my writing energy has been spent on fiction projects.  I did meet the long-lost relatives.  Natalio invited me to his house for New Year's Eve, where I ate from platters of traditional Argentine cuisine and drank champagne with scoops of lemon sorbet, and where I met his son's family, including two teenage cousins who speak a little English.  We're facebook friends.  I have also seen the colorful tourist maze of Caminito in La Boca, once the neighborhood of artist Benito Quinquela Martín.  Now it's only shops and street fairs and a little museum, surrounded on three sides by the concrete houses of the real residents of Boca's ghetto.  The roommates in CasaBB have revolved: some Brazilians came and went, with an Australian and Candian taking their place.  Ian moved on to Cordoba, en route back to Peru, where he'll catch a plane to New Zealand.  Ben, an American from California (San Luis Obispo, just like our writing-group friend Lara), moved into Mateo's room.  And Paola is back.  It's a full house. 

Tickets back to the States have been purchased.  We leave March 3.