Sunday, November 26, 2006

¨Here lies Sub-Zero. Now...plain zero!!!¨

Fray Bentos, Uruguay
Greetings, comrades. This E-mail comes to you from the tender arms of Uruguay, which I entered today via a strange road built on top of a hydroelectric dam connecting Uruguay to Argentina. The ¨International Hydroelectric Dam¨ was announced with much pomp in the forms of signs celebrating its construction, signs which presented themselves with a frequency in line with those announcing the speed limit. The latter were largely unnecessary, as the spirit of international cooperation drawn upon in the building of the dam resulted in a sort of faux cobblestone finish on the road, the vibration from which nearly rattled the fillings from my teeth.
Those of you who were following the progress of the Destiny are likely confounded by my present coordinates, thinking that I should be nearer to the southern tip of the continent than I am. Aye, you are correct. The Kentucky Gentleman shares your sentiments, and he was likely displeased when I turned his yokes sharply to starboard and egged him on a northerly course. ¨North, Miss Tessmacher¨, I whispered. For I fell victim to the irresistable siren song of Iguaza Falls, and I was helpless against its charms.
The Iguazu Falls are one of the greatest natural wonders in the world. Snuggled comfortably at the crux of the borders of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, Iguazu draws its name from the indigenous Guarani language ¨y¨, meaning ¨big¨, and ¨guasu¨, which means ¨water¨ (most of you probably speak Guarani, so I apologize for belaboring the obvious). The Guarani weren´t kidding. Upon visiting the falls during her husband´s presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt was rumored to have remarked, ¨Poor Niagara...¨, as the Iguazu Falls are some four times larger than the Niagara Falls.
Alas, I underestimated the distance to Iguazu when I looked at a map, thinking I could make it there in a couple of days. Rather, the trip north turned into a 1200 mile ordeal across roads of varying quality, through a series of intense thunderstorms that seemed to follow me for several hundred miles, and into a heatwave that crested 100 degrees for a few days. It was a trajectory marked by insect-infested rooms (commemorated this evening by the discovery this evening of a dead cockroach in my rain-soaked boot whose death the insect coroner could attribute to drowning, being crushing by my giant Slavic foot, or asphixiation by the stench of a sock I´ve been wearing for ten days), tours of tea plantations and amethyst mines, and a few random encounters - one of which reached its weary end with me sleeping in a trailer full of itinerant construction workers (but not before being taught how to operate a backhoe at 1AM by a kindly Argentinian named Armando and an Irish/Argentinian named John and then being taken to a brothel named Manollo´s that was full of disgusting women and disguised as a restaurant) and one which landed me at a family BBQ. At the latter, I was mistaken as a friend of the family, and only late in the meal was it revealed that I had only known the hostess´s husband´s sister´s husband since the day before (and had met him while operating the backhoe). Regardless, the conversation was good, the meat savory, and the king-size bed at the house comfortable. Indeed, the tradition of Argentinians being generous to a fault has continued - from Rafa (who showed me the best that the country has to offer and always tried to pay for everything) to complete strangers that have showed me every sort of hospitality.
Aside from the Falls, my time in the far north afforded me the opportunity to visit Che Guevarra´s childhood home (the museum´s proprietor refusing to acknowledge my assertions that Señor Gueverra had advocated a nuclear war against the US (he did)...and who wore a sweet beret), tour an incredible set of ruins left behind from the Jesuit missions before the Spanish gave them the boot so they could annihilate a few more natives, and wind up on a tea plantation with the wrong crowd.
In terms of the tea plantation, it played out as follows. I saw a sign on the side of the road saying something or other about a tea factory. At the bottom of the sign, it said: ¨We´ve been waiting for you.¨ As you wish, fancy tea people. And the Kentucky Gentleman turned off into a flower-lined drive to a rather nice estate.
Security at the plantation was more befitting a nuclear arms installation, and the cadre of meaty guards asked all sorts of questions, save for the largest of the group, who merely stood silently about three feet away from me with a solid grasp on his combat shotgun.
One of the questions in the later stages of the interrogation was ¨Are you here for the meeting?¨ I was unsure as to what that meant, so naturally I answered ¨yes¨. Copies of my passport and license now on file, the gate was at last opened, and I sped into the grounds. After parking in front of the main building, I was approached by a man named Walter. Walter - like all the employees of the plantation - was dressed in company monogrammed garb. We´ve all seen company polo shirts and jackets in our day, but I must say that I´ve never seen company jeans...much less company jeans where the company logo is emblazened on the buttcheek. Very professional. Very classy.
Walter welcomed me to the plantation and ushered me over to a group of seven or so people dressed in cripsly tailored suits. I was introduced and asked where I worked, to which I simply replied, ¨Chicago¨. It was honestly close to 100 degrees, so I couldn´t imagine wearing a suit (or maybe I could - after standing up in a Serbian wedding this past summer in non-air conditioned church wearing a three-piece tux). But my head start on these people in the stink department was robust. And clearly I did not fit in, which confuses me more and more every time I think about why they let me hang around so long.
I was dressed in a raggedy grey V-neck shirt I inherited from Neubz when he left, a dusty pair of motorcycle pants with a little blood on the shins from a dead animal I accidentally ran over the day before (disgusting, I know), and as mentioned, I reeked.
My Spanish has gotten a lot better over the course of the trip, but when the conversation turned to growing techniques, current trends in the global tea market, and new developments in agricultural chemistry, I was clearly at a loss. Since I understood very little of what was being said and simply said ¨Si¨ to every question directed at me and laughed, the conversation could well have played out thus:
Man in sweet brown suit: ¨So, looking at global sales trends, it seems that Ceylon tea is experiencing quite a renaissance in your country - particularly in the Northeast. To what do you attribute this phenomenon?¨
Me: ¨Yes, of course.¨ (Having understood nothing, I smile and laugh a little while shaking my head in acknowledgement)
(Awkward silence in the group. People look nervously at one another.)
After about 15 minutes of this, I think somebody realized the mistake, an S.O.S. was placed discreetly by Walter into his walkie-talkie, and two guys in company jeans came to lead me away.
I was taken to what I believe to have been the tourist center, and seated in a small ampitheater with what appeared to be the rest of the riff-raff looking for free samples to watch a company propaganda film. The man sitting next to me was probably about 350 pounds with a ZZ-top style beard and dressed in denim overalls (no monogram). I could picture him choking back a 12 lb pot roast for lunch and perhaps chasing it with a few bratwurst, but could not imagine him sipping daintily on a cup of tea. We were equally out of place as we watched the majestic film, which borrowed its soundtrack heavily from the musical ¨Riverdance¨ and the early '90s film ¨Howards End¨. This I leaned over to tell to the man in overalls, but either Big John Stud did not care or he was simply not familiar with Sir Hopkins´ work.
Perhaps because they felt awkward about putting me in the wrong group at first, I was treated to copious amounts of free tea and something called yerba mate, which is for whatever reason always consumed via a silver straw. They did not give me a silver straw.
And from there I have made it to Uruguay. The police in Argentina have searched the contents of my bike at least eight times at random checkpoints along the way, ostensibly searching for drugs, though I think it is because they are bored. They are corrupt, but lack the audacity and know that - unlike in Central America - extortion by traffic police is not sanctioned/encouraged by the state.
That´s not to say they haven´t tried. I was fined 100 dollars (which was then raised to 150 dollars when I asked for the paper ticket) for passing a broken down semi on a curve (the alternative being...), but they are not apparently willing to risk asking for the money on the spot; they just allude to it. So they said they would send the ticket to my Embassy in Buenos Aires which would ¨get me in a lot of trouble¨. Surprise, surprise. It never happened.
Another creative tactic has been to ask me for my fire extinguisher. As I scarcely had room to pack four pairs of underwear, I obviously have no room for a fire extinguisher. And since about one out of every five hundred people in Latin America on a motorcycle even wears a helmet, I´m guessing they don´t have fire extinguishers either. The first two times I was stopped for this, I refused to pay. The third time, I responded with an equally asinine question: ¨Do you own a bakery?¨ He did not.
I do not have adequate time to reach the southern tip before Christmas, so I will be heading west to Mendoza, the heart of South American wine country settled near the base of the highest peak in both the western and southern hemispheres. If the Kentucky Gentleman can crest the mountain pass, I will finish up in Santiago, Chile, from where I fly home for Christmas and return to in January for the final push south. I´m grabbing a tent (and perhaps a fire extinguisher?) when I go home, and I think I may start growing a mountain man mustache.
- Tom
PS: From now on I will put a movie quote as the title of each E-mail. Anyone that can get three correct in succession without cheating by using the Internet will get a postcard signed by a local celebrity. This title does not count, as it is a gimme.
If you cheat I will lace your postcard with the lethal poison, Black Velvet.

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