Or so Sonia said, The owner of the Camping de la Barra del Chuy when that spring night, In a section of border of Uruguay with Brazil, A Bossanova Uruguayo-Brazilian band sounded, and whiskey and roast ran from one table to another in an atmosphere of border fraternities and import beers.
"Welcome to the rhythm of the border", said in his improvised speech, In a pause that made the band and that we present we took the opportunity to run to the grill, To the bathrooms, To the fridge, to be well supplied for when I sing that voice again.
We were at a dinner at Rocha, A Uruguayan department with infinite beaches of ocean waters, Red wine wineries, Orchestra nights, and open borders like rivers of water and wild as a cimarrón.
Red wine wineries, Orchestra nights, and open borders like rivers of water and wild as a cimarrón.
But, What did we do there? How is one going to those houses in inhospitable lands in which, In the middle of the immense night, Music comes out, Light and smoke, as in fairy tales or magician Merlin?
It all started a few days ago: A journalist friend proposed to go to a frugal excursion to the east Uruguayan to inaugurate the summer season. We were going to know, I said, The lagoon, some town on the coast and "El Chuy", a land of no one from a questionable atmosphere and which had heard sordid legends, Low funds and tales of suburb princesses that made me shiver.
Del Chuy said it was Brazil and Uruguay, That it was a town similar to Far West at a point on the border between the two countries where the Uruguayans arrived by thousands and filled their shampo cars, lotions, whiskey, more or less modern clothes, Toothpaste and coffee capsules. Import taxes in Uruguay are so high, and chocolate, Coffee and Brazilian whiskey taxes are so low, that in the chuy, they were saying, They converged a multitude of human paradoxes and border topics of wonderful folly.
They converged a multitude of human paradoxes and border topics of wonderful folly.
So we left Montevideo on a bus full of journalists who covered the start of the station and, After hearing in a lagoon without horizons, Eat shrimp and rice with meat, We stop opposing resistance and understood that the secret recipe of the trip was to get carried away, Without asking, Where the tide will guide us.
After leaving the lagoon behind and traveling an hour by bus through Uruguayan moors, We arrive at Chuy, We settled in hotels with Brazilian mosquitoes and receptionists of Nortambulesco and, almost without knowing how, We were submerged in the enormity of the night with deliciously peripheral orchestras, Chocolate cakes and Brazilian samba mixtures with eastern strip roast…
The tide continued to guide us by groundwater and was soon the next day, We had slept little, The morning spun and the currents took us to Chuy. Everything was better than they related: Supermarkets deployed kilometer rows of toothpaste, The streets of the distant west mixed decline with stores called "Hollywood" or "glamor", and the Turkish landowners of the border watched the convulsive purchases of the visitors escorted by some dogs with clear scabies who died of thirst to the heat of the south.
The tide continued to guide us by groundwater and was soon the next day
The winds dragged us to a placid state of cheerful purchase, of smell of hot restaurant and rewarding sensations of having found the ideal offer. In the glow of the border waste the hours passed and we barely had time to realize that we had to come back, Loaded with blue bags, to the bus that would take us back to the usual.
We soon abandoned the intercostal magnetism in which we were less than 24 hours and of which today, A few days later, We barely save the occasional random flash than to add to the list of the experienced: Capillary masks at laugh prices, The alternation in a tiny space of the spelling of the spices route with the fear of merchandise ports, The skies full of dust and insolent clouds, and the explosions of perfumes and coloring of the Duty free land.
Once again we experience the traveling intensity of impregnating themselves with penetrating essences and seeing them leave with the same force with which they come to occupy us. Once more, Back home, We forgot that we had been 24 hours in a distant energy until some dreams were entangled, We used toothpaste or caught the desire to travel again.
