Mate

Despite what the title of this post may make you think, I am not writing about “mate” as the word would be pronounced in English.  This post isn’t about a new British friend, or an Argentinian boyfriend, but rather about máte (MAH-tay), as it is pronounced in Spanish.

Mate is a kind of tea that is very popular in Uruguay, Argentina, and Southern Brazil.  I think it might even be more popular than beer.  It is the staple of all social gatherings that take place before 10pm, for people of all ages, both genders, and all classes.  Everyone has at least one mate pot, which is about the size of a tennis ball, made from wood, and either painted, polished, covered in leather, or decorated in some other way.  Along with a mate pot, you need a drinking rod, which has a small, hollow, metal bulb about the size of a very large lima bean at the bottom. This bulb has several tiny holes in it, and is connected to a metal rod with a narrow oboe-reed-shaped opening at the top to drink from.  This way the bulb on the drinking rod also serves as a filter so you don’t drink the tea leaves.  Dry, loose-leaf tea leaves are used, and are available for purchase at all stores.

To make mate, first you boil water and put it in a thermos.  Many people have matching thermos and mate pot sets, along with specific bags for carrying all mate-related items with them on walks, to work, to the park, to visit friends, and everywhere else they go.  While your water is boiling, you can go ahead and fill your mate pot up to the brim with the loose, dried leaves, and then pour the boiled water in when it’s ready.  Some people like to add sugar, depending on the kind of leaves they have.  When drinking mate in a group, only one mate pot is used.  It is filled with hot water, given to someone to drink, then refilled (without changing the tea leaves or cleaning the drinking rod), and passed to someone else. Multiple pots are never used, even in large groups, because drinking mate is a social activity, so sharing is part of the culture of it.  Drinking mate is always a suggested activity for future hangouts, although I don’t know why they bother saying it because it is always offered to visitors anyway. 

I was visiting some friends who work at a hostel here today, and there were four people from Buenos Aires staying there.  Obviously they had brought their mate supplies with them on their trip, so during some down time they made mate, and of course offered it to everyone there.  You can’t really drink mate in front of someone and not offer it to them; it’s not like coke or juice or any other beverage.  There were probably about 8-10 of us there, and half of us had just met the other half right then, but we all shared some mate and drank out of the same drinking rod and became friends on the spot. 

Daily Life

After being in San Ignacio for about a week now I’ve developed a nice daily routine.  I set my alarm for 8, and then when it goes off I usually stay in bed until around 8:30 just because it’s comfortable, warm, and there’s nothing else I feel like I should be doing instead.  (Jealous??) Whenever I decide to get up, I eat a banana, stretch, go for a run, and then do some crunches and pushups and what not.  Nobody else in San Ignacio goes for runs, but at least they’re familiar with the concept, so they don’t look at me as incredulously as the Mozambicans did.  A lot of the roads here are made of cobblestones, which can be difficult to run on, or dirt, which turns to mud when it rains, limiting my possible routes.  But when the mud dries to dirt there are some nice roads that go away from the town that are surrounded by untouched nature and are really peaceful to run on.  There’s hot water for my shower, and a normal, modern stove to fry my eggs for breakfast. 

Usually around 10:30 I finish breakfast and Romina wakes up.  Sometimes I have some time to read or check my email before.  Romina is usually happy and fun, but sometime has cranky days too, especially when it’s rainy and she can’t go play in the yard.  We play with her toys, hide rocks under cups, walk around the yard, push her stroller, make drum beats, ring bells, tear leaves, make funny noises with our mouths, have snacks, and various other things that appeal to one-year-olds until lunch, at 3:00.   Lunch is the big meal of the day, and it’s pretty standard food – rice with meat, spaghetti, chicken, salad, steak, or other “normal” dishes.  No dried fish and cornmeal porridge like in Mozambique!

After lunch Romina takes her nap, and I usually read or go online for a little (if the internet works), and then go wander around and hang out with friends I’ve made, or make new ones.  There are two hostels in town, and I’ve become friends with the people that work at them, and also with a guy that works at the tourist agency (and he’s pretty sure I can bribe the border control to let me into Paraguay for the day even though I don’t have a visa).  Hanging out at the hostels is fun because I get to meet all the travelers coming through also.  The big social thing to do here is drink mate, so whenever I meet someone new they always invite me to come back for mate sometime.

I make sure to come home around 8 so I can watch Romina while Lili gets things ready for dinner, and I often watch her after dinner until she goes to bed around 10.  Then I have some free time to read or work on various things, such as this blog.  I’m also keeping a journal of this trip, and working on writing about my time in Mozambique, since I lost interest in keeping my journal there a few months in.  They also get some American TV stations, so sometimes after dinner I watch a movie – everything from Jurassic Park to He’s Just Not That in to You to Robin Hood has been on.  Sadly no football on Sundays though.  It’s a nice, relaxing life here!

San Ignacio

My trip getting to Argentina went about 70% as planned.  It involved my first flight getting canceled, being put on a plane to a different airport in Buenos Aires with promises of a bus waiting to take me (and 7 others in the same situation) to the correct airport, said bus not existing, wandering across the airport a few times, and finally getting the airline to pay for taxis to the other airport.  But luckily I had a 10-hour layover, so there was plenty of time for all the confusion, after that it was fine!  I easily found the correct buses to get from the airport in Posadas to where I’m staying in San Ignacio.

San Ignacio is a small town of about 8,000-10,000 people in Misiones Province in northeast Argentina.  It’s right on the border of Paraguay, and not far from Iguassu Falls at the junction of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay (which I plan to visit!).  San Ignacio is a quiet town with not much in terms of recreation or entertainment.  Everybody knows everybody, and the most common thing to do in your free time is go visit friends or family and drink mate.  There aren’t really any bars to speak of, just restaurants that also serve beer, but without the bar atmosphere.  There’s one nightclub, but it’s only open on Saturdays.  There’s a “cyber” that seems pretty popular and consists of computers, pool tables, photocopiers, and some videogames, but that’s more for teenagers.  There are some paved roads, a bank, a post office, a few parks, a nice town square, a library (I’ve been told), 2 “gyms” that consist of a few hand weights, and a disproportionately high amount of bakeries, grocery stores, pharmacies, and stores in general, such that none of them are very successful.  There’s a lot of trash and stray dogs in the side streets.  Some houses look nice and new, but many appear to be run down and some are almost falling apart.  The electricity and running water usually work, but go out every so often, as does the internet.  Argentina is definitely a bit behind Uruguay and Brazil in terms of development.

The main attraction in San Ignacio are some Jesuit ruins.  There is a tour you can go on, and a “light and sound show,” which, from what I understand, is a movie projected on the ruins.  About 3km from the town is a beach on the river, and 8km from town is a provincial park that is supposed to have some interesting plants and foliage and such.  There is a fair amount of tourism here, mostly from people traveling to or from Iguassu Falls.

I’m going to be living with a family here until the beginning of December, and in exchange for room and board I’ll be nannying for their one-year-old daughter, Romina.  They own and run a hotel (http://www.pragamisiones.com/), which is actually several small cabins.  The father, Ramon, is from Italy, and the mother, Lili, is from the Czech Republic.  They have traveled, lived, and worked basically all over the world, and are full of interesting stories!

The Kindness of Strangers in Uruguay

Even though I was only in Uruguay for less than two weeks, I was impressed time after time by the kindness of strangers there.  On my second day in the country I was taking a bus from my hostel to the main bus terminal, and I asked the lady sitting next to me which stop I should get off at, and how to get from there to the main terminal.  She explained what I should do, and then after a minute or two she turned back to me and said, “I’ll just get off there and show you.”  I insisted that she didn’t need to do that, so she explained what I needed to do again, and I found it on my own.  But I couldn’t believe that a perfect stranger was willing to get off at the wrong stop to help a confused foreigner!

Another time I had just arrived somewhere and was going from the bus station to my hostel.  Just to make sure I was on the right track, I asked a man who was walking by if this hostel was ahead.  He told me to go another block or two, and then turn right.  I had all my bags and stuff, so he walked on ahead of me, but when he got to the street that I should turn on, he looked back and called, “Take this road!”  I was really impressed that he even remembered which hostel I had asked about, let alone was thoughtful enough remind me about it.

Finally, the day I left Uruguay was a cold, miserable, rainy day.  I was going with another guy from my hostel to the main bus terminal to catch the airport bus.  When we were getting off the bus at the terminal, we asked another guy where the airport buses pass.  He offered to accompany us there (in the cold rain!) but I had to get my bags from the storage lockers first.  So he came into the terminal with us (which involved going out of his way and walking across a parking lot in the cold rain), asked someone who worked there to borrow a pen, and drew us a little map showing where to go.  It was amazing! In that weather I honestly would not have wanted to do that even for a friend, and he did it for strangers he would never see again.

The Cold and Dogs: Two Things I Love

Tomorrow I’ll go back to Montevideo to catch my flight to Argentina.  I’m exited to be going somewhere and settling down for a few months, because I’ll actually get to know people that live there and make friends with people I’ll see for more than just a few days.  And I’m excited to be going to a warmer climate!  It’s been so cold for most of my time in Uruguay that I’ve been wearing three sweatshirts most of the day.  Most building here don’t have electric heating, so when the high of the day is 60 degrees that doesn’t sound too bad, but it doesn’t get warmer than that inside.  People use fireplaces and wood stoves to heat the main room (which doesn’t make it nearly as warm as I would like), but the other rooms are absolutely freezing!  I went to sit by the fireplace at the hostel today, and I stuck my feet nice and close to the flames to warm them up.  After a little while I realized that the fire was melting the glue that held the soles in place, and that they were falling away from the rest of the shoe!  So I quickly stood up and stayed standing for about 20 minutes until the glue had redried and the soles were firmly secured again.  In other shoe-related news, I found a posting online to stay with a family in Ecuador that has a shoe shop, and live with them and learn to make shoes in exchange for room and board.  I’m keeping that in mind for January.

Overall I have really enjoyed almost everything about Uruguay.  It’s a really calm, safe country and everything is well-organized, the bus are on time, and the people are really friendly (although their Spanish accent is really difficult for me to understand).  But there’s one thing I don’t like: dogs.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with my feelings about dogs, let me explain.  They can be cute to observe from afar, and I find being in the same room as someone’s clean, well-trained pet acceptable as long as the dog doesn’t smell me, slobber on me, or basically come anywhere near me.  So the fact that they are everywhere here is greatly disturbing to me.  They roam the streets everywhere.  Sometimes they ignore you (which I can tolerate), but sometimes there follow you (which I abhor).  They wait at the entrances of hostels and restaurants, and if you’re not careful they follow you in.  Most of them belong to people, but spend most of their time roaming about, but some of them are strays.  When I was in San Gregorio last week three large dogs started following me at one point, and they were getting a bit jumpy and nippy around me.  To make things worse, I had just read a blog the night before about someone who got bit by a dog and had to get 5 stitches, and I was getting somewhat scared of these dogs.  It wasn’t until a few blocks later when they finally left that I realized how terrified I had actually been of them.  My muscles were all tensed and I just wanted to sit down.  Probably kind of how my dad felt after he went on a roller coaster, but maybe not quite as intense.  Anyway, maybe I’ll appreciate dogs in the US more when I get back after dealing with all the dirty, untrained ones here.

Uruguayan Travels

So about my time in Uruguay…I spent my first day wandering around the capital, Montevideo.  There’s really not many specific things to see or do there, but I met some people at the hostel and we walked through the historic area, along the beach, and through a nice park.  I really like Montevideo because it doesn’t feel like a big city.  It’s really safe, the bus routes are easy to understand, and everyone walks around drinking mate.  It was quite common to see people of all ages carrying their thermoses of hot water, bags of tea leaves, and special mate pots with the traditional stirring straw with them through the streets.  And these tea-drinking habits are not just for women.  Even the young, hip men carried their matching mate thermoses and pots with them as they went to meet up with their friends, and groups of guys sat together on benches passing around this traditional beverage.  Someone staying at my hostel offered me some, and it was a very, very, strong flavor; a little overwhelming but not bad at all.  It would be like making black tea and putting three teabags in a tiny teacup and letting it steep for 20 minutes maybe.

The next day I went to a beach town east of Montevideo called La Paloma.  Since it’s just the beginning of spring here now there were very few tourists there, and everything was pretty dead.  I did my first help exchange there with a really nice couple who ran a hostel.  They really didn’t have much work for me to do, but they let me come and stay for free anyway just out of the kindness of their hearts, and because they had done a lot of these exchanges when they were in New Zealand and I guess they wanted to help me out and practice their English.  I had a lot of fun there.  They lent me a bike to ride along the coast, and over the weekend some Brazilian tourists came to stay there, so we all had a fun time walking along the beach, playing cards, and hanging out.  The ocean was absolutely freezing!  So cold that if you stick your foot in the water it actually hurts, and if you keep your foot in the water for a few seconds (why did I do that?) your whole leg hurts.

After my stay in La Paloma I wanted to go to the interior to Uruguay, something that I regret not having done more in Brazil.  First I went to a town of about 3,000 people called San Gregorio de Polanco, which is right on the shore of a lake, and is a very nice, typical, small Uruguayan town.  From there I did a day trip to Tacuarambo, a larger city in the center of the country, just to see what it was like.  It was cool to see just a regular city that doesn’t have much tourism, but there really wasn’t much to do there.

Finally I went to Colonia del Sacramento, which is just across the river from Buenos Aires.  In the summer it’s full of tourists, but at this time of year it was dead as well.  During the first two days I wandered around the historic downtown (which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site), went to some museums, and went for a walk along the coast.  I’ve been to several museums here, and the thing that I love about Uruguayan museums is that they are tiny.  Usually when I go to museums I get bored after half an hour, at the most (unless it’s a map museum), but the museums here are so small that I can see everything before I get lose interest.  Even though the weather forecast predicted rain for the entire time I would be here, the first two days had several rain-free hours, and only today has been so bad that I haven’t left the hostel.  I wasn’t sure how I would pass the day until I discovered that they show American football on TV here!  Problem solved.  There was only one option, so I didn’t get to watch the Eagles, but the Packers/Redskins game was on.  I like the Packers well enough to enjoy watching them win, but even more satisfying than that was watching the Redskins get destroyed in the first half!

Introduction

My last full day in Uruguay has been a rainy one, which I’m taking as a sign that today is a good day to finally start my blog.  I might as well start by answering some basic questions since my plans have changed so much and been rather vague the whole time that no one really knows what I’m doing here.  Where all am I going? What am I doing?  How long will I be gone?  Why am I here?  How can I afford this? 

The best way to answer all of these questions is, “I don’t really know yet.”  But I’ll try to give some good guesses and estimates.  I’ve just spent close to two weeks in Uruguay, and now I’m going to Argentina until December.  After that I’ll be taking a trip to Peru and someplace else with a friend who’s coming from the US for a few weeks, and after that your guess is as good as mine.  Likely options include Ecuador, Chile, or staying in Peru, but I don’t want to rule anything else out.  My current return ticket to the US is for May, but maybe I’ll come back before or after that, although it will probably be in that general time frame.  Here in Uruguay I’ve been traveling around and just having fun, but in Argentina I’ll be babysitting a one-year-old girl and living with her family.  After that I might look for some work in another country working at a hostel or doing something random.  Basically my goals here are just to have fun, speak a lot of Spanish, meet interesting people, and have some great experiences.  In most places that I’ll go I’ll be doing exchanges, in which I’ll do some sort of work (babysitting, working at a hostel, etc.) in exchange for room and board.  So most of my expenses will be covered, and I can always look for some English students to make some spending money.  While I do plan to take short trips to some of the coolest places in South America (Iguacu Falls, Machu Picchu, Galapagos Islands, etc), I plan to spend most of my time staying for periods of 2-3 months in just a few different places instead of spending the entire time traveling constantly from town to town.