Across the Rio de la Plata to the Promised Land
By: Gabriel Goldstein
Tags: Uruguay, Journey, Travel, Montevideo, South America Travel

1

Before eight o’clock this morning at my hostel in Buenos Aires, I had made a pot of tea for my thermos, a couple hard boiled eggs for the day in transit, and packed my bags up ship-shape. I said goodbye to the acquaintances I’d made over three nights there, at least the ones that were awake already. It was morning in a busy hostel and there was no sense of nostalgia, no space for emotion.

My time there was done and I went out to the street to catch a taxi. In the interest of saving money, I had looked into taking a city bus to the port, which wasn’t far away, but every option involved two separate bus routes or walking significant distances on each end, which is not recommended with all my baggages. I was tired and just needed to simplify.

Walked a couple of blocks in the direction of the port, and on Avenida Bolivar I hailed a cab. From the information on the seat back his name was Victor Hugo Francisco Bonfont, a hell of a name. Victor was a friendly man in his early sixties, the first taxi driver in a while to start a real conversation with me.

“¿Vacaciones?” he asked.

“Creo que es demasiado larga para ser vacaciones,” I said — I think it’s too long to be a vacation. “Viné de Virginia, en los Estados Unidos, por tierra. Por autobus y combi y colectivo y unas veces, por barco.”

“Phew,” he said, and from the sound he made, he got it, some sense of the immensities involved. He didn’t really say “phew”— it was like a kid playing cops and robbers, shooting their pistol, but with more sustain— but there’s no word for that, at least not in English. “Bastante,” he said.

“Si…” — when you want to agree with emphasis in Spanish, si becomes two syllables, the second with a rising tone — “y este es el último día de mi viaje. Montevideo es mi destino.” I could see in the rearview mirror his forehead in an expression of confusion.

“¿Por qué viniste tanto, para vivir en Uruguay?” he asked.

“No sé.” I felt humbled by the impending proximity of my destination, and the lack of any good reason for it. “Tenia una idea de vivir en Uruguay. No sé si es una buena idea… Pero quería ver otras partes del mundo, conocer otras culturas, aprender a hablar español…y no es un buen momento en mi país. Por ir a Uruguay, podría hacer todas estas cosas.”

He seemed to like my answer well enough. “Uruguay es muy tranquilo. Es como esto,” he said, motioning out the window to the passing city. “Te vas a gustar,” — you’re going to like it.

I didn’t know anymore. I asked him about his name, and said his parents must have really liked Victor Hugo, and he said, “mi padre tenía el mismo nombre.” “Entonces, tu abuelo le gustó mucho Victor Hugo,” I said, smiling.

Si, he said. The long si. This conversation was reminding me that two humans can just talk and be straightforward and decent with each other. He told me that his abuelo came from France, and I offered that “mi abuelo de abuelo, cinco veces, también vinó de Francia.” I knew this was the wrong way to say it — I didn’t know how to say great-grandfather — but it didn’t matter.

“Quizas vos también llevás el nombre de un escritor,” he said. “Tenés la edad adecuada.” This was an interesting idea, one that I’d never considered.

“¿Gabriel Garcia Marquez?” I asked.

“Claro.”

“A mi padre le gusta mucho Garcia Marquez, y probablemente en el tiempo yo nací.” I liked the idea of somehow being related to that magical writer. In my head I toyed momentarily with changing my name to Gabriel Garcia Marquez Goldstein. No, that was probably too much.

“Era un escritor buenisimo,” Victor Hugo Francisco Bonfont said.

“Si,” I said, the long one again. “Quizás el mejor.”

“Quizás.”

2

An hour before my boat is set to depart, sitting in the boarding area at the Colonia Express ferry terminal. This is the last day of my journey, at least insofar as my journey has been traveling to Uruguay. I am a bundle of nerves, woke up before my seven o’clock alarm this morning with a sense of worry that has been brewing in the back of my mind for awhile.

I’m having something of an existential crisis this morning while waiting for this boat, because the driving purpose of my short to medium term life for the past few years is about to change. The answer to the question “What are you doing?” has been “going to Uruguay”. In a half a day’s time, that will no longer be true. It’s a fundamental shift. The next part of the plan was always “get a job teaching English and live in Montevideo.” But what if I don’t like Montevideo all that much? What if I can’t find a decent job?

It is clear to me that I have unconsciously put a significant weight on this day, simply by being on my way here for such a long time. I might have been on my way to Uruguay before, but in my head the moment I decided I was actually coming was November eighth, 2016. Election night. I was at the Hillary Clinton Victory for Nevada party, in Reno, where I had been campaigning. It was in the chaotic aftermath of the outcome becoming clear, but before the results had been officially confirmed. Everyone knew, but no one could quite accept it. I decided that I had to leave the country as soon as I could get things together, and I knew that the place for me to go was Uruguay. Today being the twenty-fifth of March 2019, for eight hundred and sixty eight days, I’ve been on my way to Montevideo. I chose this place I will see in a few hours out of all the places in the world to live in, sight unseen, without at the time knowing anyone who had even been here.

Of course I’m not in any way obliged to stay, but in some ways I need to. I’m exhausted, worn thin, literally. My weight is somewhere around one hundred and thirty pounds. When I left the US, I was one-sixty. Emotionally and physically and psychically exhausted. Then there is the issue that I am almost entirely out of money. I anticipated this ahead of time, this moment, and set aside a thousand dollars for when I arrived in Montevideo, to get started and subsist for a little while I looked for a job. The only problem was that I ran out of other moneys before I got here, and have spent the majority of that thousand dollar arrival fund.

There are lifelines to which I could turn to: asking for a loan, living off a credit card, but I don’t want to. I have already gone into a fair bit of debt —nothing terrible, but a few thousand dollars — on this journey. Mainly I am in debt from going back to the states for a month last year for two weddings on opposite coasts. That is an extremely expensive country to travel in. What I really need to do is get to Montevideo and get a job and a room to live in, soon, and stay there for awhile. That all puts a certain pressure on me, and on this first impression I get today.

Technically, I am already in Uruguay, having passed through the migraciónes of Argentina and Uruguay downstairs. This was my second border crossing in a row that was painless. No chaos or confusion, no border agents asking weird questions or charging unexpected fees, no hangers-on offering services or money-changing at inflated prices. And now, here I am in this vast waiting room full of Argentinos and Uruguayos with a smattering of viajeros. There should be some sense of impending accomplishment, at how far I’ve come, of almost having made it to my destination, one that at times I doubted I would reach. This is the longest journey I’ve ever taken, in both time and distance. But there isn’t. I feel trepidation, obligation, necessity. This end is also the beginning.

Most of the cities in South America that I expected to like along the way I turned out to not really like all that much. Cartagena, Bogotá, Medellín, Quito. By that point I had learned not to expect to like Lima. There were cities I connected with to varying degrees: San Gil, Popoyàn, Cuenca, Arequipa, Cuzco, Salta. But the main difference is that the first group are all big if not mega cities, and the second group are small to medium ones. Montevideo is a million and a half people. Before preparing for this journey, I had barely heard of the cities I liked the most, if I’d heard of them at all. I chose Montevideo, years ago, from the United States.

Did I mention that the city with the highest cost of living on this entire continent is Montevideo, Uruguay? Almost immediately upon arrival I will embark on those necessary pursuits. I have two job entrevistas at language schools lined up for tomorrow, and I’ll need to get my clothes washed or buy some respectable pants, figure out how one gets to these schools on public transit, because I can’t afford to take taxis. Then, once I have a job I need to land a decent place to live, because my money will run out very fast in big city hostels. There is no rest for the weary. There is a lot of ahead of me, and I feel done, feel like I’m ready for a good long rest. This is the place my mind is in, sitting here waiting for my boat.

3

looking back on Buenos Aires

An hour and a half later, somewhere out in the middle of the Rio de la Plata. When I saw it for the first time a few days ago from the shore, the first thing I noticed about this river — really much more of a bay; you can’t see across — is that it is brown. From the name, I supposed that it would be beautiful, maybe silvery somehow in the light, but it’s not. Just a huge space of flat light-brown water, a lot like Lake Ponchartrain in Louisiana. Maybe sometimes it has a different color, though it hasn’t rained once over the past three days, which would seem to cast doubt on the idea that this is from runoff. The rio is big enough that we have been crossing for half an hour and I haven’t found any sign of the opposite shore yet.

My mood and condition are improved. Almost as soon as we set off from the dock, my stresses diminished. So strange how these emotion things work. Sitting in the waiting area, I could find endless reasons to worry. Now, none of them seem convincing. The reasons are still there, but they don’t seem worth fretting over. What will be will be. I will figure it out and do what I need to do. I’ll either love Montevideo or hate it, but more likely our relationship will fall somewhere in between.

But then, boats almost always have this effect on me. To be floating on water gives me a sense of freedom and lightness that maybe nothing else does. Makes me feel better about life, being on a boat. It’s like a giant magic trick played on reality. Like, ha, gravity, ha, reality! You think you’re so serious? I’m on a boat! This isn’t even a nice boat, just a big floating box of metal and plastic and rubber, powered by a giant gasoline engine, churning away. You give me a good boat, a canoe or sailboat, to be outside, on deck, on the water, in the elements, be they friendly or vengeful — and I’m just going to feel like I’m in a dream, that the world is a dreamy, mystical, mythical place.

On this boat, although there are decks, they don’t let passengers outside. We are confined to this one large main room with about three hundred seats. There aren’t even big windows, so to get a good view of the brown water, you have to look over the shoulder of the person with the window seat. It is also costing me a significant amount of money. A day and a half’s budget for this five hour ferry and bus combination.

I am thinking about all the transit vessels I’ve been on in this journey. Whatever its shortcomings, in terms of comfort and modernity, this ferry is a far cry from all of them. The little open-air lanchas across Lago de Atitlán. The old tug-ferry beast that took me to la Isla de Ometepe. Of course, El Titanic del Caribe, the ramshackle Panamanian motorboat that crashed through the waves for twelve hours along the coast of the Darien all the way to Colombia. Capitan Roger’s little thirty-person ferry tour-boat on Lake Titicaca.

Compared to all of them, this boat is in a different decade. It’s possibly even a part of this current decade. It’s not terribly loud; there are no gasoline fumes. There are big video screens on the cabin walls. At first they played safety videos, then commercials for fancy touristy things in Uruguay, like staying at estancias — ranches or country estates — and drinking wine while riding horses. Those felt like they didn’t apply to me. The feature presentation is some kind of trivia game that I’m trying not to pay attention to.

And now, my next check of the horizon, there it is, the peninsula of Colonia de Sacramento up ahead, a dark outline to the brown. I’m about to be in Uruguay.

4

We are rolling along Highway 1, traveling parallel to the coast from Colonia del Sacramento to Montevideo. There was a Colonia Express bus waiting for those ferry passengers traveling onward right outside the terminal, and as soon as everyone was loaded up, off we went. It was very organized. Simple, really. The boat arrived more or less when it was supposed to, because it left on time, and the people who processed the tickets and loaded the bags and drove the bus were all where they were supposed to be. Just like the customs and migrations this morning.

The most surreal thing is the scenery out of my window. The whole way has been rural, agricultural land. Gently rolling hills, deciduous trees mixed in with some pine, little ponds. Corn fields, cows grazing, barbed wire fences, round hay bales, fields bleached a brittle yellow in the sun; a palette ranging from brown to gold to green. Except for the occasional palm, or the fact that many of the trees are eucalyptus, this whole landscape could easily be found in Central Virginia, where I’m from. It’s more like Virginia than Perú or Colombia or México, at least looking out my window. It makes sense: we are essentially on the Atlantic Coast, the same ocean, and I have come far enough that this is a temperate latitude.

The houses are different, more modest in size and style, generally more run down than most in Central Virginia. But then I’ll see a ranch style house with a carport and pickup truck and satellite dish. It is so bizarre to me that of all the worlds between here and there, I have unknowingly chosen to live in the landscape that most resembles the place where I’m from. It’s not exactly the same — when we cross a river, in the lowlands and floodplain bordering, the vegetation is wild and overgrown, and with its hair down you can see that this land is a little bit different from my home state. It is pampa like central Argentina. But between fields there are patches of forest and I recognize many of the trees, sycamores and oaks and willows.

5

As we come into Montevideo, it starts to rain. My first looks at the city I’ve chosen to live in are of some neighborhoods on the outskirts, buildings of mid-twentieth century construction, cement and concrete, then some kind of petroleum refinery or chemical processing area. There is nothing remotely romantic about any of it. We pass the industrial port, then a little hill with houses climbing up the sides, and past that the real city shows its face. Some slightly tall buildings, a waterfront, a giant white cruise ship docked in the harbor, the water a gray-brown by this point. We drive through a fairly nondescript neighborhood, and then a slightly nicer one, trees lining streets, buildings with vaguely Spanish touches like tejada roofs or Moorish arches above balconies, but mostly it is uninspired and built in the last fifty years. All of it could be in Buenos Aires, but not in any of the best parts of that city. It is not a great first impression. It also isn’t so bad.

Around five o’clock we come into the Tres Cruces bus terminal, a bus station similar to what I saw in Argentina, a giant multi-story mall building with the boarding platforms outside, lines of people standing in line, waiting for their buses. I collect my bags from under the bus and venture inside to take Uruguayan pesos out of an ATM. It strikes me that there are a lot of people everywhere, in the mall and then out on the sidewalk, crossing the streets, and that they’re going about their normal lives in this city, and the fact that I have arrived at my destination after a journey of over six hundred days has almost no significance.

I walk past a long line of taxis to a busy corner where I find a parada de autobús. I’ve spent way too much money already today, so I need to take public transit. There is a little bus-stop shelter, but with the people inside and all my bags on, I don’t fit, so I stand out in the light rain. At the stop there is no map of bus routes, no names, just a sign on a pole with a lot of route numbers. I ask a white-haired woman who is also waiting what bus I need for the Ciudad Vieja, and she says la Plaza Independencia.

When the Independencia bus comes, I climb to the first step after all the other passengers get on and ask the driver if he goes to the old city, and he shakes his head and says curtly “no, necesitás la Ciudad Vieja,” and pulls off. That makes sense. I go back to the curb and wait another while. There is a lot of traffic. When the Ciudad Vieja bus comes along, it is twice as expensive, almost two dollars, and I get on without asking any questions, just pay my fare and miraculously find an open bench seat. I am able to get my bags down just before losing my balance as the bus lurches into the river of vehicles. In fact I do fall over, but right into my seat.

I collect myself and ride for a minute or two, then walk up to the driver and make a request. “Por favor, dime cuando estamos cerca de la Plaza Constitución.” It is clear he can’t understand me, but he says, “si, si.” I know this face from those of English students who don’t understand me. “¿Este autobus va cerca de Plaza Constitución?” I ask, and he says si but his eyes don’t say si and I know what he is doing, what I often do, pretending to understand — just say yes and hope it starts to make sense later. Upon further questioning, he says Plaza Independencia, and I ask him if that’s the last stop, and he says si.

Back to my seat, enough of that. From the map I have, it looks like Plaza Independencia is right on the edge of the old city, and I could walk eight or so blocks from there. How frustrating that the Ciudad Vieja bus doesn’t actually go into the Ciudad Vieja. But I can handle this. I will just wait until the bus stops at a big plaza, and the driver will say something, and I’ll get off.

But the bus doesn’t stop at the big plaza, just rolls through and takes a turn a couple blocks after, the wrong direction, and we are going away from the Old City. Every block is an extra one I will have to walk with sixty pounds of bags. I ask the driver to let me off at the next stop, and he says “ok, ok” with the name of a different Plaza, and I say “no, no, Plaza Constitución,” and a man behind me asks “¿necesita ayuda?” — if I need help and I say “si, quiero bajarme.” The bus is showing no signs of slowing down. “You need help?” he asks again, now in English. His eyes are kind but also full of confusion. It would appear that the people here can’t understand my Spanish.

“Yes. I need to get off the bus. I’m going near Plaza Constitution and this is the wrong way.”

He doesn’t understand me. I try again in Spanish and we can’t connect in any language. He doesn’t understand and the driver doesn’t understand and I don’t even understand how they can not understand and confusion is winning and I shout “¡Pare por acá, por favor!I” in desperation. The driver immediately pulls the bus over and lets me out. They think I’m crazy.

It is amazing that after all this time and travel that on my first day in a new country I would still be so helpless, that taking a city bus would be such an ordeal. I strap on my bags again. The rain has stopped but the street and sidewalks are wet. I carefully walk ten or so blocks up and down hills, aware that I am liable to fall, watching my steps more than the scenery. On an impersonal block across from a dry cleaner and a closed, florescent-lit panadería, I find the hostel that I booked online from Buenos Aires.

Up the steps, the owner of the Punto Berro Hostel, a serious-faced Indian man, is working the reception. I am booked for two nights, but I ask if they give discounts by the week. He seems taken aback, and switches immediately to English. No more of this fun español stuff.

“This is a very good price. It is already lower from the high season, and includes dinner and breakfast. What’s wrong with the price?” he asks, offended. He then starts in on a lecture about how expensive everything is in Uruguay. “You don’t understand from the other countries,” he says. “A burger is ten dollars. A soda is five dollars.” He continues listing exorbitant prices. “And I am giving you two meals and a bed for twelve.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I am sorry that I asked. I am not sorry, but I just want it to stop. “How many nights do you want?” he says, as if by being adamant and defensive about the price, he might have persuaded me to stay for longer. I pay for my two nights, regret having made a reservation before seeing the place, and retreat to my room. I want to go see something of my chosen city before it gets dark, but as I sit down on my bed I realize it simply isn’t happening. The very first thing I do upon arriving to Montevideo is lie down and take a nap.

6

I wake up to loud talking just outside the door. The next appropriate step is to make a pot of yerba mate. There is a large group of African people congregating in the kitchen. Three of the guys are cooking impressive, army-feeding amounts of fried chicken, vegetables and rice. I try to start a conversation, and gather that they’re from Senegal, but we don’t speak any of the same languages, so I boil my water and listen to the sound of theirs. It strikes me as musical.

The included hostel dinner is at eight in the dining room upstairs, and I am given a plate of pasta with a few dollops of red sauce from a jar, and the lightest dusting of parmesan powder. Food made without love. I take my plate and sit down across from a couple guys who turn out to be Mario and Dario from Spain. I find I can understand their accents fairly well, better than the Uruguayos I’ve encountered.

Dario, a little blonde guy with a huge dark beard, is studying at a University in Rio de Janeiro, and Mario, a tall, broad-shouldered guy with dark hair to his shoulders, has come to visit him. They are traveling together for a couple weeks, down the Brazilian coast, and here in Uruguay. A blonde girl who is staying in my same dorm room comes and sits down next to me. She is from Madrid. I can’t remember the last Spanish travelers I’ve met, but here are three of them.

Patri is her name, maybe thirty years old, and she is a ski instructor in Ushuaia way down in the south of Patagonia, traveling around for some months until the beginning of the ski season. I can understand all three of them, even the majority of what they say to each other. They ask what I am doing, and when I tell them about my journey, they are amazed and have many questions. ¿Por qué no aviones? ¿Por qué Uruguay? ¿Por qué querías viajar tanto tiempo?

Here at the end of the road I struggle to answer. I wanted to see the land. I don’t know…? It’s a long way…sometimes you need a change. Realizing that this is must be a big moment for me, Patri announces she is buying a beer for us to celebrate. Beer probably isn’t what I need health-wise, but the sentiment is perfect and she is very sweet to offer and so of course I accept. It feels good to have someone notice what I have done, and I am happy for the company of these young españoles.

She buys a litro of Norteña beer and pours little glasses and we drink to my journey and to Uruguay. Our meager plates of pasta are long since finished, and we go out to the terrace to sit and talk and drink our beers. There are stars above in the city night. The streets are quiet below, and there is a bit of a chill to the air. The guys talk a lot about Brazil, mountains and jungles, how good the fruits are, and about something called changa, an extract of Ayahuasca that you smoke.

Mario has many, many questions for me about America. He has always been fascinated with my country and I am the first American he has ever met. What happened with Trump? How was he elected? Is the country very racist? Why is there still a war in Afghanistan? What was September 11th like? He remembers it from when he was six years old, when Great America was attacked in its own house. These questions would be difficult to answer even in English, and trying to answer them in Spanish makes me feel almost dizzy. I try my best and find myself very lonely, digging in to the darknesses of my country perhaps nine thousand miles away.

We end up drinking three litros de cerveza. Not what my body needs but it is good to have some semblance of ceremony at the end of the road. To have company. These are the first travelers I’ve really connected with in a week. Lying in my bed, what do I feel? Tired. Bone tired. I am ready for a couple weeks off. But there is no rest for the weary. I have two job interviews, entrevistas, tomorrow. I need to find a job, and then a place to live. If I’m lucky, I’ll start teaching next week. The end of a long journey is always the beginning of something else.

7

My first night in my new city was brutal. The dorm room was plagued by mosquitoes, and no one in the room could sleep. Patri was in the bottom bunk opposite flailing about, and above me was a strange middle-aged woman who came in after midnight and wanted to talk about the Senegalese people. She told me, whispering in a strong accent, that they are here for a week just to get documents, that it’s very easy to get documents in this country. I tried to just agree and end the conversation, but she went on and on, in increasingly accusatory tones. When she asked me if I had smelled them, this was too much. I told her abruptly that I was very sorry but I had to go to sleep. Sadly, there was no sleep to be had.

The first task in the bleary-eyed morning after making a pot of tea was to acquire acceptable pantalones for my interviews that afternoon. I could either find a way to get laundry done on short notice or I’d have to buy some pants. Walked to various lavaderos as they call them here — in most of Latin America that refers to a car wash — but nothing was open. The standard opening hour appears to be ten a.m. I did get to see the Ciudad Vieja in the light. The streets aren’t dirty but they aren’t clean either. It’s a bit dingy. A lot of the buildings in the old city are older, but not so old, maybe turn of the twentieth century or later. Came across a couple nice plazas with big trees, and as I walked, views appeared out over the harbor between buildings. It is a relaxed place with some character, but it has this strong feeling of being just another place. I don’t know what I was expecting; I was expecting the Promised Land.

Came to a pedestrian street where I found a man setting up a table outside of a bookstore. Asked him about lavaderos and he directed me to one he thought would be open. Eight blocks later, it was indeed, but the lady said the earliest she could have things back to me was six in the evening. I left my dirty clothes with her but will have to buy some pants.

I was back at the hostel in time for the nine o’clock breakfast, which like the dinner was meager. White bread toast cut in triangles, a tiny bit of fruit. The owner’s wife served my plate, and she is kind, but her husband was glowering at me from further back in the kitchen. I sat with the three Spaniards from last night, and was sad to hear they were checking out this morning. They all thought that this was a bad hostel, and I couldn’t disagree. Dario and Mario were going to a hostel in another part of the city, near the beach, and Patri was going to Colonia. The guys tried to persuade me to come with them, but I said I had already paid for the night. “Es solo dinero,” Mario said, and it was true, but it’s easy to say that when you’re not about to run out. I told them maybe I’d move to that hostel tomorrow, but when I said it I had the feeling I’d never see them again.

An hour after eating the hostel rations, I am hungry again. I’m going out to buy some pants suitable for an interview, and to get a real breakfast. I have arrived at my destination of Montevideo, Uruguay, and it strikes me that it doesn’t guarantee me a damn thing. Nobody scheduled the welcome parade. All my anxieties of whether or not I would like it seem irrelevant now, though. This is where I have landed. I am going to have to put my head down and try to find myself some kind of life.