February 20  -  Montevideo, Uruguay and the Tango

This morning we arrived back on the South American continent.  It is a gorgeous, sunny and quite warm day here.  After the last few weeks it’s going to take some getting used to.

A little about the city. Montevideo is the capital of Uruguay and has nearly half the population of the country living here.  It is situated on the Rio de la Plata (Silver River in Spanish). The name Montevideo means “I see a hill” in Spanish and the story is that a sailor on Magellan’s voyage to circumnavigate the globe spotted a hill here and shouted that he saw what it turns out is the only hill around. The city and country have been at various times under Spanish, Portuguese, British and Brazilian control. The country finally became independent in 1825.  It was one of the earlier countries in the world to grant women the right to vote in the early 1900’s.

This evening we had a Tango show with local dancers.  Here’s some interesting trivia for you. The second most recorded song in the world (according to Soledad) is a tango called “La Cumparsita.” Coincidentally I used to play that as a kid on my accordion.  It was composed by a 17-year-old lad from Uruguay in 1917 and may be perhaps the best-known tango ever written. In fact, UNESCO has declared it a world cultural treasure. 

It's late now and I have to add something about tonight.  One of my new friends  saved me a seat in the front row next to the dance floor for the tango show.  There were four dancers, a trio of musicians, and a singer who sang tango songs.  They were all very good. Perhaps you can guess what happened.  Near the end of the show the four dancers got people in the audience to dance the tango with them.  One of the men tried to get several women and they wouldn’t do it. When he came to me I must have had an out of body moment because I went on to the dance floor with him. I did it! All I needed was a rose between my teeth to complete the experience. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like that in front of 350 people before, but I had such a good time. I’m going to have to check around and see if anyone captured my moment. If I find a photo, I may even post it.

Here’s what I did the rest of the day which was much less exciting. I took a tour which was supposed to explore the Uruguayan wine culture.  What we actually did was visit two wineries and have wine tastings. We went to a vineyard named Spinoglio whose wine I really enjoyed and to one called Bouza whose wines I didn’t really care for very much. The former had a lovely pavilion and we had a nice breeze blowing. To complement the wines  presented we each had a plate with fruit, nuts, cheese, bread and cold cuts. I forgot to mention that it’s late summer here so the grapes are ready to be harvested. At the first winery there were a lot of boxes with already picked grapes sitting at the ends of the rows of vines. At Spinoglio all the grapes are picked by hand. There was large circular vat where the grapes are thrown in to be pressed.  All I could think of was Lucy stomping  the grapes. They don’t have people stomping them.

At the second winery there was a collection of antique cars including a  model of the first car ever made.  Here too we had a platter of cheeses, cold cuts, and olives with some delicious breads.  The bread was my favorite thing at that winery. The cars were pretty spectacular too. After our tastings we drove back into the city to get back on the ship.  It was close to 2 PM and getting pretty warm and I have an appointment for a manicure at 4 PM so I’m back for good today.

Our guide Soledad spoke better English than I do and was very interesting. She told us about their education and health care and retirement systems. They sounded pretty good, but alternatively they have very high taxes here. They have income tax, a health care tax, a retirement tax (like our Social Security tax) and even a Value Added Tax (VAT) of 22%!  She told us that they don’t have big income differentials between different classes in Uruguay as are found in some other South American countries.  That may be true, but on our way back into the city we passed some pretty bad slum neighborhoods and I saw people checking out the trash in garbage cans.  Once again I thought that perhaps it would be good for every young American to come and live here for a while to get a greater appreciation of the many good things about our country. 

I’ll post some photos of the wineries another day because it’s late and I have to get up early for a tour in Buenos Aires. It’s the home of the tango; so who knows, I may have an opportunity to practice my newfound dancing skills. Olé!!