Coati Quest

I knew I should have brought my camera… In fact, I thought I had packed it, but the moment I needed it, it was nowhere to be found. The odd creature who would have been my model seemed to know this and stuck around, watching us, coyly waiting to melt into the underbrush the instant a camera lens appeared.

We had been trudging up the small boulders that make the trail to the top of Cerro Pan de Azucar. This was our second outing to the park and I had left my camera at home. So there I was, admiring a ring tailed Coati staring right at us from 8 feet away while my husband, whose philosophy about picture taking just prior to that moment had been to “experience” rather than be behind a lens, expressed his disappointment that I was sans camera. Naturally, I told him to just be in the moment and enjoy rather than getting caught up in bagging a photo trophy. We stood there for a while, him watching us, us watching him, awed to see a creature like this here. The Coati didn’t seem awed though, he just yawned as he approached us with curiosity.

I could substitute one of the many Coati photos I took in Tikal, Guatemala seven years ago. In Tikal, ring-tailed Coatis are like squirrels are in most parts of the United States – everywhere. However, the same creature here is unlikely to be seen. Up until now, we had not even heard of Coatis in Uruguay. Their habitat is forest, which Uruguay does not have a lot of.

Hopefully, we’ll see this little guy again. If you should come across a Coati, or any wildlife for that matter, please don’t feed them. In doing so, you would be habituating a wild animal to humans, who may not all have good intentions. Wild animals have adapted beautifully to fit their environment, of which your snack food is not a natural part.

Cerro Pan de Azucar

Ever since I first laid eyes on the impressive stony flanks of Cerro Pan de Azucar, I have wanted to climb it. Pan de Azucar (not to be confused with the nearby town of the same name) is the tallest of three large hills near the city of Piriápolis, in the department of Maldonado, about 50 kilometers from Atlántida. With steep, bald stone shoulders rising to 423 meters above sea level near the Rio de la Plata, it is a picturesque sight.

We finally got around to exploring Cerro Pan de Azucar today. The route to the top is a well established and well marked trail, not the mad thorn-choked bushwack I suspected it may be. At the bottom near the trail entrance is a zoo of some sorts. We avoided it since I find wild animals in cages to be depressing. However, on the way to the trail-head, we did enjoy seeing in large enclosures two examples of Uruguay’s increasingly rare indigenous fauna, Pampas Deer (“venados”) and a small cousin to the ostrich, the Nandu.

Nandu

Venados

Our walk to the trail and ascent took just under an hour. We started at noon, when the sun is at its most brutal. I don’t know what it is about Uruguay, but the sun here seems extra strong and punishing. My unscientific theory is that the ozone layer above the country has been depleted by Uruguayans’ incessant burning of wood and the methane released by their many, many cows. But I digress. Our shadeless and broiling hot ascent was punishment for not getting there in the morning, as we had originally planned.

It was hot.

One of the things I admire about Uruguayos is that they don’t seem to worry about anything. All is “tranquilo”. In fact, the most frequent comment we heard while traveling in Argentina in response to our choice of place to live (next to “¿por que?”) is “ah, Uruguay, tranquilo”. Sometimes, though, the Uruguayan lack of worry can go a bit far. I am thinking of shirtless guys on motorcycles, often without helmets and wearing flip-flops; or today, seeing people going up craggy, rocky Pan de Azucar wearing flip-flops. By comparison, my all-leather trekking boots from L.L.Bean that I am breaking in must have looked seriously overkill to them. They may not be outdoors people as we are used to in the northern hemisphere (the Uruguaya idea of camping is being as close as possible to your 500 best friends), but I think Uruguayans are a hardy lot. Unfortunately, they don’t quite grasp the idea of protecting and respecting our natural environment, so litter and graffiti are common sights in parks.

Litter aside (anyone want to help me on a clean-up campaign?), Cerro Pan de Azucar is a fun experience, not to be missed if you live nearby. Enjoy the photos.

View from the trail

Typical disrepair of local parks.

Duh, where's the trail?

Lagarto

Antiques Shopping, Uruguayan Style

Last month’s road trip took us to the eastern edge of Uruguay, to Chuy, the Brazilian border, Fortin San Miguel and Treinta y Tres. So for a change of scenery this time we traveled west, towards Argentina. Our excuse to hit the road this time was a grand estate sale outside a sleepy town in the department of Colonia, called Ombues de Lavalle.

When I was a kid, we would sometimes go to auctions in Pennsylvania, the home state of my Pennsylvania-Dutch family. My Grandmother, aunt and cousin still go to these sales. The custom there is to auction off a house and most of its contents instead of just selling the house through a conventional realtor. They call them “sales” in Pennsylvania and publish flyers advertising them. Sales are often whole day events and are just as much a social and entertainment event as a buying opportunity. Our family home, sadly, was sold in this manner. I wasn’t at all surprised to find that the same is done here in Uruguay. Here, they are called “remates”. It could be Pennsylvania –simply substitute paisanos (country people, who foreigners mistake for gauchos because they wear the traditional gaucho clothing) in their baggy gaucho pants, wide belts, leather hats and gaucho boots for Amish and Mennonite men in black suits, straw hats and ladies in long dresses and bonnets. (I regret not taking any pictures of the paisanos. Yet again, I erred on the side of politeness and respectfulness, not good traits in a photographer, plus I hesitate to photograph a cow-hand with a dagger tucked into his belt. I'll work on being less shy on future outings).

I think this particular remate was an unusual one for its size and the quality of the items. In contrast, check out the heap of junk for sale at the first remate Cesar went to in Uruguay. I’m glad I passed on that one. So, just like the Pennsylvania sales, this remate had a glossy flyer with the details and pictures of the most photogenic or desirable items. An auction house was hired to manage the event. An event it was – at 9am it began with the auctioning of farm equipment, it then progressed to different locations around the property to sell off smaller farming tools, odds and ends and common things like cook pots and knick-knacks. The main event, scheduled to start at 6pm, in typical Uruguayo style did not start until 8pm. Before sunset, we gathered in plastic lawn chairs before a large screen set up just outside of the main house.

The auctioneers warmed up the crowd by dispatching a few small items while people walked around serving the crowd complimentary cold soda or Johnny Walker Red on ice. Later there were free sausages and meat cooked over a fire nearby. A lot of people, probably from the nearby town, seemed to know each other and had a ball just watching and commenting on the items for sale. Mixed in the crowd were some serious antique hunters who clearly came for specific items and bidded assertively on them and left when the item was in their possession or in the hands of a competitor. As darkness fell, the remate went high-tech. A team with a video camera and lights went around the inside of the house to project each item on the large screen outside as the auctioneer in front of us did his job.

The items the crowd seemed most interested in were some antique gaucho accoutrements, such as ornamental daggers, boleadoras, a horse’s headstall and bit beautifully decked out in silver, solid silver stirrups and two beautiful and old gaucho coin belts, one of which fetched $20,000 pesos (about $1000 US).

We came away with a fascinating antique Uruguayan-made balance scale with silver feet, a wood body and marble top for $8000 pesos.

By this time it was past midnight. When we left at 1:30am the crowd had thinned and the auctioneer was trying not to yawn, but there were quite a few smaller items left. The thing I coveted was this dining table which went unsold as there were no bites at its base price of $35,000 pesos.