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Uruguay / Argentina / Brazil: Latin laxity, tour de fuss, Christ in a tree!

Montevideo Days

Rhymer1
2005-03-26 19:30:18

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interesting and charming. Whew. After all that I'd like to say they made me puke or have them turn out to be evangelists or Bush Boosters something. But sadly no. They were just very shiny human beings. And, after four days in an almost completely tourist free Montevideo, it was genuinely thrilling to meet someone who a) didn't speak any Spanish and b) thought eating meat three times a day was too much.

The boat trip across the River isn't bad at all and is notable only because the river is so enormous. It's called a river but really it's a huge estuary, muddy brown, steaming in the sun and so wide it looks like you are out on a dirty sea. Buenos Aires itself rises out of the hazy mists looks very stylish indeed. Though closer up, I found myself noticing the poverty much more than before. In Montevideo there are quite a few beggars but in Buenos Aires they actually look like they need the money.

Latin Time II

As I think I may have mentioned, when we bought our tickets to Iguazu, we were offered an economically perverse deal. Either buy the tickets for U$215 apiece or buy a package with the tickets, four nights in a hotel, all our transfers, etc, etc. for U $199 each. When we got to the check-in desk, it suddenly made sense. Our f-kwit travel agent had sold us standby tickets. Not that he actually told us this. You would think that anyone who took about four hours to find and issue tickets would get them right. But actually, this is not what happened. We spent four hours waiting: he spent 3:49 engaged in non work activities and 0:11 actually dealing with us.

The guy at the airline didn't like much it either. For this meant he had to do work too! But Jane appealed to his better side and I kissed his ass and we got seats.

Tour de fuss

And, suddenly we were back in the land of the tour group. Specifically the Japanese tour group. It is an interesting thing about the Japanese. In a sense they are quite intrepid: you find them in all sorts of weird and wondrous locales. Indeed there is almost nowhere the Japanese won't go. As long as it's in a group of twenty led by a tour guide who treats them like naughty schoolchildren and tells them when they're allowed to use the toilet. To an outsider, it is quite ridiculous: there is no other nationality quite like the Japanse.

Moreover, all this oddity is doubly so in Latin America. The Japanese - men and women alike - fuss like mother hens. Everything must be just so. Within a tour group (and they are never without) it is 20 times worse, as there are twenty of them, all busily fussing away. But in Latin America, they are fussing to the wrong people. The Latin's don't worry about anything. Optimistically, they just hope it'll all work out in the end, that the chain of mistakes and laxity will have an agreeable ending. And, like our plane ticket non-disaster it usually does.

Christ in a Tree

The province of Missiones (at the top of which Iguazu is located) is appreciably different to BA. With its red earth, jungle (appropriately, intact on the Argie side, deforested on the Brazilian) and sultry heat, it is tropical: it feels more like Asia than Argentina. And, as our package minibus (with cheerful driver) whisked us towards our package hotel, I spotted a plastic tree by the roadside, branches like outstretched arms. But where the normal silly tree face should be on the trunk, there was a likeness of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I knew that although I would only be spending four days here, Brazil would not let me down.

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