Fall                                      Moon of Thanksgiving

Reentry.  Business meeting this am.  Funds look good.  Calendar less crowded for the next couple of months, though there is that Denver trip in January.  Another Stock show with the grandkids.  Groceries in a bit.

Here are the Rio entries:

Spring           Moon of the Southern Cross

Rio port

We were supposed to debark a half an hour ago but the process has gone slowly.  We’re still aboard, waiting for yellow 1 to be called.

It doesn’t matter to me much, though our car will come at 10:30, it’s now 10:15, and will wait an hour.  We have to debark then clear Brazilian customs.  Hopefully we can that done in an hour and fifteen minutes.  We’ll see.

Our bags have debarked, except for those we’re carrying, but we sit.

Brazil, as a BRIC nation, will have a different flavor than the others we’ve visited, a flavor accented by indigenous, African and Portuguese gene pools.  The music, the celebrations, the general psyche reportedly has a different feel.  I’m ready to find out for myself, but bureaucracy must have its due.

This will be my last post from onboard ship.  Next will be the Ipanema Plaza Hotel.  I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to carry Ancientrails around South America and report on our trip.

Spring             Moon of the Southern Cross

Rio de Janerio   The Ipanema Plaza Hotel

We debarked according to an odd pattern.  The Brazilian customs folks set up shop in the Veendam’s showroom.  We had to fill a customs declaration form, a Brazilian immigration form and a health clearance form.

We finally just showed up, went in and got processed.  The processing consisted of a Brazilian customs official putting our passport (with our very expensive visa) into a little machine, then stamping our immigration form.  That was it.

In the port we had our customs declaration ready.  We got a porter for our bags, USA heavy, and he ushered us through the customs process.  Which was.  Hand the customs declarations to a smiling Brazilian woman and Welcome to Brazil!  It was the damndest combination of bureaucracy and nonchalance I’ve ever experienced in a foreign country.

Our porter also helped us track down the Rentamar folks from whom we had already purchased taxi service to the hotel.  This turned out to be somewhat difficult.  The porter said,”Taxi?”  I said, “Yes.” because my voucher said to go to the taxi area.  No, I did not want just any taxi, I needed the one I’d paid for already.  This proved difficult to communicate.

Eventually we figured it out and Ferdinand picked us up.  On the drive to the hotel he and Kate had a language lesson in Portuguese via Kate’s modest, but extant, Spanish.  Ferdinand showed us his family, named the various favelas through which we drove, taught us thank you, good morning, good afternoon and good night.  It was fun to see Kate working through the combination of English and Spanish with Ferdinand’s Portuguese, Spanish and limited English.

The hotel had its puzzles, too.  The room lights, for example.  To operate the lights you have to put your room key in a receptacle on the wall and leave it there.  Since it was dark in the room, I thought the receptacle was the temperature control.  Got that figured out.

A bit of rest and then a tour to the biggest Jesus in the world on Corcovada, hunch-back hill.

The tour consisted of a long ride up a cog railway, an elevator almost to the level of Christ the Redeemer, then escalators the rest of the way.

Jesus Christ is muy grande. 30 meters tall plus an 8 meter base.  He ways in at 120 tons, one hand alone weighs 8 tons.  From Corcovada it is possible to see much of Rio and that’s why this tour is on the first to do list.

What you learn from Corcovada is that Rio is on the ocean, you sort of suspected that with the beaches—Ipanema and Copacabana among many others—but what I didn’t suspect was that it is also very hilly, stony hills, small mountains really. That means Rio is a blend of ocean and mountain in topography with a huge, vibrant city tucked into and on the mountains and up against the beaches.

The woman who gave our tour, a Gray Line  tour, spoke English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese on this tour alone.  Her linguistic skills were impressive.

After we returned, Kate and I took a quick jaunt in our hotel’s immediate vicinity, located a typical Brazilian restaurant and had a very interesting time ordering, again using a blend of Spanish, English and our very new Portuguese.

This area has a large gay population and a large young population, some singles and some young families.  It makes for vibrant street life, fun to see after a ship that felt like a floating retirement community.

Tomorrow we rest, then go on to the Plataforma show at 8:30 pm.  This show recreates the ambiance and costume of Carnival.  Supposed to be amazing.  We’ll see.

Rest, now.

Spring               Moon of the Southern Cross

Ipanema Plaza Hotel, Rio de Janiero   11/23/11   afternoon

We meandered.  When we woke up it had rained hard, then continued to rain a fine mist the rest of the morning.  Cooled things down to 22 degrees centigrade.

First stop.  The breakfast buffer (sic) promised on our hotel information.

This was as good a buffer as I’ve had.  I started with two Brazilian sausages, think big Vienna sausages, added some B. cheese bread and ovos mexido, scrambled eggs, and got some tea, a roll and a preserved fig. I found Kate outside on the Opium’s deck and we had our desayunos.

I noticed many of the Brazilians had salama, boiled ham, a roll and some fruit.  In my experience breakfast is the most culturally specific meal of the day, the one most given to habitual menus.

After changing some more money, at today’s favorable rate of R$1.75 to the US dollar, we walked out into the rain.  The front desk had pointed us toward an internet cafe a couple of blocks away, so we headed toward it.

This is a late night town, so in spite of the fact that it was 11:00 am, businesses were being opened, a few folks were having a late breakfast or an early lunch, Ipanema was still waking up.  Shops here tend to be narrow and not too deep, though businesses on the main retail street seem to have larger stores.  A hardware store, for example, had concrete stacked in sacks at its front, shovels and other digging implements hung on the wall and a crowd of 5 men gathered around a cash register, maybe 30 feet inside at the back.

A small grocery was the same, with a meat counter at the back, a cooler on the right as you face the store from the street and goods like laundry soap on the left while fruit and candy dominate a narrow row that broke the store into two short aisles.  I bought a minalba for R$2.59, a bottle of water con gas.

On the main street there were two larger grocery stores that, even though they extended further back, still had an open front with cashiers almost on the sidewalk.

The LGBT community comes to Ipanema for vacation, or so says the mini-guide to Rio in our room.  Not hard to believe from the street traffic.

Tonight’s the big Carnival show that begins at 8:30 pm.  I canceled the Sugarloaf tour we had tomorrow since it started at 8:30 am and frankly we’re toured out.

Something I’ve not mentioned, but has been a constant theme since Santa Marta is futbol. All of the countries feature futbol teams and players though Buenos Aires and Rio seem obsessed.  Our guide in Rio, Marita, explained that there was Boca, her team and Tio, “the enemy team.”  She said this tongue in cheek, sort of.

She also said, and I’ll end with this for now. “Travel makes us bigger people.”

Spring               Moon of the Southern Cross

Ipanema Plaza Hotel, favela Ipanema   Rio   11/23/11   late afternoon

Dogs barking outside. Sounded like dogs facing off on either side of a fence.  A sound Kate and I know well.

Ferdinand, our taxi driver from the port, said that keeping dogs has become a craze throughout the city.  Veterneria have sprung up all over, too. We’ve seen a lot of them.  There are also dog walkers, though none with the 8 to 10 doggy charges common in New York.

The dogs we’ve seen here are far away from the dogs of Ecuador, where Paul, our otherwise sensitive said dogs were just “small animals.”  Our visit there to the Hacienda Castella emphasized this since the owner was “unusual” because he buried his dogs.  “We just throw them away,” Paul said, meaning, I took it, that dogs were to them as raccoons are to us, animals on their own to whom we owe no special allegiance.

Carioca’s (Rio citizens) seem to have approached a USA pole on the small animal to beloved pet spectrum with their dogs.

In both Chile and Argentina we were told, appearances matter.  To have respect you had to dress for it.   My sense is that Cariocas are different, though business is still formal and our bus driver yesterday did have on cuff links.  Here the attitude toward life seems to matter more.

It’s too simplistic to call it hedonistic, though here too the beach scene, the extravagant night life and the sale of bling might argue otherwise.  My sense is that Cariocas relish their life, their city and want to live their life fully in their beautiful city.  This is different from hedonism where pursuit of pleasure trumps morality and a work ethic.

This is a Latin American city, in a Latin American country, that wants to break out of the boom and bust cycle of Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Argentina.  They want a stable, growing nation, one well-governed and respected internationally.

In 2014 they host the World Cup of Futbol, the largest sporting event in the world, and follow it with the 2016 Olympics.  These events will push Brazil into the global consciousness in a way they have not yet achieved.  They want to be seen and heard.

What the world will see, based on my two days here, yes I know that’s way too small a sample of way too small a chunk, is a nation that both knows how to work and how to play, a nation that has mixed Portuguese, indigenous, African and Spanish cultures into a blend not visible anywhere else, a musical, colorful, fun-loving people.

My feeling is that the world could use a world power not wedded to the grim work ethic of the United States or China, a world power that could inject a little salsa into our Beethoven.

Spring            Moon of the Southern Cross

Rio de Janerio    Ipanema Plaza Hotel  11/23/11  favela Ipanema

Rain here this morning.  Surprisingly for this spring journey, it’s the first rain I can recall on land after we left Ft. Lauderdale in tornado conditions.  We had rain—oops, Puerto Montt had rain—during the Chilean fjords, but otherwise, nada.

Rio, though, has abundant and tropical vegetation, including the Tijuca Rain Forest inside the city limits.  We’re going to wander today, check out the beach and the neighborhood.  Maybe get wet.

The folks here range from the very muscular, beach boys literally, with very small bathing suits that leave little to wonder about, and muscular human mules pulling or pushing large carts through the city, small trucks, to women, some stunning, others merely pretty, few of us well-aged types, all tourists, I think and a smattering of middle-aged folks mostly running small groceries, waiters and waitresses, hotel employees.

The buildings, at least the newer ones, were, unfortunately, built during the modernist era and are large rectangles of concrete and glass with little to recommend them to the eye.  There are, here and there, remnants of a colonial or late 19^th century era.

Spring             Moon of the Southern Cross

Ipanema Plaza  Rio de Janerio   11/24/11

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea muy grande culpa.  Last night I knew our pickup for the Plataforma Carnival Show was 8:30 pm.  We waited and waited.  No gray line tour.  We gave up and Kate got ready for bed.

Then, I called gray line and let them know.  Only Spanish & Portuguese said the gray line person.  “I don’t believe you,” thinking this was a convenient excuse to get the crazy gringo off the line.

I went out to the internet cafe to e-mail our travel agent.  But. Surprise.  Totally.  It had closed.  An internet service closed at 9:30 pm?  It seemed a crime against nature.

Back to the hotel.  In the lobby the grayline guy.  Hmm.  We waited and we waited. Yes, but, 9:15 is the pickup time.  The show doesn’t start until 10:00.  Still convinced I was right, I went back to the room.

Then it occurred to me, a bit late in the process, to recheck the confirmation e-mail.  Which read:  9:15 pickup.

So, I had talked myself into an 8:30 pm pickup and stood doggedly by it in the face of all evidence to the contrary.  Not only did this cost me $210, the ticket charges, but it cost me in a coin much more dear.

Self-confidence.  Over the last year I’ve done this same thing 3 times.  That is, I’ve either forgotten something completely or had the time solidly wrong.  This is new behavior for me.  And not pleasant to   experience.  The question is, why?

It doesn’t feel neurological since I don’t experience this same phenomenon in other parts of my life.

It has something to do with appointments and times.  In part it is an odd combination of not enough going on in my life to make me check very carefully as I used to do, each day, and too much going on, that is, too much to remember easily, but enough to make me very careful about it.

I don’t think that’s the whole of it, only, perhaps the symptom.  A funny thing to have hit me at 65, but it may be time for me to retire.

My life has been one of agency: political, work, creativity, volunteer work.  Agency is a key part of who I am, who we all are, and continuing to matter in the world is not only important; it can be an obsession.  It may be for me.

I’ve chosen volunteer work that demands intellectual and political acumen.  The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has given me 10 years of very interesting labor.  The Sierra Club has allowed me 4 years of playing, once again, in the political bigs.  These volunteer “jobs” have taken on just that character, lots of responsibility and an accumulation of tasks.

This will be my last season as the chair of the Sierra Club legislative committee.  In May I plan to set it aside.  Much as I like it, the time commitment and the driving required no longer make sense for me.  The MIA has other options.  I could go to sustaining status and get fewer tours or I could choose a new volunteer role since new ones will be opening up, perhaps even one I can do from home.

Lastly and this is key, too, there is my need to be right.  To know.  For sure.  This need has driven my scholarship, my political work, my search for the truth.  Though I know it is a nettlesome aspect of my personality, I’ve none the less stuck to it as a core attribute.

At a deep level the need to know is a defense against the darkness.  Understanding and knowledge can push back the strong cold hand of the void by providing pitons on the wall swallowed by the abyss.  Of course, and this is the real rub, they can only hold up the climber for a while.  Eventually the rock crumbles, a rope breaks, the climber tires and gives up and the abyss claims him, no matter how much he knew, how many pitons he’s stuck on the wall.

It’s time for me to lean into the abyss, to welcome it and realize its inevitability.  No, not suicide.  Just acceptance.  Then I can give up my need to be right.  Hopefully without giving up the wonderful benefits it has offered.

All this from one missed appointment in Rio.

Spring   Moon of the Southern Cross

Ipanema Plaza lobbty  Rio de Janerio  favela Ipanema   11/24/11  4:10 pm

Never have been a beach guy.  Fair skin.  No Arnold Schwarzenegger and, most important, no beaches in the midwestern haunts of my youth.  Kate and I have gone to Hawai’i many times, a beach place for most, but for me, a world of mountains, waterfalls, guava trees, hiking and, no tourists.  Because they go to the beaches.

The ocean is beautiful there, mysterious and ever present, but the notion of sitting ;passively on sand, waiting for skin cancer to catch up with me?  Nope.

Here in Rio, though, I’ve come to appreciate the beach.  The beach is the city’s front yard.  All the kids can come out to play there.  Beach volley ball, beach volleyball futbol rules with feet and head only, training for futbol, training for beach volleyball, physical fitness, a place to meet friends and to make new ones.  While away a half a day with a cold beer from the small huts along the sidewalk, perhaps a sandwich, then back to the blanket.

It’s still not for me.  Too hot when it’s sunny and too uninteresting when the temperature appeals to me, but I get it as a city’s place to let loose.

I walked the Ipanema sidewalk yesterday in the evening, a mosaic of black and white unevenly cut tiles laid out in a wave like pattern.  Rio had not spoken to me as a city until then.

Out there, though, Sugarloaf in the distance clouds over its peaks and the mountain range behind it also enclouded, the sun breaking through on its way down, the surf coming gently onto the tannish sand, carioca’s sweeping by on bicycles, skate boards or on foot, the beauty of the place was too obvious to miss.

This is a gorgeous city with beaches, ocean, mountains and even a rainforest.  Favela’s with brick colored roofs and white walls climb the sides of the mountains while modernist Rio lines the beaches.

Even with all these pluses, Rio still doesn’t make it to the top of my list because it’s not in the stream of culture that really fascinates me.  Give me an old European city like Vienna, Budapest, Istanbul or Singapore, Bangkok, Beijing.  Or a place like the Chilean fjords, or the temples of Angkor, the Rocky Mountains or northern Scotland.  These pull me, will make cross oceans, continents.

Beaches and salsa, even the beauty here in wonderful city, will probably not pull me again.

Spring    Moon of the Southern Cross

Ipanema Plaza Lobby Rio de Janerio  favela Ipanema   11/24/11   5:15 pm

Liminal zones.  Beaches are the original liminal zones, places neither ocean nor shore, a place where things of the water can try out land and where things of the land can try out water.  The liminal zones in freshwater lakes are often hunting grounds, predators taking advantage of other animals need for water.

Here, too, the beach is a liminal zone, places where the various tribes of the city can stake out temporary territory, meet, thrash out new arrangements.  Places where a thief can create the liminal zone between law and chaos.

The prominence and beauty, bonita, of these beaches has made liminal zones a complex  and integral part of this culture.

Dreams, too, are liminal zones, lying between the waking world and the sleeping world.  Life could be said to be a liminal zone between non-existence and the abyss.

Dawn and evening are also liminal zones, marking the transition from light to dark, day to night and back again.

Liminal zones have an important spot in magic, powerful spots where veils can be rent, energy stolen or transferred, thus Celtic magic, for example, often calls for rituals as the day fades into twilight or as two seasons change, like Samain Eve, or Hallowe’en.

Spring       Moon of the Southern Cross

Rio de Janerio  Juan Carlos Jobin International Airport  11/24/11

A Thanksgiving to remember.  Our thanksgiving dinner, for right now, is an empanada apiece, a large cheese bread and a beer for Kate, agua con gas for me, in the elegant setting of gate 11, the international terminal.

It’s also our first thanksgiving in the southern hemisphere, below the equator and celebrated in the spring.

Thanksgiving in Rio.  Could be a family tradition I suppose.  Pricey, but it could be fun.  Still, Lutsen’s a hell of a lot closer.

We had the assistance of a porter here at JC Jobin International.  We needed it.  I’m not sure what we left back home, but it was bolted down, I’m sure.  We were not poster children for traveling light this time, occasioned in large part by the 40 day length of our trip, plus the journey from equatorial climates to sub-Antarctic.

You might wonder, as I did, who JC Jobin was.  He wrote the Girl from Ipanema (we met her in here wheelchair) and was a big guy in tango and bossa nova music.  Sort of like having Cole Porter International, I guess.

We learned on the ride out to the airport that our cruise made Brazilian TV for its long suffering.  I thought they were interviewing the woman I saw because she was a willowy blond with supermodel good looks.  Turns out they were, they just asked her questions about the virus and how she managed to survive it all.  Looking good, I’ll say.

Now for a ten hour flight to Atlanta, US Customs while sleep deprived and another of four hours or so back to MSP. Then the super shuttle, then home.

Hope the turkey was good, the relatives survivable and your team won the football game.  We’re coming home.

Samain               Moon of the Northern Sky

Delta flight 060   Over the Caribbean near Haiti 33955 feet  3451 miles from Rio

We’re back in the clockwise drain cycling Northern Hemisphere after 4 weeks plus below the equator.  I can’t tell what time it is because we are neither here nor there, between time zones, between destinations, headed for Atlanta.  It’s early morning, still dark and I can see the big dipper out my window.

Cabin lights are off, but Kate’s watching a movie.  I just woke up about a half an hour ago.  My seat is right next to the engine, which makes a lot of noise and I can’t hear the movies, so I’m writing.

I left my kindle in the Rio airport.  This is a bummer, but not terrible. I’ll have to buy another one, but all my books are still in my library on Amazon.

International flying, fast travel, we’re moving at 547 miles per hour far above the surface, is the counter  point to cruising where the Veendam’s top speed was 18.2 kph while moving on and through the world ocean.  Fast travel has its obvious advantages.  It won’t take us a month to get home, for example, but I  would only call this travel in the loosest sense.

In international air travel, the journey is from one modern airport to another modern airport, with blue skies or darkness as the medium through which you move.  There is no, or very little, reference to the physical and cultural changes occurring beneath plane. Then you land.  Somewhere else, in that modern airport.  It’s not until you leave the airport that the journey once again takes on physical and cultural specificity.

Slow travel, whether by train, car or ship, moves us through changing physical and cultural landscapes at a pace the mind and body can absorb.  This is travel.  Leaping from one spot, say Rio, to another, say  Atlanta, in ten hours requires the abandonment of all the pleasures of travel to speed.

Yes, this same speed shrank the world, and makes reachable virtually everywhere, but the traveling can only begin after the airline ride is over.

Slow travel makes the means a part of the journey.  The car on a road trip.  The train on a trip across the country to New York City passes through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland at ground level. A cruise ship goes from port to port by necessity.

Fall                          Moon of Thanksgiving

Quick note to say we’re back in town.  Have posts from Rio that I was unable to add due to internet kerfuffles both days we were there.

We’ve picked up the dogs, listened to our messages and will do some more re-entry stuff tomorrow.  I’ll have the Rio posts by then, too, plus, I hope, some photographs now that I’m back with my good photo editing software.

Good to be back in the States, in Minnesota, at our house.

 

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross
25 degrees 38 minutes S 45 degrees 6 minutes W course 038 NNE
The winds continue to howl out of the northeast, 47 mph now and 9 on the Beaufort Scale. White caps and spindrift. The Veendam shakes in the wind and shudders when it hits a trough. The overall feel is one of stability, made possible by the stabilizers and a heading almost directly into the wind.
The end of a cruise has a particular atmosphere, organized, ritualized. Good-byes are said to crew and new friends. Packing happens, then the suitcases disappear. Debarking times come color coded and numbered. The bill, just like a motel or a hotel, can stay on the credit card so express check out is the norm.
In Rio we go down the gangway and have our key cards scanned for the last time. After that we cannot return to the ship.
It’s a little like the end of a year at college. People have come together from disparate places to share a common activity, but at the end of that activity, the semester, the cruise, any linkages made get broken when transportation for home comes. Minds turn away from the common life shared and begin to refocus on lives, children, homes, jobs, the usual.
Jerry and Marsha, our table partners since Ft. Lauderdale, have been splendid dinner companions each night for a month. An unusual experience, to find two folks interested in similar things and able to keep the conversational ball in play. We’ll stay in touch.
There is, of course, still Rio. We’ll see the statue of Christ the Redeemer, go up Sugarloaf in cable cars and see a performance of Carnival music and costumes. Walk on Ipanema beach. Enjoy the street life in the neighborhood around Ipanema.
We gave up Thanksgiving this year for this trip. It will be a travel day. Next year I hope we can Thanksgiving at Lutsen with our close family all in attendance.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

South of Sao Paulo 26 degrees 29 minutes S 45 degrees 47 minutes W Course 038 nne

Since we left the Rio de la Plata estuary after Montevideo, the seas have been high with winds ranging from 51 mph to 39 mph, Beaufort 11 to Beaufort 8. My episode of sea-sickness vanished over night and I once again have my sea-ears. The pitch requires sea legs, too, and those sometimes find me rolling when I should stand and standing when I should roll, but that’s fun. Sea-sick, not so much so.

The bags stand stuffed with clothes we brought, gifts and clothes we’ve purchased. We’re ready, almost, for debarking. Toiletries and tomorrow’s clothes, our Kindles, the computer, passports and all they await final packing in the morning.

We see Brazilian customs and immigration aboard ship before leave. Brazil is one of the BRIC countries, the rising future hegemons and now has some swagger. I’m glad the world stage has begun to fill with other countries vying for prominence and power. It will be interesting to see how Brazil handles its new role from the inside.

Speaking of the BRIC nations. Did the Confucian Peace Prize surprise anyone else? I haven’t googled it because internet minutes here are expensive, so I don’t know how official it was, but Vladimir Putin? A peace prize? Like awarding one to GW or a neo-con.

He got it, according to the news piece I read, for his 1999 stand against Chechnya, showing Russians he would defend them. Is this the new world order? Dictators and strongmen get the nod from others of their ilk? God, I hope not.

The final meal aboard tonight. In days gone by we used to get the parade of a flaming baked Alaska, the finishing flourish to many, if not most cruises. Now we get dancing and singing waters, waving napkins and introducing dishes with a song. Very odd.

Why not baked alaska? A fire hazard, apparently. Wonder who figured that one out?

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

South of Rio, North of Montevideo rough seas

Wrote the above yesterday looking out the lanai windows. Watching the deck go up and down. Big mistake. So, I spent yesterday in bed recovering from an indelicate moment of sightseeing.

Last night we had winds that I observed at 51 mph or 9 on the Beaufort Scale. These were the strongest winds we encountered on the whole trip. The Pacific was just that.

I’m in the showroom right now awaiting the disembarkation talk. Getting on and off cruise ships is a logistical feat of some proportions and requires co-ordination.

Kate, with her superior spatial skills, has already begun packing. She doesn’t like it, but sees it as her job. It’s fine with me. I’m delegated to attend this briefing and take notes.

The mood, buoyed by up beat light rock, has a festive spirit. Oh, boy, we’re getting off! Less than half of us have been on since New York. The tech guy has carried the obligatory laptop out and placed it on the clear plastic lectern. The showroom lights are a glitter.

We’re getting off last since we are an independent disembarkation, taking a taxi to the Tulip Plaza hotel in the Ipanema beach neighborhood of Rio. We’ll spend two nights there before getting on a plane at 10:20 pm Rio time, headed for Atlanta, then home.

I’m ready to get home, perhaps a bit more than Kate, but we both miss the dogs and our digs, especially, at this point, the space.

That’s done. We’ve been given the info and the opportunity to clap for all the staff teams. Now we can get about arranging items for our departure.

Last night the Captain declared the health protocols lifted, so we have one full day with salt and pepper on the table and the option to select our own food at the Lido cafeteria. Our table mate Jerry wondered if lifting the protocols had anything to do with clearance for our ship in Rio. Maybe so.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

Montevideo, Uruguay On the banks of the Rio de la Plata, overlooking the Atlantic to the East

Travel brings the unexpected. A primary purpose, of course, but after tours with guides, I had become a bit dulled to the canned formula of the best this and the most that and the very special music. Not saying it was all boring, far from it, but too predictable.

Not today. In Montevideo, a city of which I had no expectations, Kate and I had a wonderful day. After being pressed sideways into the dock, we ended up within walking distance of the old part of Montevideo. At about 10:30 I suggested to Kate that we walk into town, something we could do in only a handful of ports. She agreed.

Our way took us first past two warehouses, both as I described earlier, three stories high with iron doors spaced about 50 feet apart on each story, brick with chipped and rusted concrete outlining the doors and interior bays. The iron doors, once gray now have rust blooms, some just a few, others with the gray vanishingly small.

When we got past these, a painted walkway led us through a port welcome area with guides hawking city tours and a free shuttle to a leather factory. Beyond them a memorial to the sinking of the Graf Spee shared a park-like space with painted anchors and their chains, or sheckles, as we learned from our Captain. Policia Turistica sported chartreuse fluorescent vests and stared off, wherever people stare who face an entire day of standing in roughly the same spot.

Across an intersection a sign said, “Tourists Follow Green Sidewalk.” Guess what that made me want to do? Kate said, “We’re following the green sidewalk.” Oh, ok.

A large boulevard with some cobblestone lanes opened in front of us. The buildings were somewhat dilapidated, like the warehouses, concrete and brick that had seen better days. Or, maybe not. There was a shabby chic to it that appealed to me.

A wandering fellow tourist told us about a market up ahead, hidden by buildings ahead. We walked over that way. Sure enough there was a large open air market with many different things for sale, many of them tourist oriented, but just as many artisans selling their products.

Off the market area, pedestrian only somewhat like Florida Street in Buenos Aires, a large building held more shops and a number of restaurants each of which featured huge fires and metal grills filled with roasting meat: chicken, sausage, beef tenderloin, pork, lamb. Each restaurant had an awning with its name around four sides of an island that contained the fire, the roasting meat, a bar and an area for washing dishes. Tables and chairs flanked the islands in the open area created by the building, fans turning, cooling the diners.

When we firsts went through, tables were set and glasses sparkled. The smells of roasting meat had only begun to fill the room.

We looked in several shops, but continued up another, older pedestrian way with a slight incline. This had a few tourists shops, too, but began to sport a carneteria here, a fruit and vegetable market with their wares colorfully displayed in wooden crates on the sidewalk there, a bar named “Los Beatles” and a petfood store.

The buildings have a colonial look, similar to the older part of Panama City that we saw well over a month ago, balconies, molded cornices, plaster decorations. A few of the buildings had pastel colors, recently added.

Like the warehouses and the building across from the green tourist sidewalk these buildings had a shabby but not run down look to them, more like a neighborhood in which people really lived. As the mid-day heat had begun to settle on us, Kate started talking about air conditioning. About 45 minutes before that, I told her I’d give my 12:30 tour a pass to meander around Montevideo with her.

We walked back down the hill toward the large building with the restaurants.

Inside we walked past several folks hawking their restaurants, “Sir, a refreshing drink?” “Some lunch, mister?” and found a table underneath a fan at the Cafe Veronica.

The waiter welcomed us to Montevideo and to Uruguay with a genuine and warm greeting. When Kate got up to take a quick picture of the fire, another waiter came up and encourage her to go inside the kitchen to take her picture. After some insisting, she did. We had a meal that exceeded our expectations and a dessert, pancakes con leche that would bring me back to Cafe Veronica in a hurry if it weren’t so damned far away.

This was the kind of day I’d been missing, a day of just poking around, meeting some folks, sticking our heads into various places, seeing the layout for ourselves, discovering rather than being led.

We had a great day together then came back and took a nap.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

Montevideo, Uruguay 141 nautical miles east of Buenos Aires

Due to high winds the Captain hired a second tug and has pushed us into the dock sideways. Standing on deck as the ship moved straight in tbe direction I faced from my spot midway on the starboard side disoriented me. As if the earth had moved.

The dock here presents an old warehouse to our window, three stories high with metal doors stacked atop each other on each story. In the days before container shipping metal gangways must have been laid down between ship and warehouse, perhaps offloading by forklift.

Uruguay is the second smallest country in Latin America, about the size of North Dakota, with 3 million citizens.

At 12:30 pm I’m going on a walking tour of old Montevideo. It will be good to be on foot in a city though the back continues to complain. I remind my back that it just has to take it since we likely will never see Montevideo again.

It now seems the anti-gastro-intestinal illness protocols will not lift. We were fine from New York City through Valparaiso where we took on passengers booked only on the second segment of the cruise. Since then we have been exhorted frequently to wash our hands, wash our hands, WASH OUR HANDS. We can no longer serve ourselves on the Lido cafeteria either.

The protocols, designed by the CDC and mandated by the company at a certain illness threshold make sense, but they are a nuisance. Still, better than getting sick.

Six days from now we’ll be home so the trip has gotten down to days from a month, then weeks. Two days at sea remain and two days in Rio.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

Buenos Aires, second night

We were up and out early today, headed for the famed Argentine pampas and watching gauchos gaucho. Boy, what a let down. Turns out the pampas looks just like rural Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and so on. By just like I mean they grow beans (soybeans) and corn, raise cattle and do all this on fenced, flat land—the pampas.

In my mind the pampas have open lands, filled with gently swaying grass, gauchos with sort of flat hats twirling their boleros and bringing down cattle for branding and other matters necessary for rearing livestock.

Instead, the gauchos wear plump hats, scarves and a belt with coins. The more coins, the more gaucho. They also have ponchos. (I did see ponchos in my pampas.) Turns out gaucho means a mestizo, a blend of native South American and Spanish, who lives on the pampas. A country guy as opposed to an urban guy. The gaucho knows how to work the land and ended up managing the estancia’s for the European landowners or serving as ranch hands.

They also take small silver implements about the size of a large fountain pen, ride their horse very fast and insert the implement through a ring hanging from a piece of leather by a cotter pin. The ring is slightly larger than a finger ring so this is a feat of dexterity and good horsemanship. I don’t know what part of cattle rearing it relates to however.

It does relate to the gaucho coming over to the crowd, handing the ring to a lady and taking a kiss in return. Kate was the first woman chosen for a ring and a kiss. She was happy.

A dog, a very happy, tail in the air, prancing dog helped the head gaucho herd his group of ten geldings. This dog worked hard, running, nipping, barking and occasionally jumping up to bite a horse on the nose. He kept them in line.

After the horse wrangling, the ring spearing (penning?) and the women kissing, Kate took the opportunity to ride on a horse. She’s trained in dressage so this was a return to an old love. She looked great heading out to the large riding area. A good seat.

My back, still very painful from yesterday’s tweaking, made jumping into the saddle unappealing.

I took the time to take photographs of the barbecue. This was some barbecue. Low grills were on two foot high legs and extended over some 40 feet long and about three to four feet wide. On them were row after row of chorizo, dead, splayed chickens and several tenderloins of beef, by several I mean thirty or forty. We’re not talking briquets but burning logs. I have pictures.

Lunch involved, as you might imagine, the meat, potatoes, boiled beets, onions and carrots. Very good. All of it. Plus, for the bulk who drank, a lot of vino tinto and vino blanco. As for me, aqua sin gas.

A fokloric show followed. I’ll not tell you my opinion of this because Kate will read this entry.

Oh, ok. I’ll tell. I don’t like these deals where people barter their culture for money in a cheap, sensationalist and mostly bad way. This was one of those in my opinion. So there.

We got back and Kate took a nap. I turned around and went into Buenos Aires on the shuttle, which took me to Florida Street, a pedestrian only shopping area near a large city park.

My purpose in going back was to see the city for a bit at least (I barely left the room yesterday) and to buy some yerba matte. Matte is the national drink of Argentina, a blend of herbs that has a smoky tea-like flavor. I bought a small matte recepeinte, a cup of sorts and a straw. I’ll post a picture when I get b back.

While I waited for the shuttle back to the terminal, I took the yerba out and read (tried to read) the ingredients and directions. The shuttle driver smiled and reaching into the van pulled out a leather pouch with two cup holders. In the main body of the leather pouch he had a hot water bottle and a plastic container of yerba. In the cup holders he had a recepiente and a straw.

He didn’t speak English and I speak very little Spanish, but we looked at each other’s kit and smiled. It was one of those moments.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

Outside our room and down at the deck just above the waterlines, refueling is again underway. The promenade deck in front of our room and for about a hundred feet toward the stern of the ship has red cloth barriers over it, preventing other passengers from getting close to the refueling. We, however, can just open our door and go see. Which we did. Then, being the good northern European adults we are we turned around and came back inside. After all.

Way back in Santa Marta, after paying for our lunch at a bayside restaurant, I turned to go next door and follow Kate into the souvenir shop. When I put my foot out, only open air was available. There was a step, in the same white tile as the floor, and I didn’t notice it.

At the time I was proud of my ability to react quickly, turning back and onto the upper floor where my other foot already resided.

However. In so doing I wrenched my back. That’s how I got the foot back on the same surface as my other one, whipping my back around while my planted foot remained steady.

Since that afternoon, our first port in South America and our first one of this trip, I’ve had a sore back. It’s gone up and down in inflammation, mostly background noise, but today I torqued it again. This time I can’t move easily, even with some significant pain meds Kate has along. That means that, though Buenos Aires is within walking distance, I can’t walk the distance. So. No wandering around here, which I had very much wanted to do. Mark O. gave me a neighborhood, San Telmo, and it sounds wonderful. Maybe next circumnavigation of South America.

As Evita said, don’t cry for me, Argentina.

Tomorrow we head out onto to the pampas by bus so I’ll see some of it on the way there. Also, we’re here overnight again tomorrow night, so perhaps I’ll have a shot then. Gauchos and boleros.

Even so, the travel malaise I spoke about in recent blogs has abated and I’m eager to get outside.

We watched cormorants or grebes today, flying between our ship and the Log-In Pantanal, a cargo ship being loaded just across the way. These birds are fish eaters, with the ability, like loons, to turn and suddenly disappear under the water. When one comes up with a silvery, squiggly catch, the race is on to get it eaten. The others flock to the successful bird, flail around, trying to knock the fish out and eat it themselves. In one scrum I watched the fish passed among five different birds until one of them got that long neck pointed skyward and let the fish slide in.

We are in shirt sleeve weather here, perhaps 80-82 and sunny, a change from the cloudy jacket weather of the Chilean fjords and Ushuaia.

Got good news today. We discovered that our checked bags going home have a 70 pound weight limit. That means we should be able to check bags without penalties and carry our fragile treasures on board.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

34 degrees 43 minutes S 57 degrees 48 minutes W course 300 WNW Rio de Plata estuary

Threw out my back this morning. Gonna curb sightseeing here. Damn.

Our journey up the Rio de Plata to Buenos Aires moves forward at 12 knots, a stately pace, occasioned in part at least depth, I’m sure, and other traffic.

A cargo ship of some kind just passed us headed east toward the Atlantic. It had storage containers of a kind I saw in Ushuaia and couldn’t suss out. They were flat, about 2.5 feet deep and maybe 30×30, made of metal.

The water in the estuary is no longer ocean blue, but top soil brown. Rivers have many functions, but one of them deposits wind blown and erosion carried soil out first to deltas and then to sea.

It made me wonder if a time will come when we mine estuary bottoms and the fanned out oceanic streams of soil to replenish our ruined agricultural lands. A problem with that, of course, lies in the concentration of pesticides, fertilizers and toxic metals held in the soil. In the great fan of soil in the Gulf of Mexico, carried down by the Mississippi, the same phenomenon has created a great dead zone that no longer supports either plant or animal.

Today we return to Latin America though I learned last night from Table 31 dining partner Jerry that Argentina has a largely Italian heritage population, something in the range of 50%. Why not speak Italian?

The law of first impact. That’s why. This law of immigration studies says the first ethnic communities to settle (or seize) a new land have a disproportionate effect on later culture. This explains why Minnesota seems to have a largely Scandinavian heritage when in fact the dominant country of origin is Germany.

Caveat. We’ve seen port cities and then through a glass darkly. Still. The cultures of Latin America, at least the dominant European influenced cultures, those with Spanish or Portuguese first impact, seem thin to me. That is, the distinctions among them so far seem minor, the cultural equivalent of dialects, not different languages.

Also, the histories seem, as the United States must seem to Europeans, Asians and Africans, shallow. Long ago historical events happen in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, like the coming of the Conquistadors and the gradual settlement of South America by Spain and Portugal.

In the Andes or in the jungle there are cultures with deep histories, hundreds and thousands of years stretching away from the present, but this immersion in coastal South America has given me no opportunity to experience them.

From the top of our Arctic head to the tip of our Tierra del Fuegan toes, the dominant political cultures of the Americas are new. We are, in that sense, still very much the New World. Of course, for thousands of years there have been indigenous people here though even they crossed over from Asia.

Jumped up nouveau riche. Johnny come latelies to the human sport of culture creation.

The rise of China has put forward a civilization that is the exact opposite. It has known only internal struggle and change for most of the last 5,000 years and even has a dominant ethnic group, the Han, who have been present and in power, again, for much of those 5,000 years.

This means that the world will now have a hegemon as much civilization as state (one analyst calls China a civilization-state) and a second hegemon barely 400 years old, one with no dominant ethnic group and a changing, swirling ethnic mix. As they say, interesting times.