Uruguay, the legend of Maracana

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There's an uruguayan legend that goes that once upon a time a football team coming from little little Uruguay had to play the final of the football world cup championship against big big favorite brazil, in brazil, in the brand new stadium Maracana, specially built for the world cup.
The story tells the stadium was full of brazilian green and yellow (verdeamarello;) supporters, for the final match. Brazil beign big time favorite scored, and the first half of the game ended up 1-0, brazil above uruguay. The brazilians were so confident that they took the match for granted, even when in the second half the little uruguayans scored, and the match got even. This was no real stress for the brazilians since a tie was enough for achieving the championship.

Until suddenly...little uruguayan team, coming from nowhere scored for the second time. The story goes that the time froze, and around 200,000 brazilian supporters got real quiet, that you could actually hear a small bunch of uruguayan supporters screaming fanatically.

Despite all the efforts made by the big shot brazilian team, the match remained as it was, and little little uruguay took the world cup home, leaving a big country openjawed.

This is a bedtime story that pappas tell their sons in uruguay. Scholars cannot achieve consensus on whether this actually ever happened, some say it took place in brazil in 1950.

I understand that brazilian pappas don't ever tell this story to their children. Nowadays noone in brazil knows the story of little david uruguay, who beated big goliat favorite brazil in the football world championship of 1950.

Sad side effects of this spell is that a big part of little little uruguay's population got stuck in time when that happened, remain there, and lost the hability to look forward in time. ...

Montevideo, sights

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This are some typical sights of Montevideo's downtown.

This is a picture of the statue of Gral Artigas, in Plaza Independencia. There is a mausoleum beneath the statue, with the rests of the national hero.










This is Plaza Cagancha, also called plaza libertad, with our uruguayan version of the liberty statue, kinda new york's statue after the flu. Check out the anarchism graffiti at the bottom. This square has a nice hippie and naturist market.








This one's infomally called "Plaza del entrevero" which means something like square of the mixed up, after the statue in the middle representing several horseman in the heat of battle, where they are all kinda mixed up. Actually noone remebers it's real name which is plaza fabini i believe.
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Montevideo

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Montevideo is the capital city of Uruguay. The story goes that the word montevideo comes (at least that's what they teach us in school) from one portuguese expeditionary who saw the hill by the area known today as montevideo, and said something like: i see a hill, which in portuguese was something like monte vide eu and sounds like montevideo. ...

Hornero

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If you are roadtripping in uruguay this is a very common sight. It's the house of a bird that goes by the name Hornero (Furnarius rufus). Builds his own place, about the size of a basketball ball and seems to have a thing for telegraph posts.

As a kid I used to think that it had a complex internal rooms distribution, with a tv room (electricity and telephone wire access is not the problem ;), and a bedroom, the whole bird family thing. Dumb kid. ...

After the storm

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The 26th of august Uruguay went through the worst storm in it's history. There were winds of about 160km/hour. 7 men died, around 50 injured. This is not normal in this part of the world, here we dont have hurricanes, we are not prepared for this type of thing. There were lots of families without electricity or water for a couple of days. I've friend who took showers on cold water for a week.

About five blocks from my place there is a wood of eucaliptus, that covers one full block and has survived urbanization in the area, It was cool. This are post storm pictures of my neighborhood's wood. I used to play there when I was a kid. Very sad sight. ...

Colonia do Sacramento

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Located at the south west end of the land, Colonia do Sacramento is the oldest city in Uruguay or err... mmm, maybe the oldest city in Uruguay, or one of the oldests cities in uruguay, anyway. The fact is that in 1680 the portuguese founded this city, and that's prior to the foundation of our capital Montevideo, in fact Montevideo was founded as a countermeasure of the Spanish empire (not darth vader's one) to stop the portuguese advance. The history of Uruguay's colonization is a continuous struggle between the spanish forces against the portuguese, with some intrusion of the british (when not?) to take over this chunk of land in the world. Colonia went from portuguese creation, to spanish domination, then back again to portuguese or brazilian, depending on the year, and back again, times N, until Uruguay as an indepenant country was born. This is why the historical part of the city has blend of spanish and portuguese architectural styles which is kinda nice.


The historical parts of the citiy were declared common heritage of the human kind by the unesco, some time ago, and it's right now one of the turistic spots of the country.
The historical part of the city it's small, you can make it by feet, it keeps it's original disarranged cobblestoned streets, and houses.

It's a good place for example to spend a weekend in couple, as it's beautiful, quiet, and there lots hotels in the whole area, some of them reasonably cheap and good. Let's put it this way it's not famous for it's wild night life. ...

Food, bakery

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As americans have donuts, and french have croissants, we have bizcochos. Lazy cops here dont eat donuts, no, they eat bizcochos. They are made mainly out of flour and grease. There are salad and sweet ones, the salad ones are filled with cheese, or bacon, and the sweet ones with...guess, yes, dulce de leche, or dulce de membrillo. It's typical to have them with breakfast or tea (mate actually). You buy them by the kilo, and you usually eat it with friends or family. I guess it's not very healthy but tasty ;)


These ones are called "Alfajores de maizcena", like little cakes, with a thick layer of "dulce de leche" in the middle, and coconout in the borders, if you like really sweet stuff (which i do) you can't miss them. Enter into any baker's store (panaderia) and pronounce: "alphajores", then thank me.



These ones are called "ojitos" (little eyes), dont know how they make them, dont really care, I think it involves grease and some sweet red stuff that goes in the middle, im crazy'bout them, always been.

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Food, dulce de leche

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Dulce de leche is a creme, made with milk and sugar (hence the name), with kinda caramel flavor, but better ;) You can find it everywhere in Uruguay's sweet food, cakes, everything. I guess it's part of the uruguayan culture. As a kid I thought all the world had dulce de leche, and that all the world eated it as much as we do. To my surprise little is known of dulce de leche outside the river plate zone. I have concluded that for mysterious reasons the uruguayan population has developed an addiction to this stuff, I know I'm on it. It's one of the things uruguayan's living offshore miss the most. It's also one of the many things uruguayan's and argentinian's debate on who invented it, I say Uruguay :)

It's not a dish on itself, as it supposed to be eaten along with other things, bread, in cakes, you name it, but the chubby uruguayan won't doubt to grab a spoon full of dulce the leche lick it like there's no tomorrow, and when finnished, go get some more. ...

Food, Asado

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Barbecue, or "asado" as we call it's the national dish, if there's such a thing. Uruguay's meat has very good fame, and for good reason. The conditions for cattle growing are ideal in this part of the world, or so they say. History goes that, a long time ago (in this galaxy;), one spanish guy, called Hernandarias, brought around 100 cattle heads to the land, that would later become Uruguay, and in a matter of years they had reproduced big time. Land and weather natural conditions turned out to be real good, as well as the lack of any kind of predators, including human populations. So we could say that Uruguay's territory was populated extensively first by cattle, then by humans.

Asados are social activities, instead of charcoal the meat is roasted by making a fire from wood, and using the embers (is that the word?) to cook the meat. It's a time consuming process, but all for the better, because while someone is preparing the fire (el asador) everyone else get's to eat snacks, and play cards ("truco" typically). It's typical to put some parmesano provolone cheese on the grill, and to serve hot cheese as entrance, along with the snacks. The meat is placed in a big, big grill, called "parrilla", expected to support considerable amounts of meat, and sausages ("chorizos").

Typically if the asado turns out to be good, the responsible cooker (el asador), get's an applause from everyone. Actually "el asador" always gets an applause, unless the asado is real bad, and you have a trust relationship with the person so you can tell him the awfull truth, that his asado sucks. Luckily this is not often. ...

Uruguay's beaten Argentina 1-0

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Do you know the phil collins song titled: against all odds? Phil's should have dedicated that song to uruguay's football team, after yesterdays match. It won after 16 years of not winning to Argentina, anything but a win would have lefts us out of the world cup. Do you know what are the odds of pulling a win after 16 years? It was insane.

Some observations:

Once again Colombia beated Paraguay, in Paraguay, when paraguay is known to be very hard to beat playing at home. Monkey business.

Once again colombia didnt make it to the world cup thanks to Uruguay ;)

Once again Uruguay will be playing Australia. People are talking here that kangaroos seasons is open, and about top ten ways to cook a kangaroo ;) Yet this time, they have the last leg of the match, it'll be hard. It would not be fair to loose with Australia after beating Argentina, but who said football is fair anyway? Oceania should have one assured place for the world cup, but not at the cost of one place less for South America.

Once again it's impossible to watch a Uruguay's team football match without suffering. ...

Uruguay's flag

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White background, sky blue stripes, with a sun in the top left corner. The strange thing is that the sun has a face, with eyes, mouth'n stuff, just weird. I've heard somewhere that is some sort of masonic symbol, I understand that masonry is strong in uruguay, brazil, paraguay and argentina. Urban legend, who knows?

Anyway, beautiful flag, isnt it?
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Countryside

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Populated mainly by cows Uruguay's countryside is a green and flat meadow. Very, very quiet. This are typical sights of Uruguay.



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Mate

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Mate is the name of a typical beverage of the river plate zone, shared with south of brazil and argentinians. It's an infusion of a weed named "yerba" (wich actually in spanish means weed), like tea, but the weird thing is that it is drinked (sipped actually) in a special recipients made out of a dried, hollow "fruit" (it's kinda small pumpking) called mate, wich names the whole thing. You sip it with a metal thing called "bombilla". There I've said it. It's like coffe, some sort of stimulator, very popular among students to start the day, and to stay awake until late.



Half of the population or more are on it, people carry their own "mates" to work, and it's also a social drink, it's unpolite to have mate and not offer, and if someone requests "a mate", while you are having it's almost illegal to deny it.

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