Gauchos could be (and I think some English-speaking sources have) described as the equivalent of cowboys. That feels kind of disrespectful, I think. To my limited understanding since I mostly lived in a city, gauchos are people who tend to cattle and pasture in the grasslands of Argentina and Uruguay. This image and the rural esthetics bred […]

The circumstances that led to Montevideo’s birth are incredibly curious for a Spanish colony. It is all about land and military control. The Portuguese had settled east, founding a city called Colônia do Sacramento. I have been there briefly, and it is a lovely place to visit. Unlike the Spanish colonial cities with their rigid grid […]

If my roots reached deep underground, they would stumble upon the layers of sediment from years past. I can’t help but think about certain signs alongside la rambla. These signs talk about fossils (which I still have not figured out if they were found on those locations or not).  I was quite happy at the […]

The wind was genuinely insane today. I pondered if I should just return home but eventually decided to face adversity and be brave. Last time I came here, I sat at a bench nearby a tree, kind of in the middle of the park itself. This time, the waves colliding even more agressively than usual […]

Montevideo is intrinsic to la rambla. Every part of its identity is tied to the beach, nestled by the sea. A sea that is actually a river, Río de la Plata, home to such a deep collective memory that it does not matter what it technically is, but rather how it feels. No matter the time of […]