Punta's hand

A joke that never weathers, a photo op not missed -

Punta de Este's beach(ed) hand.

C

En route to La Boca, BA

Boy, bust banana



Young silouette


Tango tools

(Working backwards, no real order, as I get through photos and maintain a connection)

C - somewhat sunburnt, La Barra Uruguay

City tells its past

"The city, however, does not tell its past,



but contains it like the signs of a hand,
written in the corners of streets,



the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps,
the antennae of the lightning rods,



the poles of the flags,
every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

A gaucho's breakfast

Uruguay, Punta del Este

Late, blasted north across the massive Rio de Plata by aggressive winds, wet and packed into a station wagon Avis surely wouldn´t claim as its own, we arrived Punta late yesterday afternoon.

Our estancia hosts-to-be, Jasja´s parents, came for breakfast this morning. Jasja´s father, a distinguished, supremely accomplished player of the world´s business games, scoffed at our breakfast of coffee and baguettes. The fussy pouring of meuseli over yogurt.

Fixing R´s little cup of coffee in his stern gaze, Raymond announced:
"On the estancia, we´ll teach you to drink mate."

R pursed his lips (having tasted the bitter brew at Cin and Ian´s).

"The gauchos eat no vegetables, have no breakfast - only mate," he continued. "You´ll try when you arrive, so we can separate the men from the boys..."

C - intimidated/fascinated to meet horse-wrangling tea drinkers

Buenos Aires

"This city that I believed was my past ,
is my future, my present ;
the years I have spent in Europe are an illusion ,
I always was (and will be) in Buenos Aires."
- Jorge Luis Borges, "Arrabal", from Fervor de Buenos Aires (1921)
(the man who first put BA on my map)

Late this Sunday eve, R and I depart for Buenos Aires to visit Cintra and Ian, who have bought a remarkable apartment down there and set up a remarkable life.

They write, they explore, keep an excellent blog , make many friends, learn to take a long time cooking meat (and eating a meal), buy fantastically cheap but not cheap clothes, live in the flip world of our seasons and ski in August, master Spanish including elusive subjunctive, and do all of this just one hour behind us.

Intrigued, already overwhelmed by how much we'll see and the wonders that Cin and Ian will reveal, and anticipating the ache of why-can't-we-live-multiple-lives-in multiple-places coming on...

Last saw Cin into a taxi in the West Village many months back. Now she's almost a dual citizen of that other land.

Cin + Ian in a brand new context - will report.

C (your woman in BA, then Uruguay...)