couchsurfing

Last year at this time, Suzanna and I were couchsurfing in Montevideo with a sweet German couple. Here they are, doing some sleep-arranging and blowing up an air mattress.

thursday vertical

tektonika

When Suze and I were in Montevideo over Christmas, we met these kids dancing to tektonika music in a plaza in the Ciudád Vieja (Old City). They surrounded us when we approached them and everyone was hollering at once. At first I was a little scared--adolescents scare me--but then they shouted "Welcome!" in unison.



See the complete set here. They taught us some moves and were just generally awesome.

skeletons

Montevideo and Buenos Aires are full of skeletal trees like this, even in the summer. I have been trying for weeks to shoot them, and the result is always a little bit off. But I like this one.

Uruguay ftw

I was in Montevideo when the national team defeated Korea to qualify for the quarterfinals of the World Cup.



I shot the festivities for Norman Einstein's Magazine. The July issue is out today, and that's where you can view more photos.

working

While I shot photos of nicely appointed luxury hotels in Montevideo last week (left), I (gratefully) couchsurfed in an unheated house (right).

gone fishing

There is this long pier full of fishermen on the Río Plata...

sorry

I couldn´t help it. I´m just like a ten-year-old boy. Also, it was a really long day and you know I hate shooting fashion, so this really cheered me up.



I was so shocked that I didn´t even think to go in and buy a tee-shirt.

How much is head?

This is another thing you can buy at the flea market in Montevideo: a wooden head, nicely displayed...on the asphalt.



I like this photo because of the two women sitting in the background. People here are so good at sitting and chatting, or sitting and staring. And any place is good for sitting, just as long as there is shade. It also helps to have things to look at, like this disembodied head, and the stupid tourists taking photos of it.

to market!

The Sunday flea market in Montevideo is fun. You can buy everything there. A short list: fireworks, antique telephones, a white peacock (live), fishing tackle, and four identical framed photos of soldiers.



Definitely my favorite part of the flea market were all the random people selling puppies out of crates. But it also kind of broke my heart. I wouldn't want to be separated from my litter of fuzzy brothers and sisters and handed over to some sticky-fingered child. Unless, of course, he was going to share some of that ice cream cone with me.

a word on uruguayos

There is a noticeable difference as a photographer when you cross the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires to Montevideo. Namely, that people in Montevideo don't really mind having their photo taken. In fact, this happened quite a bit in Uruguay:



They would wave you down, (even if it meant falling out of a moving vehicle), and pose. I have all these posed photos of men who just...I don't know...wanted their photo taken...with their shirt off.

hide and seek

In my host's subdivision, there were always people out, and it felt good. True, the subdivision was locked behind a gate, but it seems that everything here is locked up somehow and people just get used to it. In many retail stores and apartment buildings, you have to bet let in and out personally with a key.

These kids were having a lot of fun. When they were playing hide and seek, occasionally they would duck into the apartment of two older people who were just sitting outside their front door drinking mate.



In the evenings the older kids would come out. We spent Christmas night outside passing beers with the 20-somethings of the neighborhood.

couchsurfing in montevideo

Starting on December 25, Suzanna and I couchsurfed (and cot-surfed) for a few nights with the "ambassador" to Montevideo of couchsurfing.org.



Our host was incredibly chill and open, as the best couchsurfing hosts are. To be welcomed into a stranger's home on Christmas seemed so natural and unobtrusive. I loved the Uruguayos.