The ride from Porto Alegre to Montevideo took about 13 hours. The bus was spacious, and they even served dinner and breakfast! It felt like a plane ride with more foot room. The bus company collected our passports before we settled on the bus, so that they could take care of everything when we got to the border and we could continue sleeping. Although I had a minor panic attack about human trafficking, it all turned out alright and I did get my passport back.
The bus station in Montevideo felt more hectic than Tiete. I found the bus to Colonia Valdense and found an ATM for some Uruguayan Pesos. In about an hour I was back on a bus headed in the direction of Estancia Don Miguel, which is located about half way between Montevideo and Colonia.
I was forced to make a quick transition from “Fala ingles?” to “Habla ingles?” Spanish did turn out to be easier to understand than Portuguese.
Estancia Don Miguel is essentially a tourist attraction. They host families and sometimes even groups. People also came to only spend the day. They served breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner. They brought tourists on trail rides, walks, rides in their antique car, and they brought them to swim at a nearby water hole. If the tourists stayed overnight then they were able to help milk cows in the morning and make cheese.
The family I stayed with couldn’t speak any English, and I didn’t know any Spanish. They were very understanding and patient with me while I tried to learn. It was difficult and frustrating at times, but I was amazed by how much I could understand and how well I communicated after only two weeks (unfortunately my plan to stay for a month was cut short due to scheduling conflicts with other WWOOFers). I would say that this experience has been the most rewarding so far. I was definitely stretching my comfort zone leaving Rachel in Porto Alegre, traveling to Uruguay on my own, and staying with a family whose English was limited to “muchas thank you.”
It was also necessary for me to be more expressive with faces and body movements to be understood. I spent one afternoon sitting in front of mirror trying to figure out what faces worked best for certain moods, thoughts and feelings. It felt really bizarre, but I think it helped.
The best part about the Uruguayan work day is siesta! A long break after lunch in the middle of the workday, which lasted from 2 to 5 on the farm. Most of the time it was nap time and occasionally they would stay up and sit in the yard in the shade under the trees with their mate.
Mate is Uruguay. Everybody has mate. The people on bikes, on horses, on skateboards, they all have mate. The police have mate. The gauchos have mate. It was always the mate in one hand and a thermos filled with hot water under the other arm. The family, Hugo, Maria, and their son Miguel, would relax in the evening with one cup of mate and the thermos at hand. It was family time for them. They would fill the cup and one person would drink until it was gone, and then they would fill it and pass it to the next person. They always let me join them even though most of the time I couldn’t follow the conversation. It was good listening practice.
The daily breakdown:
7:00 Rise and Shine
7:30 Milk the Cows
9:30 Breakfast
10:00 Make cheese!/Farm work
11:30 Help prepare lunch (there were always tourists, so this was quite a production everyday)
1:00 Lunch
2:00 SIESTA
5:00 Farm work
7:00 Tea/Mate/CAKE
7:30 Farm work
8:00 All done
9:30 Dinner
11:00 Bed
Tidbits…
After Hugo picked me up from the bus stop we drove to the farm and it was incredibly dry and hot and one of their fields was on fire. Instead of stopping at the house we drove straight to the fire and had to whack at it with bush branches until the fire truck came.
I managed to break both the weed whacker and the lawn mower in the same hour. I don’t feel either was entirely my fault. They laughed and banned me from all machinery. Maria kept teasing me telling me not break anything else.
On my third or fourth day at the farm French tourists came for a trail ride, and Hugo decided I could take them. I really clarified this point by asking him repeatedly if he actually meant me on my own with the tourists. He was serious. I rode in front and the others followed. We explored the farm together.
During breakfast one morning Maria and Hugo asked me to make cheese with the milk from the morning. They showed me the recipe, which they taped to the wall. It was in Spanish, but it was nothing a two way dictionary couldn’t handle. One line literally translated to “fish the cheese.” Well, I made the cheese and the good news is that it’s aging, which means I’ll be long gone when they find out if it went horribly wrong. If it isn’t good that will be unfortunate because I made quite a bit of cheese.
One nice day after siesta Maria and Hugo thought it’d be nice to go to the beach. We spent the late afternoon on the beach and didn’t return to the farm until late. I was exhausted and told Maria I was going straight to bed and she asked, “What about dinner?!” I said it was fine and I wasn’t hungry, but five minutes later Maria came knocking on my door with a glass of yogurt and toast with jam.
Hugo came into the living room one evening wearing one of those small Jewish hats and he had google translated, “I am a Jewish Rabbi.” I laughed so hard I cried to this one.
When I arrived Maria pointed out that they have three cats that all look the same, so they are named Uno, Dos, and Tres in no particular order. She also named the goats Santa and Claus.
I milked the same cow first every morning, and she wasn’t exactly a fan of me. She would give me very little milk, but the second Hugo came over and took over he’d get almost a bucket full. This made him laugh more than anything. He also found it entertaining that in two hours I could only milk three cows max.
Despite the language barrier there I definitely feel that in those short two weeks we all came to know each other fairly well. When I left Maria gave me a letter (that I still have to finish translating) that said in Uruguay I have a home and a family. She signed the letter “your Uruguayan mother.”
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