June 27,2019 Hasta La Vista Montevideo, Buenos Tardes Buenos Aires

Our ferry across to Buenos Aires--Francisco

I will have to say, I was a little sad this morning to leave the lovely city of Montevideo behind and all the wonderful people. I felt like I barely got to know it when it was time to go. BUT...

We toyed with the idea of flying back to Montevideo, but there were two other choices, both cheaper. One was the bus and that is a longer but very economical option if you don't have time constraints at all. An option which is amazingly no more time consuming that flying and much cheaper is BUQUEBUS. In the summer, you probably need to arrive at the port of Montevideo to catch this passenger and car ferry a couple of hours in advance, but in the winter, like now, it's fine to show up about an hour in advance to go through customs for BOTH Uruguay and Argentina at the same juncture and load your luggage. We went first class, but other than sitting in the front of the boat, a bit less crowd,  and a welcome glass of champagne, I didn't see the advantage and tourist class is considerably cheaper. We did have a nice view of the departure, passing huge container ships and eventually the Buenos Aires skyline.. 

Hola, Buenos Aires!

It is a short ride by taxi to downtown where we settled into the Hotel Panamericano where it costs $5 to get a pair of undies laundered (I kid you not.) This is the first hotel for our eclipse trip and we came a day early. The hotel is exceptionally nice and is well located across from Teatro Colon, the most famous theater in South America. 

Welcome home to Hotel Pan Americano. but do your laundry before you arrive!

After a brief respite, we decided to go to the home and gallery of the late Argentinian abstract artist, Xul Solar. We named our cat after him, even before we knew much about the artist himself. But for those unfamiliar, my husband says he reminds him of a visual artist's parallel to Sun Ra, the jazz artist. He was born inBuenos Aires Province, in the bosom of a cosmopolitan family. His father, Elmo Schulz Riga, of Baltic German origin,  was born in the Latvian city of Riga, at that time part of Imperial Russia. His mother, originally from Italy, was named Agustina Solari. He was educated in Buenos Aires, first as a musician, then as an architect (although he never completed his architectural studies). After working as a schoolteacher and holding a series of minor jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, on April 5, 1912, he set out on the ship "England Carrier", supposedly to work his passage to Hong Kong, but he disembarked in London and made his way to Turin. He returned to London to meet up with his mother and aunt, with whom he traveled to Paris, Turin (again), Genoa, and his mother's native Zoagli. Over the following few years, despite the onset of World War I, he would move among these cities, as well as Tours, Marseille, and Florence; towards the end of the war he served at the Argentine consulate in Milan.In 1916, Schulz Solari first signed his work "Xul Solar,” ostensibly for the purposes to simplify the phonetics of his name, but an examination of the adopted name reveals that the first name is the reverse of "lux,” which means "light" in Latin. Combined with "solar", the name reads as "the light of the sun", and demonstrates the artist's affinity for the universal source of light and energy.^[1] His father's name "Schulz" and "Xul" are pronounced the same in Spanish.(Not really, but close.) Solar's paintings are mainly sculptures, often using striking contrasts and bright colours, typically in relatively small formats. His visual style seems equidistant between Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee on the one hand and Marc Chagall on the other. He also worked in some extremely unorthodox artistic media, such as modifying pianos, including a version with three rows of keys.

Xul Solar was an interesting guy with a great artistic talent, definitely ahead of his time, and his work is interesting a beautiful. He had an interest in all mysterious things such as astrology, tarot, religions, etc. We thoroughly enjoyed the museum and think if anyone is in Buenos Aires--GO THERE!

Did Xul Solar go to Knoxville and paint the 1982 World's Fair Golden Golf Ball?

Since Paul has a cat named Xul Solar, I had to photo the pirate observing cat-like critters of Xul Solar's work.

After a sojourn in this very fine museum (with a crazy good small gift shop!), we were off to dinner at Chila.(rated in the top 50 Latin American restaurants.) The serve a tasting menu and it is in fact insane. It is haute cuisine gone wild. We had wine pairiings. The service was great as well.

Mushrooms cooked tableside on hot stones in a mushroom broth

Dessert of sorbets

Chocolate cake in an edible dulce de leche box.

My mate drinks mate'

For a transit day, it doesn't get much better. Much enjoyed by all.

"I am a world champion of a game that nobody yet knows called panchess (Panajedrez). I am master of a script that nobody yet reads. I am creator of a technique, of a musical grafía that allows the piano to be studied in a third of the usual time that it takes today. I am director of a theatre that as yet has not begun working. I am creator of a universal language called panlingua based on numbers and astrology that will help people know each other better. I am creator of twelve painting techniques, some of them surrealist, and others that transpose a sensory, emotional world on to canvas, and that will produce in those that listen a Chopin suite, a Wagnerian prelude, or a stanza sung by Beniamino Gigli. I am the creator, and this is what most interests me at the moment, apart from the exhibition of painting that I am preparing, of a language that is desperately needed by Latin America.”

Xul Solar 

Paul's Ponderings:    This was quite a varied day.....we had a nice ride on the ferry to start, sadly saying goodbye for now to Montevideo.    After arrival and a bit of shuffling around we headed to Xul Solar, the great artist from Argentina we found at a museum in San Diego a year or two ago and whom we now have a cat named after.   From the view of jazz, he's someone I would compare a bit to Sun Ra, although he was not a musician   Very cosmic stuff from a drawing view but he also invented his own languages and more.   The paintings are pretty compelling and speak to you in a way that still is relevant.    Too bad he didn't get more appreciation in his lifetime.   

After that it was off to a crazy great tasting menu at Chila...a contrast to Araumburu from a few days ago.   Looking forward to more great times ahead here.   

June 26,2019: RT Day—aRT and foRT, Montevideo

The very young Picasso

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. 
Pablo Picasso

   Before I get into our tourist activities, let me give a list of things I have learned about Montevideo.

1.       People are nice.

2.       Literally everyone you meet, whether you ask them or not,  will tell you not to go to the port at night. Even they seem scared.

3.       Most of Montevideo, the “Paris” of Uruguay is first world, but it gets down to at least 2.5 and an example is the neighborhood in front of the fort.

4.       Montevideo prison from which a major mafia kingpin escaped Sunday night while waiting extradition is apparently a lot like Mayberry RFD with Barney Fife at the helm. The prison is in the tourist area and the prisoners went across the roof and through an old lady’s apartment. Before checking into your hotel, see who is on the international extradition list.

5.       The water in front of Montevideo is not the ocean. It’s the mouth of the Rio Plata. Think brown.

6.       It’s not the temperature. It’s the wind. Trust me on this.

7.       It’s so humid, your socks will never dry.

8.       If you go out to take a walk on the Rambla, it’s a 50 mile round trip. Have fun!

We learned that the Museo Nacional de Belles Artes was having a Picasso in Uruguay exhibit. So, of course, we had to go. The museum itself is nondescript and near a main park. The exhibit was a retrospective of sixty years of Picasso’s work taking him from approximately age 18 until his death in 1972.  His initial works do smack of master artist prior to cubism. He seems to have had an epiphany about art after his friend and fellow artist , Carles Casamengas,  committed suicide shortly after spending Christmas with his family in Malaga. I can only imagine how disheartening that would have been. He also seems to have been influenced by World War I and the Spanish Civil War greatly in his painting and his approach to it. It was interesting to see his approach, all the way to his final painting made the year he passed away. This show leaves Montevideo on June 30, and I am not sure where it goes from here (if anywhere), but we recommend to anyone with opportunity. I really enjoyed the show. But I wouldn’t want to be his girlfriend 😊

Paul's favorite Picasso work of this exhibit: the burrowing owl. There's maybe a theme here? There's also an owl on the ceramic plate behind.

In the other holdings of this museum is a large and exquisite sixty year retrospective of an artist I have never heard of, and now, can’t imagine why: Jose Pedro Costigliolo. His career also spanned sixty years and he was about 20 years younger than Picasso. His work, except for the very early years, was also in abstract, mostly geometric forms. It was fascinating to walk chronologically through the galleries of prolific paintings by this artist and see how his work evolved over the years. He also did a lot of graphic such as playbills and magazine covers in addition to traditional painting. Jose Costigiliolo—where have you been all my life?

Geometric work of Jose Pedro Costigliolo

A more abstract piece of Costigliolo. 

From this point, we walked to the Torres-Garcia Museum. Torres-Garcia was a contemporary of Picasso and at one time they were friends in Paris together. At some point there was a “falling out”—details unknown. Torres-Garcia seems very into the “theory of art,” seemingly thinking it needed to be “local” and also that it was only for those who could transcend individuality to a higher plane of imagination and existence.

Late in life photo of Torres-Garcia

More art theory of Torres- Garcia

Abstract work by Torres-Garcia

He wrote prolifically on art theory. Much of his work is abstractions of cityscapes, but at one point he decided to manufacture toys on a large factory scale. There is a small collection in the museum. Apparently, it wasn’t a very profitable enterprise and lasted only a few years. His factory in New York City burned to the ground destroying the toy, made of wood, with it.

 

Original toys by Torres-Garcia

At the top of this museum was an exhibit by members of the Liu Family from China who have a long tradition of artwork, especially pen and ink. Many beautiful pieces from three generations of painters.

Tools of the trade

Lunch today, since it was our last full day in Montevideo, was a search for a good chivito. Chivito is the national dish and is essentially a steak (usually filet mignon) sandwich with melted cheese and a variety of accompaniments. We chose La Pasiva. It’s a chain, but it was great. Take our word—even if you aren’t a sandwich lover—Don’t leave Montevideo without eating a chivito.

The best place to eat a chivito: La Pasiva

We then grabbed an Uber and went across the bay of Montevideo to the Forteleza de Cerro, a fort in place since the earliest occupation to protect the city. It has been used by all its “conquerers”—Spain, Portugal and England.  The fort honors General Artiga who liberated Montevideo from the British. To me the best part of the visit was the incredible view of Montevideo from the high hill, but some folks might enjoy the military museum and the large display of weaponry. The weapons, mostly guns and artillery cover at least four centuries of engineering—a reminder that the human species has donated a lot of brain power and economics to find ways to kill one another. But it was an impressive collection.

Okay. Guess where the pirate is?

Improvised third world type housing in first world Montevideo

Forteleza de Cerro

An amazing view of Montevideo skyline from the opposite shore

Ways to kill each other

This evening we ate at a nice steakhouse called Restaurante Garcia. We find the beef here, almost all grass fed, to be extremely tasty but a slightly different texture than US beef. Temperature (rare, medium, etc) seems to be pretty hit or miss.

All in all, an artful day (or should I say fortuitous?) in Montevideo.

Montevideo is a beautiful city with a very European style. It's a small city, but with a lot of cultural movement and a lot of personality. At the same time, it's a very chill city.

 Juan Campodonico

Paul's Ponderings:  This was our final day in a great laid back city.   I'd love to come back here given the opportunity, since I feel like we only scratched the surface.    The info above gives a pretty good overview of the variety of things to be found here.    This might not have been the best time of year to come due to the weather, but we had a great time.    Highly recommended as a great close-by contrast to Buenos Aires.   

June 25,2019: Wine and a Strike: What to do when the Government shuts down during your vacation to Uruguay

When the government shuts down, go to a private winery. Pizzorno. Great wines and good food.

Better to starve fighting than to starve working.-- A slogan of the Lawrence, Massachusetts "Bread and Roses" strike of 1912

     

 So last night at the hotel, we asked the desk clerk where the closest ATM was located so I could get $ for the wine tour today. They gave the location but said, "Go tonight because tomorrow no bank will be open." I asked if it was a holiday and they said, No. There's a big soccer game (and there was last night in which Uruguay beat rival Chile in Brazil 1-0), and no one is going to work tomorrow. Now we live in Knoxville, Tennessee where we can easily imagine someone taking a day off or sacrificing a virgin to see Tennessee Vols play football, but we thought it showed an amazing affinity for soccer that everyone in the country was taking off for a soccer game. We thanked our lucky stars that we booked a wine tour for today, because all the museums, post office and essentially most of the Uruguayan world was not working today. We later found out, however, that it was not sports enthusiasm run rampant, but a worker's strike in solidarity for the gas workers who were recently laid off in droves.  Oh capitalism and privately owned business--the great savior of this vacation day!

    Fortunately, this morning at a relatively decent hour, we were off to Canalones province where most of the Uruguayan wineries are. The drive was about 45 minutes from Montevideo and became scenic right at the end. We visited Pizzorno Winery, a family owned affair going back to about 1910 when the Italian family immigrated from the Piemonte region to start a Uruguayan winery. The wine is now being made by the "third generation." 

Family member, Francisco gave us a lovely tour.

     We were met at our hotel by the lovely Veronica of Wine Explorers who gave us a lift to the winery and good explanations of everything along the way. She is expecting her first child, a girl named Paz, in about 2 months, so she was not able to taste with us.

The facility was quite beautiful and they grow 11 varieties of grapes. Their wine specialties are tannat (a red grape we never heard of till we got here) and blends. They also have a lovely chardonnay sparkling. 

The posada at Pizzorno winery

Some of the biodynamic vineyards

We had a great tour of the barrel room where Francisco gave us a really nice explanation of the qualities of French, American, Polish and Hungarian oak and encouraged us to actually feel the wood grains for softness and "tightness of grain." He also explained about barrels and expenses in the wine business. I have to say after probably 25-30 winery tours worldwide, I have never had such an erudite experience about barrels and how it affects taste and cost. 

French, American and Polish barrels in that order left to right. 

He showed us their older equipment which they still use which are huge concrete tanks. They also have steel for some production. 

This tank holds 15, 200 liters. They have one that holds 60,000+ liters. 

    They mostly produce blends and tannats, but have a small sparkling chardonnay production. They also produce a lovely sauvignon blanc. 

Sparkling wine in production

    After this informative tour, it was off to the tasting and the lunch. I have to say I enjoy the concept of foreign wine tours where you just go to ONE winery and taste and have a nice lunch. They also do this in Italy. It is so much more enjoyable than riding around for 4-6 hours tasting multiple vineyards. Frankly, I don't enjoy having THAT MUCH wine in one day (and usually don't!)

Lunch with the Pirate and Veronica, wine tour coordinator extraordinaire!

Eggplant parmesan. Yum

    All in all, a nice tour with great wine and food and lovely hosts. We recommend touring Pizzorno Winery, if you find yourself in Montevideo.

    When we got back, all museums were closed, so we took off on a walk around downtown. The wind has literally HOWLED today and definitely blew most of the time at 20-30mph with bigger gusts. The temperature was 50F, but with the wind it seemed lower. We bought Paul a Uruguay hat to warm his shiny top. We actually found a tour of a private building that was open despite the shutdown and strike: Palacio Salvo. 

Palacio Salvo---when built in 1927, it was the tallest building in South America

    This building really stands out in downtown Montevideo for its height and generally unique architecture. Built as a luxury hotel, it NEVER was one. It is currently shared housing and office space---which is all it has ever been. But it is quite dramatic. There are two ballrooms on the second and third floors which were never used. There is beautiful wood and marble throughout. The top was going to be a functional lighthouse and that never happened either. But there is an amazing view of Montevideo from the top floor. 

Staircase to the top floor

View from the top. Rio Plata in the background. Sunsetting. Somewhere in the photo is our hotel. 

     Overall, this was an amazing building, but also an avenue of broken dreams. 

On the street outside the building my pirate finds a pirate sculpture to commune with.

   From here, it was on to dinner at Jacinto, a small but tasty restaurant in the Ciudad Viejo. We had small plates, which is all you need after such a big lunch. Paul was ecstatic that the restaurants were not on strike!

A toast to the striking workers from the pirate. 

    Another great day. We managed to work around the fact that there was a strike. We are told it will be over tomorrow. Since it is our last full day in Montevideo and we have museums we would love to see, we can only hope it is true.

Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.

By Andre Simon, French wine merchant, gourmet and wine writer (1877–1970)

Paul's Ponderings:   Wow, the temperature and weather really changed here....it rained like crazy overnight and the wind was howling.    While the outside temp was about 50F during the day, with the wind, it was more like 40F.    That did not deter us from some great wine tasting and a nice meal.   The strike prevented us from visiting a museum late in the day, but we compensated that by catching a tour (in Spanish) at the Palacio Salvio, a crazy wedding-cake like building in downtown Montevideo.     

We ended the day at Jacinto with some small plates and some lovely red wine from the grape Tannat, which is new to us.     Coming and going, the wind was still pretty high, but we did get in a reasonable amount of walking and the restaurant was only a 5-6 minute walk away.

No more rain for our visit per the weather map, but likely continued cool temperatures.....oh well.   It's interesting to see the town in this season....less people, lovely plazas and squares in the cold-ish weather.      Tomorrow it's hopefully off to the fort and the Picasso exhibit, which should make for a great combo.   

   

June 24, 2019: Birding Tour and Andes Museum 1972: A Bird in the Hand is Worth More Than a Plane Crash in the Andes

Burrowing Owl . This was Paul's favorite bird of the day. 

“Sometimes I think that the point of birdwatching is not the actual seeing of the birds, but the cultivation of patience. Of course, each time we set out, there's a certain amount of expectation we'll see something, maybe even a species we've never seen before, and that it will fill us with light. But even if we don't see anything remarkable - and sometimes that happens - we come home filled with light anyway.” 
― Lynn Thomson

    Although I love getting to know a foreign city for the first time, I always want to also step outside of it and see what the rest of the country looks like. So for this excursion, since we are not renting a car, I chose a birdwatching tour with Florencia who runs a company called Birding With Me. She's easily found on the internet and is a biologist who is actually studying the effects of wind farms on avian mortality. (The good news is that in Uruguay where 95% of energy comes from  a sustainable source, few ill effects have been noted.) 

     We started by going out of town about 45 minutes to a wetland area. We had a lot of fun and saw so many beautiful birds there. Ubiquitous to nearly all locations was the lapwing, which is the national bird of Uruguay. 

Lapwings. These birds were everywhere---riverbanks, marshlands and even on the side of the road.

Florencia seemed to consider the lapwing a bit of a pest, much like we do the Eurasian collared dove. It had a nice call which it vocalized frequently and we loved the tuft coming out of the posterior head.  It would be impossible to delineate every bird we saw (probably around 50-60 species), but here are some favorites.

Black and white monjita

Red Crested Cardinal 

Saffron Cowled Blackbird

From the marshland, we drove around to several ponds where the beauty continued:

Giant Wood Rail

Spectacled tyrant

We had a lovely lunch at a park full of eucalyptus trees on the Rio Plata--empanadas which are one of the local specialties and highly recommended.

One of the ponds where we looked for wetland waterfowl. We probably found about as many birds sitting on a wire or fence post as we did anywhere else.

Paul Parris, expert birdwatcher, on the shores of Rio Plata.

Our last set in Birdland was the shoreline of Rio Plata for shorebirds. The choices were limited in species but the numbers were good--plovers, seagulls and southern caracara.

Collared plover

Southern caracara

Two banded plover

All in all, it was a lovely day of birding with some looks at less inhabited parts of Uruguay. We did see some improvised housing along the route. I asked Florencia if the people in these scrap built houses owned the property and she said doubtful. They most likely just occupied the land and built. We also saw a lot of farmland, especially apple orchards and winter greens as well as strawberries.

We look like anuses attempting a selfie, but Florencia was a pro! Go birding with Florencia. It's amazing!

We returned to Montevideo in time to see the Andes 1972 Museum. Most people of sufficient age will remember the story of the Uruguayan soccer team whose plane crashed in the Andes and 13 of 45 survived, some by eating remains of the dead. There was a movie made called ALIVE that many people have seen (and a book by the same name.) The heroic tale (referred to here as "milagro"-miracle) of 70+ days of survival with very little clothing, food or shelter is really amazing. They showed incredible ingenuity for a group of mostly 18-25 year olds. Not only were they plagued by hunger and cold, an avalanche hit the wreckage several days into the catastrophe and killed more of the initial survivors by suffocation. It is a horrendous and yet inspiring tale and this museum does a good job of describing their hardship and how they worked communally to survive. The cannabalism is not dismissed but it isn't the main focus. The survivor who went public with the fact that they ate their teammates several days after the rescue and once media and officials investigated the site and saw the evidence that they had consumed their teammates described the experience as "an intimate communion." They obviously did not relish the idea, but it was the only option they had to survive.  I would recommend this museum to adults and teenagers. Not sure I would take a little kid who might find it hard to understand. Should you take a child, an explanation in advance is recommended. 

The teammates who survived have had a very positive attitude. Although they agree that most of the time on the mountain was a living hell, they also believe that everyone faces mountains and rescues every day, and encourage us all to never give up trying to surmount our problems, big or small. They have inspired many people who are struggling over the decades and many of them are motivational speakers.

An artist's depiction of the famous newspaper photo of the survivors. The remains of the aircraft were burned shortly after the rescue.

 For our last act of the evening, we had a lovely dinner (after a shower and a short nap--making us look forward to retirement!)  at Tandory Restaurant in the Pocitos neighborhood of Montevideo---which seemed less business-like than Ciudad Viejo and more upscale residential. The chef had lovely preparations and we combined shrimp arepas with a pasta and fish dish. It was tasty and filling.

This is a local dessert composed of cookie and mascapone ice cream. 

Leek raviolis. 

I am grateful for an amazing day that was mostly without struggle, some beautiful creatures of mother nature,varied and lovely scenery, and a dose of inspiration from those who bore so much pain and grief and emerged stronger and more cognizant human beings. May we all learn from their experience.

"To be affronted by solitude without decadence, or a single material thing to prostitute, it elevates you to a spiritual plain, where I felt the presence of God. Now, there's the God they taught me about at school, and there is the God that's hidden by what surrounds us in this civilization. That's the God that I met on the mountain.” 

JOHN MALKOVICH - Narrator

                                                                                                                    in the movie ALIVE

Paul's Ponderings:  What a great day in Montevideo.   We got to see a lot of rural area and some incredible birds.   The temperature was cool but manageable, even though we had an early start (730 am local) and spent about eight hours out birding.     After that we spent some time at the Andes 72 museum.   I have vivid memories of reading the book by Piers Paul Read as an adolescent and finding it riveting.   It's been a long time since I thought about that event, but here we are in Uruguay where the team was from and now there's a museum about it.   The museum is pretty matter-of-fact on a topic that's very complex, but a really incredible story of human survival under extreme conditions.   We finished with a great dinner after finding out our original choice closed at  5 pm on Monday!    

So far, we are having a great time here in Uruguay.....looking forward to more.