The Dancing Gringo

When I think of Carnival I think of a big, expensive production in a big city, like Rio De Janeiro or New Orleans.  I think of the blood, sweat, and tears that each entertainer puts into the performance.   I think of the hours of practice and choreography.  I think of beautiful Brazilian women wearing almost no clothes, moving their bodies in mysterious ways.   I’m actually thinking about that right now……still thinking about that…still thi…  *SMACK* - that sound you heard was Pauline’s open fist hitting the back of my head.

Well, the Carnival we saw was nothing like that.  Each neighborhood in Buenos Aires has a local show, no one huge show for the entire city.  It’s basically a family-oriented cookout with lots of great dancing and hypnotic music….seriously hypnotic music.  Even Pauline was dancing.  It was the second time I have seen Pauline dance (and the first time since the millennium), so by my calculations, Pauline gets “jiggy with it” approximately once a century.

 

A cool tradition they have at Carnival is that they sell canisters of this aerosol spray foam. It’s like silly string except it’s a very wet, soapy foam. Every little kid (approx 150 ) has multiple cans.  Teens and adults have cans as well, but this demographic only uses the wet foam as a means of self defense against 8 year old girls who are dressed up as princesses.  These princesses will spray anyone with reckless abandon, even people who are just visitors in their country and who don’t want to get wet right now.  Prominently displayed on the wet foam can is a warning, which says (in Spanish) don’t spray in people’s ojos (eyes),  boca (mouth), or rostro (????).   I mention this because those are the only places that little kids will spray people.  Every minute, a little kid will start to cry, his/her mom will run over and wipe the foam out of their eyes, then the kid will locate his can and spray a random person in the eyes, mouth, and rostro.

One of many princesses running around

YAY! for spray foam!

So the title of this post is the Dancing Gringo.  So what’s that all about?   Well, against my will and my better judgment, I was coaxed into joining the parade by one of the dancers. In college I was known as “The Dancing Machine”, but that was many fortnights ago, and I was worried I’d be a little rusty and possibly hurt my hip.  Well I wasn’t rusty.  I still got it!   I was doing flips and stuff, but Pauline didn’t record that, she only recorded me at the end here doing a dance that can best be described as an impression of an inebriated Brontosaurus.

36 Hours in Uruguay

Plaza di Armas - Colonia del Sacramento

Our alarm goes off at 5:30 AM and Mike and I grudgingly roll out of bed…whose idea was it to take a ferry to Uruguay at 7:45 the day after Fat Tuesday.  At that moment, I was definitely blaming Mike, but to be fair, it was a great idea.  The day before he had realized that our travel plans wouldn’t get us to Uruguay (and our only opportunity to hit up a beach) until April which is like October in the US…hardly the best time for hanging out at the beach.  After checking the weather around noon on Tuesday and realizing the next 2 days were going perfect beach weather, we booked ferry tickets to Colonia del Sacramento.

After a one hour ferry ride, we reached Colonia.  Colonia is a charming, sleepy town.  It was originally a Portuguese, then Spanish settlement, and is the oldest town in Uruguay.  It sits across the Rio de la Plata (where the Uruguay River and the Paraná River flow into the Atlantic) from Buenos Aires so it is a popular destination to escape to craziness of Buenos Aires. 

Here are a few of the highlights of our trip:

Dog Beach - where I learned that Mike is very attractive to dogs 

We couldn’t check into our hostel until 1 pm so we headed down to a tiny beach about 2 blocks away to hang out for a few hours.  There were several dogs walking around the beach when we arrived and they took an immediate liking to Mike.  One managed, among other things, to lay on Mike’s towel, drip water on him, and even lick his head (I think the pictures below say it all).  When we finally left to go eat, the dogs followed us right onto the main street of town.  We kept trying to lose our uninvited entourage, but they were not to be dissuaded.  We tried hiding in a bank for a few minutes, but they just curled up on the pavement until we returned.  Finally we lost them through some advanced maneuvering.  Later while sitting in a restaurant, the one most in love with Mike walked by and paused right outside the open restaurant window (they had been looking for us).  Luckily Mike had just run to the restroom so I think it fooled him.  Otherwise, I’m sure he would have walked right into the open restaurant door!

Mike's mistake: Petting a wet dog while he drips on your towel

The consequences of Mike's mistake (notice the 3 dogs sleeping around Mike in picture on right)

Barrío Historico

This is the historic part of Colonia that makes you feel like you’ve stepped back in time.  Small, winding, cobblestone streets are lined with beautiful little Portuguese styled homes.  Some of the buildings, as well as the tiled street signs, reminded of us of our trip to Macau (another Portuguese colony).  We walked around for a while, took way too many pictures, then stopped for some ice cream.  Finally about 10:30, we went out for some dinner.  We dined outdoors by candlelight at a place called El Drugstore (I have no idea where they came up with this name).  We have some really good Uruguayan wine (who knew they had good wine?) to wrap up a wonderful day. 

Playa Fernando

The best beach near Colonia is about 2km outside of the city so we rented some bikes and headed out there.  About 15 minutes into our ride, on a small side street, Mike’s chain came off his bike.  A woman rushed out of her house with some tools and proceeded to take over trying to fix it for us.  The people were so kind and friendly!  We finally made it to the beach, which was amazing.  There were less than 20 people on the entire beach (which was huge) and the water was pretty warm.  One thing we discovered pretty quickly…this wasn’t actually the ocean!  The water wasn’t salty at all.  We aren’t totally sure why not as we are definitely in water that hits the ocean.  Our hypothesis (and all you scientists reading our blog feel free to leave us a comment with the correct answer) is that the water coming out of the rivers is pushing out into the ocean and the waters haven’t blended at that point, but honestly we have no idea.  Anyway, it was the highlight of our trip to Uruguay and definitely worth the scramble to get out here before the weather turned cold.

Biking to the beach through the Uruguayan countryside

At Playa Fernando...we saw people drinking mate on the beach (see center photo)

Evita

Mike and I are sitting in a small café having our morning coffee.  Mike is catching up on emails and I’m starting our next blog post.  It is so much easier to motivate myself to write while out of the apartment.  The café is playing 90’s American music and I’ve been having a series of high school flashbacks (Sublime is on right now), which is a perfect opener for my post.  Close your eyes and think back to the top hits of 1997 – do you hear the classic lyrics of MMMBop or Wannabe? What about another 1997 Billboard Top 100…Don’t Cry for Me Argentina?   

The woman behind that song is the inspiration for this blog and no, I don’t mean Madonna.

Eva Peron (aka Evita) is a legendary figure in Argentina.  She was the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952.  She was extremely popular with the working class and was a strong champion of women's rights (including the right to vote).   Last week we visited a great museum in Buenos Aires devoted to her life. The Evita Museum does a great job telling her story (some parts were in English luckily!) and displays a interesting assortment of her belongings and memorabilia.  

Evita Musuem

While sightseeing around Buenos Aires, Mike and I visited two sites that are famous in part because of Evita:

Casa Rosada

This famous pink building serves as the Presidential Offices in Buenos Aires and is supposedly the most photographed building in Argentina.  Legend has it that the strange pink color is the result of using cows’ blood as paint.  Evita famously waved to the adoring masses from the balcony on the left side of the building.  More recently Madonna was granted access to do this for the filming of Evita.  This upset many of the locals who thought it was a dishonor to the real Evita. 

Recoleta Cemetery

Recoleta Cemetery has some of the most desired, and difficult to purchase, real estate in Buenos Aires.  It houses the grave of Evita, along with many other significant Argentine historical figures.  The cemetery is absolutely beautiful and doesn’t look anything like a typical American cemetery.  The cemetery is packed full of mausoleums decorated with beautiful sculptures.  Many of which contain chapels.   There are a variety of architectural styles so while a little creepy, it was very interesting to walk around and peek into the different chambers.  The entire space is laid out in sections like city blocks and the mausoleums are nestled very close together.  According to our guide, each site is owned by a family and can typically house up to 18 people.

   

On left, walkway after walkway were non-stop mausoleums.  On right, the city surrounds the cemetery so you can see buildings in the background.

 

On left, cats in the cemetery playing from the stoops of the mausoleums.  On right, steps down into a crypt showing the many coffins housed within one family's plot.

Sometimes if a family has used up all the spots, they will cremate the remains of one of the older relatives to make room for a more recently deceased loved one.   Doesn’t quite seem fair, does it?  The cemetery is completely full so if you want to be buried there, you better be willing to shell out some big bucks to buy a site from an existing family (they would then have to move all their deceased to a different cemetery).

On left, grave site of woman buried alive at Recoleta (her coffin supposedly has scratch marks on the lid).  On right, marker at Evita's final resting place