by Glen Chilton
Although Punta del Diablo was once a sleepy little fishing village, everyone I spoke to claimed that it had grown considerably of late. To me, it still had the sense of the minuscule, wanting to remain so. The community boasts just 1,000 residents. The bus station is a shack. Most of the community’s restaurants are shacks. The streets are no more than compacted sand, and deep channels had been created by the previous week’s rains. A bulldozer was trying to patch the worst of the damage.
Streets in Punta del Diablo have names, but that has nothing to do with the reality of the town. There are plenty of signs, but none of them are street signs. Instead, every intersection, such as it is—two sandy tracks intersecting—has numerous hand-painted signs trying to convince the traveller to visit this restaurant, that cabaña, or this hostel. By the looks of things, Punta del Diablo was Uruguay’s hostel capital. With a map from the tourist information centre, a shack, I made my way to my cabaña.
Luckily the rains had stopped, because Punta del Diablo is all about the beach. If you don’t like sun and sand, there is no reason for you to be in Punta del Diablo. I wondered what there might be to do in this town if it was raining, and suspected that the principal activity might involve coger. I made my way past modest residences to the beach, where I strolled slowly for several hours.
Forget what online descriptions say about being buff, waxed, and tanned on the beaches of Punta del Este—Punta del Diablo is the place to see acres of very nice skin. Punta del Este is for rich bodies. Punta del Diablo is for young bodies, and many of them sported a deep, deep tan to complement their natural pigmentation. By comparison, I was a grub.
On my pre-breakfast run the next day, I spied a hotel (really more a series of shacks) with a miniature golf course. It had four flags, presumably signalling four holes. In all, I spotted forty-two places to get a bite to eat, and six small markets, but not a single school, library, or church. I have to wonder what Punta del Diablo will become in forty or fifty years. Will it be fashionable to replace the tumbledown shacks with posh summer homes for the newly rich? Will backpackers tell stories about how Punta del Diablo was once the place for beach parties and cheap digs, or will it fall back out of favour and be washed away with the outgoing tide?
I set off to explore a very long and less populated beach to the south. Kilometres of light brown sand were punctuated by darker brown bodies. I strolled as slowly as I have ever walked, stopping periodically to apply more high-SPF sunblock. The lotion gave my already out of place pale skin an unearthly silver sheen. A little further on I spied two young ladies with skin as white as mine, squinting and blinking as though seeing the sun for the first time. I wondered what snowy place they had just arrived from, and how many SPF points their sunblock could boast.
I picked an open-air cantina on the beach for dinner and ordered a rum and coke and pasta. Ten minutes later I was approached by the only English-speaking member of staff, who explained that there was “only one problem.”
“Only one? That’s great.” It seems that the power to the food preparation area had gone out. I could wait until someone was found to restore the power (perhaps ten minutes, perhaps never), or I could have an ensalada. I had an ensalada. I was getting sick of ensaladas.
When I had arrived at my hotel, I had noticed that there was a telephone in my room, but it wasn’t plugged in. When I plugged it in, there was no sign of life. However, shortly after I got back from dinner a note was brought to my room. It read:
HABITACÍON IV
Lisa phoned,
she’d wish to be
here with you.
When I got home I had it framed.
FOR MY LAST STOP in Uruguay, I needed to travel from Punta del Diablo, in the country’s southwestern corner, to Colonia del Sacramento in the southeastern corner—as much as that is possible in a more or less circular country. Before leaving home, I had given thought to renting a car to get from Buenos Aires to Punta del Diablo and then on to Colonia. Thank goodness I didn’t. Uruguayan buses are clean, cheap, run on time, and saved me from having to distinguish among traffic laws, strong traffic suggestions, and easily dismissed traffic hints. Leaving behind the sand streets and dirt-poor hippie travellers behind, the bus passed hills and valleys and agricultural fields on the four-hour run back to Montevideo.
The bus was scheduled to get into the capital at 1:00 p.m. Coaches then left for Colonia at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. When I had purchased my ticket a few days earlier, I was told that the incoming bus was frequently late, and so it was safer to reserve seats for a 3:30 departure. However, if I got in on time, and if I could find a ticket agent who understood my version of Spanish, I might be able to switch my tickets for a pair on the 1:30 bus. When our bus pulled in at exactly 1:00 p.m., I was less than keen on a long wait in the terminal, and tried my gringo Spanish.
When I got to the front of a very long but very quick-moving line, I asked “¿Está possible ir Colonia la una media en rez de tres y media?”
“¿Cambio?” asked the lady behind the counter.
To this point, I thought that cambio indicated a currency exchange office, but now it was clear that the word just meant “change.” “Si, si. Cambio.” Bless the efficiency of the clerks at the Montevideo bus terminal; I was sitting on the 1:30 coach to Colonia.
As I peered out the window, I played the highway alphabet game, demanding of myself that I get the whole alphabet, including CH, LL, and Ñ, all in the correct order. K, V, and X were a challenge, particularly since they aren’t Spanish letters, but I managed. Then I tried to get all of the vowels, both accented and unaccented; A, Á, E, É, I, Í, O, Ó, U, and Ú. Just as highway alphabet got really, really tedious, I spied a sulphuric acid factory. Intellectually you realize that sulphuric acid factories must exist, but you don’t really think that someone out there is responsible for making the stuff. I hope that they get paid really well.
After settling in at a cute hotel on the Plaza Mayor in Colonia, I set off in search of adventure. It may be a silly little thing, and not an adventure per se, but I get pleasure out of asking for a package of gum in a foreign language and actually getting a package of gum. A shopkeeper in Colonia didn’t disappoint me. I wandered up and down the streets of the Barrio Histórico, the colonial heart of old Colonia, chewing gum, peeping in shop windows, and hopping between patches of shade provided by sycamore trees. Stopping at a tourist information office, I couldn’t get any English out of the lady behind the desk, but she told me, proudly, in Spanish, that Colonia had five kilometres of beautiful beaches. She pointed them out on a small street map. A little further along, I purchased green glass earrings for Lisa. I misplaced my hat. I sat on a bench in front of the Comisaría de Policía on Avenida General Flores. I watched as eighty-eight people passed me on motorbikes and scooters. Of these, five wore helmets. Many were barefoot, and most of the rest wore sandals. My favourite group was a family of four who zipped by on a Baccio Cruiser 125. The scooter was piloted by dad, who had their six-year-old daughter between him and the handlebars. Behind them rode mom, nursing a newborn.
After a lunch that was far heavier than anything I would have had at home, I wandered to an information kiosk on the main strip and asked about guided walking tours of the town. I got only as far as “Can you tell …” when I was told “¡No, no, no!” and a lady further down the line was pointed out. Very cheerful, very friendly—just not English-friendly.
The new lady said, “I speak English …” and then couldn’t think of the next word.
“¿Un poco?” I tried. A little?
“Poquito,” she responded. Very little.
Fearing what I would get if I asked in English, I tried: “¿Caminata tour en ingles?” This prompted a flurry of activity and several telephone calls, which frequently involved the word no, until the lady stepped outside and asked among the walking-tour hawkers if anyone could speak English. Beatriz Rivas did. She tried to convince me to come along on a two-hour automobile tour of the city, but agreed to meet in
front of my hotel at 6:30 p.m. for a one-hour walking tour of the Barrio Histórico.
I wandered over to the Plaza Manuel Lobo and entered the Iglesia Matriz, hoping for some inspiration. It was possibly the warmest, and certainly the least adorned, church I had ever visited. An altarpiece, a few small statues, a couple of paintings behind glass, and big white walls leading to a big white ceiling that would have made Michelangelo drool in anticipation. This austerity is apparently the result of Jesuit influence. After about ten minutes of quiet contemplation, I heard a boom as the entrance doors were slammed closed. It was siesta time, but as I appeared to be praying, I hadn’t been asked to leave.
Beatriz arrived at my hotel dripping with sweat and enthusiasm. She walked me to a plaque near the old town wall and drawbridge to begin the tour. She first explained about the complete annihilation of Uruguay’s aboriginal people, the Charrúa, as a way of saying that the remainder of the tour was going to be based on the country’s history since the arrival of Europeans.
I heard about how Uruguay had bounced back and forth over the centuries between Spanish and Portuguese occupation, with brief incursions by other nations. As we walked, I was shown how to distinguish between historical buildings from the Portuguese period (sloped roofs with tiles) and those of Spanish construction (flat roofs with gargoyles). Spanish streets had sidewalks; Portuguese streets didn’t. I saw old buildings still occupied, and others razed to the foundations. Beatriz explained that Colonia’s protective wall had stretched across a peninsula from sea to sea, isolating a plot of land about thirty-five square blocks. I heard the names of plants, some native but most introduced, in Spanish and English, and was told which ones had scented flowers.
Beatriz explained that the sun would set at about seven o’clock and that the river would then be beautiful. “Bery romantic!” she said. I wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at.
After seeing Beatriz off, and having completed a light dinner, I went for a wander, fuelled by a half-bottle of red wine. It was a warm evening, with only a whisper of wind, but by walking slowly enough I managed not to overheat. The river was bery beautiful and bery romantic, and restaurants were doing a good trade at eleven o’clock. As I entered an intersection on the main street, a fellow on a motor scooter got himself into a fix when, failing to see me, he nearly ran me down. I smiled, stepped back, and waved him through. He smiled back, and called out “Gracias.” I replied “De nada.” Strolling down Florida, the quietest back street I could find, I looked up at the Southern Cross imbedded firmly in the Milky Way. I can’t say that love was in the air, but life certainly was.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Perforation of New Orleans
REASON NUMBER EIGHT FOR INTRODUCING A FOREIGN SPECIES: BECAUSE I WASN’T PAYING ATTENTION.
MISERY LOVES COMPANY. This may explain such gatherings as Star Trek conventions, Weight Watchers, and the Republican Party. University students congregate for the same reason—they don’t have any money and they don’t get enough sleep, but at least they can be miserable together. In many cases, friends made in college become friends for life.
One summer many years ago, having just completed one degree but before starting the next, I accepted the opportunity to teach summer school in order to keep collection agencies at bay. I was sharing an office with Rob Higgins, another impoverished M.Sc. graduate who was also lecturing his summer away. Rob and I would periodically look up from our desks and glance out at coeds frolicking in the glorious sunshine and moan about being stuck indoors.
One day Rob had a tremendous idea. At the end of our teaching assignments, he said, we should go on a long canoeing trip. We could spend two weeks on the Bloodvein River, snaking back and forth across the Manitoba-Ontario border, without contact with the outside world. It sounded glorious, and I agreed in a heartbeat.
Ten days into our trip, we approached a waterfall. Our canoe-trail map was very clear on the subject; to go over the waterfall meant certain death. Less clear was the location of the portage around the waterfall. And so we paddled up to a rock in the middle of the river, close to the falls, knowing that the trail had to be somewhere to the right or the left. Rob hopped onto the rock to try to spot the head of the portage, leaving me in the canoe. “Hold on to the rock,” he said as he jumped out.
Well, fine and dandy, but this was a big, smooth, slippery rock with no handholds. I lay my palms flat on the rock and tried to use my fingerprints to hold on. Regrettably, I am not a gecko. As I started to lose my grip, Rob hopped back in, and we backpaddled to put a little more space between us and the waterfall. Strangely, the faster we paddled away from the falls, the closer we got to them.
“Paddle harder!” Rob screamed. He was apparently not in the mood to die.
“I’m paddling as hard as I bloody well can!” I screamed back. Death was not a high priority for me either.
When the inevitable was imminent, Rob called out “Hold on!!!”—only he said it with more exclamation marks.
I am pleased to report that the canoe-trail map was in error. It is possible to go over that waterfall without dying.
Perhaps the waterfall incident made us closer, and when it came time to hunt good food, good music, and Formosan termites in New Orleans, I gave Rob a shout.
SINCE OUR CANOEING DAYS, Rob had gone on to teach biology at Thompson River University in central British Columbia and had become something of an expert on ants. In an ecological sense, ants are not so different from termites. Our initial plan was to visit New Orleans during Mardi Gras. It would be a chance to skip a few days of wintry weather, miss a couple of lectures, and get our fill of hedonism. Unfortunately, our termite expert, Jerry Howard at the University of New Orleans, told us that Formosan termites would be staying pretty close to home in their underground excavations at that time of year. However, if we wanted to see great masses of swarming termites—which of course we did—Jerry indicated that there was another option, but only if we were jazz music fans—which of course we were.
Each year, on the last weekend in April and the first weekend of May, New Orleans plays host to its great Jazz & Heritage Festival, or “Jazz Fest” to those in the know. Spread over seven days, Jazz Fest attracts all of the greatest acts and more than 600,000 jazz fans, and generates more than $300 million in revenue. And by a strange coincidence, $300 million is just how much damage is caused each year in New Orleans by the Formosan termite.
In the United States, these wood-chomping immigrants were first noticed in 1965 in a shipyard in Houston. Our best guess is that they came from Asia to the southern U.S. in wooden packing material on a military transport ship at the end of WWII. Once authorities started looking, it became apparent that the problem was not a local one, with colonies as far away as Charleston, South Carolina. Formosan termites are now found in eleven states, including Hawaii. Their impact is felt most keenly in and around New Orleans.
These termites play it close to the chest for most of the year, hiding and slowly devouring all the wood they can stuff in their mouths. In the spring, when a group has come to maturity, it sends out winged colony members to find suitable spots to establish new colonies. When they do, they infest as many as half of New Orleans’ 4,000 magnificent oak trees. Even worse, Formosan termites find their way into wooden buildings in the city’s historic French Quarter. Recent study has shown that the problem is now spreading far beyond that section of the city, and the termite population is up, up, up. Global climate change may be making the situation worse; termites like a hot and humid climate, and they don’t like frost. To demonstrate the scope of the problem, the New Orleans Yellow Pages have one page with thirty-four entries under the heading “Escort Services.” Under the title of “Pest Control Services,” I found 121 businesses spread over eleven pages.
In early August 2005, The Independent newspaper ran an article entitled “The tiny pest that threatens to gobble up the Big Easy.” The piece described the enormous cost of trying to control Formosan termites. Just a few
weeks after the article appeared, New Orleans was hit by hurricane Katrina, and those who survived had bigger problems than termites.
OVER BREAKFAST AT OUR HOTEL, Rob said, “I suppose we are the only ones who have no idea what’s going on.” He meant that we seemed to be the only Jazz Fest virgins in New Orleans. Everyone else on our flight from Houston had been wearing T-shirts from a previous Jazz Fest. Everyone in our hotel was now reading festival programs. Well, everyone gets to be a virgin once.
Rob and I went for a wander in the famed French Quarter. Long the geographical and cultural pivot point of New Orleans, the French Quarter was awash with souvenir shops, restaurants, and street performers. The balconies of many of its two-storey businesses and residences showed off their iconic ironwork railings. Bourbon Street is legendary for its music and vice, but in the uncompromising glare of a Friday morning, it was a woman, past her prime, on her way home from a party that broke up several hours before. I spotted a young fellow in an Orkin uniform filling out a work invoice on the hood of his truck. Recognizing Orkin as a major pest-control firm, I asked him where I might find termites. “Formosan termites?” He then explained that he was more involved in rat and cockroach control than in the management of termites. Even so, if the weather held, he explained, I should have no trouble finding termites, as they swarmed after dark. They needed heavy rains to soften up the ground, followed by a couple of warm days.
I asked if rats were a big problem in the French Quarter. He chuckled at my naïveté and explained that he could kill all ten rats in a building, then come back a week later and kill ten more.
One of the problems is that every building in the French Quarter is attached to its neighbours, allowing rats to have free run. He said that the only way to get rid of the vermin would be to order every building to get pest treatment at exactly the same time. The biologist in me is pretty confident that nothing short of a biblical holocaust could wipe out all of New Orleans’ pests.
