Ponta D'Leste, Uruguai

Yay! Finally the Ocean! In Uruguay! It does exist! Uruguay is situated mostly on a river, but the river eventually meets the ocean here in Ponta D'Leste.

Ponta D'Leste is known for its famous statue here of fingers sticking out of the sand. I'm sure it has a more formal name, but I can't remember what it is. I think it looks pretty cool though!

The waves were pretty big with all the rocks and the meeting with the river. I wouldn't want to go diving here! Thank goodness they don't have seahorses here!

Although, I did get in the water a little bit.....it was cold!! Like Boston temperatures in the spring!

The statue of the hands was very detailed; you could even see the fingernails!

Beautiful Uruguaian sunset along the coast while heading back to the hotel!

I wish I could stay longer in Uruguay! It's beautiful!

Gaucho Ranch, Uruguay

The last day of our Fulbright reunion in Uruguay we went to Gaucho ranch to spend the day relaxing and reveling in all that is amazing about Uruguay. When the bus pulled into the ranch, we were met by a man riding a horse carrying a large Uruguaian flag that rode us up to the main building. There we were greeted with men dressed as Gaucho's holding platters of wine and soft drinks to welcome us! Wow! Talk about being treated like royalty!

There were large pasture areas, fences, and wild animals. We could ride horses, play soccer, swim in a pool, go for carriage rides. It was an amazing place!

Anyone for a horse back ride? Many of us jumped at the chance to ride horses through this wide-expanse of pastureland, including me!

Here are some of the sheep they had at the ranch. One fulbrighter got in the pen and tried to herd the sheep in an effort to try to touch one. It was hilarious watching all the sheep continuously run away from him. They look so fuzzy!

There were also llamas! That were easier to touch and just as fuzzy!

The Gauchos performed some horse tricks with us that were kind of amazing and also a little unusual. The one guy in the red hat actually snuggled up to the horse, while the horse was on it's side almost like they were a couple spooning in bed! It was unusual to say the least!

Aside from eating more delicious food, including the best blood sausage (ok the only blood sausage), I've ever eaten, there were also hammocks to relax in, if playing on the ranch got a little tiring.

Uruguay is known for it's hot, tea-like drink, called matte (ma-tay). It looks like this (shown above) but the taste is a little bitter....

as you can see by my face after trying matte. But matte is served in this little wodden cup, you put the tea-like matte leaves right in there and add water. Then you drink it out of this metal little straw. Matte is supposed to bring people luck. So you pour the hot water in, and you are supposed to drink all the water up, and in Uruguaian culture, this means you have drunken the luck you will take with you in life. If you leave any matte left in the cup, it means you are leaving your luck for someone else. So despite my not liking matte too much, I tried to drink as much matte as possible to change my luck relating to my project in Brazil.

Ah yes, they also had these houses that were made by Gaucho's back in the day with mud. I think they lined an animal trough with sheep wool to sleep in at night. Anyway as a marine biologist is totally creeped me out to be in this structure, surrounded by dirt and earth, and far away from the ocean.

The whole day was really picturesque. Great open landscapes, hammocks, wild animals, a soccer game and great food. It was a wonderful last memory of Uruguay before heading back to Brazil! Thanks Fulbright! Uruguay is my favorite!

Uruguay

I went to a regional Fulbright seminar in Montevideo, Uruguay recently, and not knowing very much about Uruguay, ashamedly not even really where it was located aside from in South America, I was fairly skeptical of visiting. I mean who decides of all places to go to Uruguay? (sorry Fulbighters who choose to go to Uruguay, nothing personal) And let's face it Uruguay is not exactly a must-see destination for a marine biologist. However, I was pleasantly surprised by my entire trip, leaving me to say GO TO URUGUAY. Anyone and everyone. It is awesome!

The coast in Uruguay, outside the hotel!

Uruguay is the Switzerland of South America. It's very neutral there. It's friendly. It feels safe. They take the following currencies, US Dollars, Brazilian Reais, Argentinian Pesos, and also Uruguan Pesos. The entire city has a very european feel to it. People dress nice (this is a shocker coming from the Northeast of Brazil). It's cold. Yes that's right, I spent a week with temperatures as a high in the 60's during the day and a low in the 40's at night and I loved the contrast from my day -to-day in Brazil. I got to wear my peruvian immigrant coat a lot.

(Brooke, studying environmental health, and Annalia, studying the management of monkeys, at a meat and wine restaurant in Montevideo). One of the things I had wanted to know about Uruguay was about their wine. Do they have wine in Uruguay? If so, is it good? Is there a national grape of Uruguay just like there's a national grape of Austria (Gruner Veltliner) or other places? Brazil-not known for it's wine, it is horrible. Argentina- well known for wine, delicious! Uruguay? Also good. And while it's no Argentina, the national grape/wine is Tannat and it was mighty tasty. They are also very proud of their beef, in more kind of a gaucho cowboy, let's raise all natural meat kind of way. It was delicious!

OOh but my favorite thing about Uruguay is that you can get really good croissants there! Yum! I had been dying for the last 3 weeks to have a croissant for breakfast, crispy, buttery, and alas being in NE Brazil there's none to be found. But they had them at the hotel for breakfast in Uruguay and it was like a dream come true! We saw the equivalent of the Brazilian White House (above), where the President works.

This is the main plaza, with a famous statue and nice looking buildlings.

Uruguai was filled with pretty parks in the city and a beautiful rambla (long bike path), along the beach.

We went to a famous Urugian poet's house.....

and even found a delicious Korean restaurant in downtown Montevideo!

Does this not look like a little european city street?

And book stores? AMAZING! These do not exist in northeast Brazil!

In between all the adventures of exploring Uruguay we gave presentations on our research to our fellow fulbrighters. Here you can see my buddy Ross giving his presentation on agr0-energy in Northeast Brazil. This meeting brought Fulbrighters together from Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. I was the only Fulbrighter studying ecology of any animal and the only marine biologist. Other people's projects were really interesting with one kid from Argentina studying cosmic rays and another from Chile studying traffic!

For a special end of the week treat, Fulbright Uruguay, took us to a Gaucho Ranch for a day of relaxing and fun. Read the next blog entry to see photos about the Gaucho Ranch.

Icapui

In a crazy, jumbled, spontaneous Brazilian-like fashion I found myself in Icapui this weekend. Icapui is a beach town about 3 hours south of Fortaleza and the last stop on the east coast of Ceará where I am doing research. Right as the weekend was about to commence, my big weekend of actually starting my own research here, several things happened. First, in organizing my research and my first visit to my first study site, I was informed that it was rather dangerous to go there. And by rather dangerous I mean I would have to have a police escort. So with visions of Ricky Ricardo in a speedo as my escort, I began to try to organize. However, as with trying to organize anything in Brazil, I was met with bureaucracy that slowed the process down. I would have to write a formal request asking the Nature Police (Policia Florestral) for an escort to these areas, specifying dates and times, with no guarantee that they would get back to me. Ugh, another logistical nightmare on my hands. Then came several scary stories of scary things happening to people that were accompanied by the Nature Police in these areas. Let’s just say the police ran running for the hills when it came time to stop sun-bathing and start law-enforcing. But thankfully, (thankfully?), I got a call from the professor, saying that although my permit had been submitted I wasn’t allowed to start until it was approved. This was news to me, as I had been advised differently from her several weeks before. Alas, this should not be a shock. Brazilian bureaucracy gives one a headache worse than a migraine. But it did mean that I would not be conducting field research this weekend and hence I would not be requiring Ricky Ricardo speedo and all to accompany me. (side note: I have since decided not to go to these two most dangerous research sites because they require a police escort and although at times I complain, I do enjoy living my life—so mom you can rest easy danger associated with research is not in my near future)

However as all this was unfolding late on a Thursday afternoon, I was also following up on a lead that there was someone in the Aquaculture Department at the University Of Ceará that was raising seahorses. I called, well ok not me, Carol- think the new Gabi if you’ve been following the blog, aka potentially my new research assistant) she called to see if this seahorse aquaculture guy (Koba, short for Kobayashi) had any interest in talking to me. He did AND he also invited me down to his beach house in Icapui for the weekend! Now I wasn’t sure if it was so I could do research down there; if I was going to be helping him do research, or if we were just going to get to know one another and see how we could work together.

It turned out to be the latter but I spent the weekend at his gorgeous home, hidden amongst the sand dunes with a spectacular view from my hammock in his home. He also invited another girl, a brazilian, who had just finished her doctorate and had recently returned to Brazil from a year of traveling to come along. This girl and I became good friends and spent one day walking 14 km along the beach, seeing some fantastic views and colors of the sand and ocean. It was amazing to see how many houses were hidden in amongst the sand dunes.

Koba turned out to be an excellent source of information for learning about how to do research in different beach towns in Ceará. I got to know some local fishermen who will help me with research when I head down to Icapui in July and Koba offered for me to stay at his house too! It was an interesting weekend filled with beautiful vistas, new friends and new details of how to go about my research here in Ceará. Not the weekend I had hoped for (actually starting research), but a great one none-the-less!