Carioca Sunshine: Journey into the Spanish-Speaking World

For fall break I went to Argentina and Uruguay with Paul, one of the French guys. We spent the majority of the week in Buenos Aires, but we also crossed the Río de la Plata (the river dividing Argentina and Uruguay) to spend a day in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

It was certainly a good opportunity to practice my Spanish, though it took me a few hours before I could even remember to say “gracias” instead of “obrigada” when thanking someone. I’ve worked very hard to remove the Spanish from my Portuguese, but over break I had to work even harder to remove the Portuguese from my Spanish. The languages are so similar that it’s a nightmare trying to keep them straight in my head. Every time I went to say a sentence, I had to review it word by word in my head first to make sure it was actually Spanish and not Portuguese. It was an indication of how good my Portuguese has gotten because I was constantly thinking, “Gosh, this would all be so much easier if I could just say it in Portuguese instead!” We met some Brazilians at our hostel, and I was so excited to be able to just sit back and have a nice conversation in Portuguese with them. I’m still not fluent, but I can carry on a conversation fairly easily, and my listening comprehension has improved greatly. On the other hand, Argentine/Uruguaian Spanish is quite hard to understand because they have an accent that is very distinct from the rest of Latin America. I was able to ask for directions and order food and things like that, but idle conversation was more effort than it was worth.

eating pizza with the Brazilians from our hostel

Strangely, though, there were Brazilians everywhere in Buenos Aires. Apparently it’s a very popular tourist destination for them, which I guess makes sense considering they live in the country right next door. At one point I wanted someone to take a picture of Paul and me in front of something, so instead of dealing with Spanish, I just asked the nearest Brazilian in Portuguese to take the picture for us. Very convenient.

Even stranger was the fact that I ran into other people I knew from PUC in Buenos Aires. There was another girl from PUC staying in our hostel, and though I didn’t know her, she was traveling with a friend who was staying somewhere else, and when he came over to visit one night, I realized I knew him from the churrasco I’d gone to in Colégio. We also ran into a girl from one of my classes in a touristy area called El Caminito. Really crazy.

Apart from the language frustrations, Buenos Aires was a cool city. It’s called the “Paris of South America,” and it really does have a European feel, at least in the downtown area. Paul kept saying how at home he felt. I think most of this is due to the city’s architecture, but the cuisine is also heavily influenced by European styles. There was an excellent pizza/pasta place next door to the hostel; I ended up eating their pizza four times during the week, which was perfectly all right with me. It was great to have really well-made pizza for once. In Brazil, the attraction of pizzerias is that they have tons of flavors to choose from, but in general, the quality of the pizza isn’t that spectacular. Argentine pizza, on the other hand, is delicious. Even better was the fact that two big slices of cheese pizza cost less than US$1.50 – it’s hard to get much cheaper than that! In keeping with the Italian theme, I also had some amazing salmon ravioli at another restaurant we visited. It was a treat to actually have a full, regular meal, since in Brazil I live off salgados and assorted things I pick up at the supermarket - none of which come anywhere close to being a “regular” meal.

Part of the reason why there is so much European food in Buenos Aires is because Argentina was largely settled by European immigrants. Because of this, the population is much whiter than it is in Brazil, so I didn’t stand out nearly as much. In addition to not being as obvious a target, I didn’t have to worry as much about security there because Buenos Aires is also a much safer city than Rio (as is just about every other city in South America, I think). There are pickpockets around, but it was so nice to know that if we got robbed, it would be nonviolently by some sneaky person and we might not even realize it right away, as opposed to Carioca-style robberies, where we would be held at gunpoint or knifepoint and forced to turn over everything of value. It was wonderful to be able to come down off high alert and just relax for a week, and even in our less-vigilant state, we still made it back to Rio with all our possessions.

Whereas in Rio you can pretty much wear the same clothing all year long, in Buenos Aires you need different clothing for different seasons. It’s fall here right now, and while in Rio you’d never be able to tell, in Buenos Aires temperatures have definitely started to drop. I wore a jacket almost all the time, and even with it I was cold late one night as we were walking back to the hostel. I was actually anticipating uncomfortably cooler temperatures though, since that’s what had been predicted, so the fact that the air was generally just a bit brisk was a pleasant surprise. I love hot weather, so Rio suits me perfectly, but as hard as it is to admit, the crisp breezes of Buenos Aires did feel rather refreshing. It was the first time since leaving Wisconsin’s frigid winter back in February that I’d experienced anything other than hot and humid weather. However, a week of that coolness was enough for me, and I was more than happy to return to Rio’s warm and sunny beaches.

Argentina is an interesting country because, at least for me, it does not fit what I envision when I think of South America. The region’s far too diverse to cram into any single stereotype, but if I had to take a stab at how a typical American would describe South America in five words, I’d say: tropical, beaches, poor, mestizo (the blending of white and indigenous races to produce that golden “Latino” look), and rainforests. Argentina hardly fits any of that. It’s almost entirely outside the tropics, and Buenos Aires is far enough south that the climate is more temperate and probably equal to some places in the US. The region around Buenos Aires actually looks quite like the Midwest. Other parts of Argentina stretch so far south that there are penguins there. In fact, Argentina holds claim to the southernmost point in the world, excluding Antarctica. Not exactly tropical. There’s quite a bit of coastline in Argentina, so I assume there are lots of beaches, as well, but the climate is cold enough for much of the year that they can’t be fully enjoyed. While Argentina still lags behind the US and European countries, it’s quite developed by Latin American standards. Argentines have been dealing with an economic crisis for several years now, but overall, the quality of life there is definitely above the South American average. I’ve already said that the Argentine population is fairly white due to European immigration, and as for rainforests, the famous Amazon is way up in Brazil and Peru. Argentina has far more grassland.

Argentina from the air

driving into Buenos Aires

driving into Buenos Aires - almost looks like the Mississippi!

In fact, that grassland contributes to an important aspect of Argentine identity: the gaucho, or South American cowboy. Uruguay and southern Brazil also share this cultural feature because of geographic proximity. Gaucho culture has made at least two important contributions to the overall culture of the region: beef and maté (mah-tay). Delicious beef barbeques are prevalent throughout the entire region, as is the drinking of maté, a type of bitter herbal tea. Mashed up maté is placed in a drinking gourd, hot water is poured over it, and then the brew is drunk through a silver straw that has a built-in filter to keep out the maté flecks. When gone, one simply pours in more water to refill it. It’s usually consumed as a sort of social event, with multiple people sharing the same maté gourd.

I’d heard of maté in Brazil, and I’d seen it in Argentina, but never had I seen anything like the maté culture in Uruguay. I really found it rather fascinating. Everywhere we went, we saw people carrying a thermos of hot water in one hand, a maté gourd in the other. And I do mean absolutely everywhere. The closest thing I can liken it to would be the way people would carry water bottles in a desert. We saw people sitting in parks, walking down the street, sitting on doorsteps, anywhere you can possibly imagine, all clutching their maté sets like security blankets. To think that maté is nothing more than bitter tea – Uruguaians must drink more tea than the English! I simply do not understand how it can have cast such a spell over a people like that. I wonder at how much a typical Uruguaian must consume in a year – I can hardly even imagine!