Love and Death in Uruguay

1992

    I did not know much about Uruguay before our arrival.

    I expected there to be some facilities for yachts at Punta del Este, because the round the world races stop there.  I did know that we did not need visas.  As a soccer fan, I knew that Uruguay had twice won the World Cup.  And the NAUTICAL ALMANAC informed me that local time has been moved  forward one hour to coincide with Brazil’s.  This gives a false impression, for Uruguay’s ties, cultural and economic, are much closer with her other neighbor, Argentina.  Perhaps not coincidentally, Brazil and Argentina were the two countries Uruguay met in the World Cup finals it won.  For little Uruguay, those victories must have been sweet.

    In a bank in Punta, I learned that the currency is the New Peso, of which, in exchange for $500 I became the possessor of 1.36 million.  Actually I learned that there are two currencies.  The other is the U.S. $100 bill.  If America is becoming a cashless society, it may be because all the bills are in South America.

    I watched with some interest as the teenager in front of me proceeded to remove from a large manila envelope two bundles of U.S. $100 bills, neatly bound by rubber bands.  In America I would immediately have thought:  drug money.  But it is unlikely that the bills were drug related, for Uruguay is the nicest, cleanest, safest, least drug-infested country in South America.  For that matter, when one thinks about it, in all the Americas.  The teenager was only an office boy, performing a normal function of business. 

    However anemic it is elsewhere, the U.S. dollar is strong in Uruguay.  Prices are quoted in newspapers and shops for goods from cars to teakettles in U.S.  dollars.  When exchange rates change almost before you get to the front of the line, he who is last will get most.  (You expect to hear people saying, “No, you go first.  I insist.)  Within three weeks, for $500 I could have  been a double millionaire.  As I left the bank, I saw the office boy, clutching his billions to his chest, waiting for a driver to pick him up.

    Oddly, this inflation is not accompanied by the vast poverty seen in most other countries from Mexico south.  For whatever  reasons--perhaps because there are only 3 million people living there, almost half of them in Montevideo, the capital--Uruguay still appears to be a middle-class country.  Even in New Zealand, another middle-class country with a similar population, one sees more poverty than in Uruguay.  Of the inflation, a Uruguayan restaurateur, who pays his employees in U.S. dollars, said:  “We are used to it.  To a North American, it would be unthinkable.  But to us?”  And he shrugged.

    Punta del Este is a resort with a two-month season, Jan. 1 to March 1, when it is packed with rich foreigners, mostly Argentineans. 

    Punta is not an unpleasant place.  It has nice beaches and a good climate, a casino, nightclubs, numerous restaurants, and many public sculptures, including a clever one of gigantic fingers reaching up as though from a hand buried beneath the sand.  I can easily understand its appeal to rich city dwellers escaping from Buenos Aires, only 200 miles away on the south bank of the Rio de la Plata, and Montevideo, only 60 miles away on the north bank.

    But Punta does not have much character.  A high-rise box is a high-rise box, and from  RESURGAM I counted 54 buildings of 15 stories or more.  I could be looking at Australia or California or Spain or Fort Lauderdale.  Actually, hills in the distance rule out Florida.

    For the sailor Punta is convenient in some ways.  There are showers,

usually hot; a supermarket a block from the port; a nearby laundromat.

    But it is inconvenient in many other ways.  There is a small boat yard, but I would not want to burden it with more than minor work.  There is no sailmaker; no chart agent; no chandlery worthy of the name.

    This is because no one really lives in Punta del Este.  After March 1, it is a ghost town.  Curtains and shutters cover almost all windows.  In the evening, a 20-story building shows only one or two lights.  And on the water, the moorings and docks are empty.  All the boats have been sailed or, more probably, powered back to Buenos Aires and Montevideo.  Mostly, I was told, Buenos Aires.  Of the 250,000 people who fill the place in season, Uruguayans say, Argentineans outnumber them 15-1.  Argentina’s economy may be a disaster, but the rich have obviously hung onto their money.

    This becomes apparent from the extensive neighborhood of beautiful houses, many of them mansions, used only as second homes during the season.  And from the price, in season, of moorings.

    The small point of land on which Punta is situated provides protection for boats from east winds, and the coastline of the continent protects from the north.  A small island about a mile to the west helps some, but leaves boats vulnerable to bad weather from that direction, and the south is completely exposed.

     A breakwater has been built to protect from the west and south; but all of the space inside this marvel is taken up by docks and moorings, all of which are fully leased for the two month season.  You are free to anchor beyond the protection of the breakwater, which we did.  On our second night in port, a gale--locally known as a pampero--blew from the exposed southwest and we spent the most uncomfortable and dangerous night we have spent on a boat in years.  Much worse than being at sea.  Both snubbing lines broke and the anchor was caught, as we later established, under an abandoned mooring.  Five foot waves began breaking just inside us, each snapping the anchor chain taut.  Only by finally veering almost all of our 200’ of chain, providing more than 10-1 scope in the nominally 15’-18’ of water below us, were we able to ease the shock.

    Moorings were available when we arrived on March 13, but we chose not to take one because they cost an outrageous $27 per night for a boat  of RESURGAM’s size.  It is partly a matter of supply and demand, and of keeping yachting a pastime of conspicuous consumption for the rich.  Despite prices, which did drop to an off-season rate of $10 per night during our stay, we moved to a mooring as soon as the pampero  passed and we could extricate our anchor.  The weather continued to be unsettled, and there really was no choice.  To anchor was to invite disaster.

    Of course, one might think we could have simply left.  We would have liked to, but there were some slight complications.  First, we had spent 58 days at sea, and had a few--remarkably few, considering the length and nature of the passage around Cape Horn--repair and maintenance jobs to do.  And I will confess that after such a long passage, we rather enjoyed having fresh water showers and walking on solid land for a few days.  We also needed to go into Montevideo to obtain visas for Brazil.  And, unfortunately, we telephoned the U.S. to have our mail forwarded.

    ‘Unfortunately’ because Uruguay, unknown to us at the time, was entering the third month of a postal strike.  Registered mail was still supposed to be delivered, but ours wasn’t.  The woman in the Correos kept smiling and saying, “Nada.”  She was very nice about it.  Uruguayans are almost uniformly nice.  But then it wasn’t her mail.

    Far beyond the time needed  for repair and maintenance on boat and selves, we waited.  But  finally we gave up and decided to sail on to Rio.  I once wrote that the hardest  part of circumnavigating is getting mail.  People thought I was joking.

    Despite the postal union, we enjoyed Uruguay, particularly Montevideo.

    We rode the bus for a couple of hours through a gently rolling countryside and came to a city of narrow streets, elaborately carved doors, iron balconies and trees.  The trees are squeezed everywhere and line streets, often joining branches overhead.  In Montevideo you feel that you are in a Spanish city, while in Punta del Este you do not.

    Between visits to the Brazilian Embassy, we walked around the waterfront.  The mouth of the Rio de la Plata is wide--the Argentine side is 50 miles from Montevideo--and shallow.   Major shipping is confined to narrow channels dredged in those 50 miles.

    On one side of the city, near the container facility, stands a neglected statue of a conquistador, staring determinedly inland.  Beyond him is the stone wall of a decayed fort.  This is an old part of the New World.  Isla de Lobos, near Punta, claims to be the site of the first lighthouse in the Americas.  Only after sailing due west for several days would early adventurers have seen the south bank or known they were on fresh water.

    On the other side of Montevideo, a promenade runs along the shore.  Late one weekday afternoon, it held a curious tableau.

    Montevideo is not the mixture of urban and rural that one often finds in Asia and Africa.  It is definitely a city.  Yet in a park in front of an apartment building in the old part of town, we saw a goat kneeling to eat grass.  A boy turned  the corner from one narrow alleyway to another, riding a fine gray horse.  Fishermen perched on the seawall, dangling hopeful lines in the choppy water.

    We passed two couples, sitting on benches partially sheltered by the seawall.  They were only a few steps apart but oblivious to one another.  The first couple were young lovers.  The second, dressed all in black, were a middle-aged man and an old woman.  The woman, whom we assumed to be his mother, was quietly crying.  They seemed just to have come from a funeral.   Both couples were the same:  a man with his arms around a woman, whose face was buried against his chest.  The embraces of love and death are identical.

    We walked back up the hill into the center of the city where, at a cafe beside the Plaza Independencia, we shared a bottle of wine in the evening dusk and watched pigeons settle on the statue of Artiga, Uruguay’s George Washington.

    There are, after all, matters in life more important than lost mail.