Minas

Saturday! Minas! GO!

Natalia and her parents picked me up around mid-day at my hotel in their car, a VW diesel that they clearly adore – anything about it that isn’t perfect, seems to make them love it more. And we roared out of Paraguay street (it’s unbelievable how fast one seems to go in a car after doing the bus thing for a week) to the school where Natalia’s daughter attends, picked her up, and shot out of Montevideo toward Minas, Natalia’s parents’ home town.

It is such an advantage to travel with locals. I got a running narration of what to look for out the windows on our trip, which was, I think, 90 kilometers – they let me know when the blue hills of Minas were first visible, when we crossed the border into the various departamentos, etc. And again, the countryside is just gorgeous to drive through. I don’t have much in the way of photographic evidence, as I tried a couple of times to fire out the window and really pretty much failed. 

But believe me, it’s amazing.

Our first stop in Minas was at the water bottling plant where Natalia’s father used to work. They maintain a park that’s open to the public, and we settled in there to eat a picnic lunch that they’d packed. 

Natalia’s mom had made pascualina, a sort of baked dish with a lovely crust, spinach, eggs, and some other vegetables, accompanied by fainá, the corn-flour pancake I’d eaten at a restaurant the other day:

We had a very pleasant time talking about the changes in Minas over the years, and in Uruguay in general. They told the story of a relative of theirs who, when she first got a television set, sat up very late watching it. “Why don’t you go to bed? It’s late,” they’d said to her. “How can I go to bed? That man’s still talking to me! I can’t be rude!” Funny stuff.

From there we toured the factory grounds a bit. It’s over a hundred years old, and has a little cave where they’ve set up lights and dramatic music about the water that bubbles out f the spring there. 

It squirts out the mouth of a puma statue, and they provide cups so you can take a free swig:

Toured the factory just outside the spring - it's very old, but you can see through the windows that the machinery is all still in place and still working.

 From there we went to see the great big stone promontory that is a landmark in Minas. It's quite an impressive sight:

Minas in general is a cool place. It's a lot hillier than any other part of Uruguay (so they tell me), and Natalia's father tells me it was first settled to interrupt and protect against Indian incursions toward Montevideo. Eventually they discovered gold there (hence the name), and now it's a mixture of busy industrial town, with cement factories and road-tar processing plants, and agricultural center, with lots and lots of horses, cattle, and food processing plants. Alfajores, everybody's favorite treat in Uruguay (two crumbly cake cookies with dulce de leche between them, sometimes covered in chocolate, other times in crystalline sugar), are made here. It's a bit strange, but there are roadside stands all along the entryway to Minas selling the alfajores at discount prices. I don't know if they actually work for the company that makes them, or if they're independent actors, but they have cement structures and seem to compete with each other. We stopped at one on our way out of town:

So, yeah. Minas. We then went to the central plaza, where there was a display of art from the National Museum. They were photographic reproductions - but it was odd to see so many works represented that I had just seen in the flesh a few days before. One of them was "the death of I-don't-remember-who":

He apparently was wrongly accused, defended himself, was pursued, etc – they whole criminal-who’s-not-really-a-criminal-on-the-run thing, kind of appeals all across cultures. Right around the turn of the twentieth century. The crazy thing is that, according to Natalia’s father, on his run he at one point escaped from this jail:

...which, much to the shame / wonderment of Natalia's parents, is located right on the main square in Minas. (By some sort of deal, it was agreed that the church would NOT be on the square, but rather one block removed. And that's where it is. I'm going to have to look that whole episode up.)

From there, we crossed the street to a store to look for Minas-themed things to buy, and bumped into an old friend of the Ximenos', who asked if we wanted to see the chambers under the building, since I was there and was a foreigner, and she wanted me to go away with a good impression. No one else there had ever gone down to see them (they're not foreigners, so they didn't merit the special attention, it seems), and were all very glad to come down too.

This is the store:

...and these are the old chambers below, maintained as a pseudo-museum-cum-center-for-family-functions by the owners:

The table is meant to represent / mimic the table depicted in "The Last Supper." They're very religious, it seems. The place is impressive and very cool, literally and figuratively.

And then we came home. It was such a great day, I felt so tremendously welcomed and taken care of - Generosity, warmth, and affection everywhere I turn whenever I'm with them. I tried, but I'll never be able to really thank them enough.

Today (it's Sunday) Natalia is coming downtown to take me out for lunch - it seems that on the 29th of every month, which is today, everybody in Uruguay eats gnocci. There's something about the tradition where you put a coin under your plate to guarantee a prosperous month to come...? Not sure. I'll let you know.