Punta del Diablo

I have come to the conclusion that being a professional writer is far more arduous and tedious than I thought. Instead of enthusiastically opening my notebook at a fresh page, the speed of my fingers barely keeping pace with my mind’s restless desire to record every detail and bring to life the sights, sounds, and smells that surround me, lately I have been writing about the benefits of certain statistical software products as managerial tools, the definition of a torque angle (I had never heard of it either) and the obligations of good Muslim women. The latter, I have to say, certainly interested me more, but the technical writing and stiff format requirements of the articles tie my hands. There’s nothing like observing real people, trekking into the wild and luring outback or listening to the softly lapping waves on the shore to get your creative juices flowing.

Today I am allowing myself the guilty pleasure of up-dating my long-abandoned blog. For my few followers, I apologise for leaving you without reading material for so long. Since arriving back in Buenos Aires, all my efforts have been focused on launching my professional writing page (www.christinacomben.com – for those of you who haven’t seen it yet) and working on my first novel, of which I’m about 55 pages in.

It is Sunday, although you wouldn’t really know it. There is little to distinguish one day from the next in a popular beach resort in high season. I decided to take a leisurely stroll over the dunes and to the quietest beach, playa grande, which actually has quite a few people on it today. I’m used to seeing nothing but the waves breaking on the sand and the trees and shrubs that pepper the hills tumbling in the breeze.

I love this beach. Once we bathed here at 2am, splashing in the tepid waters brimming with a shining star dust that had us mesmerised by its glow. Shimmering layers of what seemed like fairy dust lit up our naked bodies and danced around in our hair. I thought they were little bacteria that lived in the water, but it turns out that my star dust is actually a scientific phenomenon called phosphorescence. It occurs when lots of energy is absorbed by a substance and released slowly in the form of light. To witness it and swim in the turquoise froth of a wave at night under the light of the moon, leaving footprints in the wet sand that sparkle back at you like gold certainly doesn’t feel scientific. It feels like magic.

That summer night last year here on playa grande, the beach was ours alone. We lay back nestled from the wind by a sand dune, staring up at a sky bursting with stars. Apparently it’s not possible for two people to see the same shooting star, but we did. “Quiero estar contigo para siempre,” (“I want to be with you forever”) Angel whispered to me, staring deeply into my eyes, which were glistening with tears. We’d only known each other a few days but somehow it felt like a life time. Remembering that night has carried me through many a stressful and heart-racing moment. When we were separated and I was in Honduras, I closed my eyes and thought of the beach; when the gunshot rounds in the night were frequent and unnerving; on the day our car span off the road whilst journeying back from San Pedro to Tegucigalpa and we nearly crashed into a horse, a few opportune reeds and plants luckily softening our landing.

On that particularly frightful episode I actually wondered if I would see any of my friends or family again. I just prayed and prayed as I’ve never prayed before to make it home alive, knowing that we still had hours of journey on a treacherous mountain highway ahead, followed by a loop through the poorest and scariest neighbourhood in Honduras at the onset of darkness, searching for a way out of the rat’s nest of chaotic streets and dilapidated buildings. I certainly wouldn’t have believed that a few months later I would be back here on this beach. But then that’s the thing I love most about life – you never know what’s going to happen or what twists and turns of fate will throw you off your path without warning. Here I am, looking out to the horizon, one year later... engaged to my dark-eyed Uruguayan and anticipating yet another move.

Punta del Diablo in the Eastern tip of Uruguay, almost at the border with Brazil has such a special energy that, if you connect with it, it will draw you back time and again. I reconciled my relationship with my sister here, fell in love, bought land, and got engaged on this very beach. There is a magic in the air that radiates from the rocks, the forest that fringes the perfect sandy beaches, the honey-sweet smell of the flowers and the wildlife that hums in the distance. Apart from the phosphorescence, we’ve seen many a curious insect here. If you’re located too close to the forest then the mosquitoes can be ferocious and the frogs and crickets that throb in the undergrowth like a musical chorus, will keep you up all night with their incessant shrill, should one unwillingly enter your house.

Last year after a huge storm that shook the foundations of our cabin, my sister and I awoke to find a horse in the garden. I’ve shared my room with a species of moth-slash-butterfly-slash-bat so big that it froze the breath in my throat. The locals affectionately call this “batman” and it has a wing span greater than that of both my hands together. When it was fixed to the wall without moving I could just about live with it, but when it made its flapping and erratic darts about the thin wooden walls, terrorised shrieks were provoked in me. We’ve seen snakes and miniature dolphins, a local species of shark, crowds of sea birds that gather together on the rocks and fireflies with large green eyes that light up the night with their beams.

If you can learn to be at one with the omnipresent natural life that abounds here, slow your rhythm down to the rolling movements of the tide, and learn that nothing is ever planned in advance, then this might just be a little slice of heaven. At least that is what I am hoping. Angel and I have decided to move here permanently (I say permanently in the Christina sense of the word). I have actually lost count now of how many houses, apartments, shelters, hotels, tents and countries I have lived in and I have a passport with 87 stamps and half a page of space free that doesn’t expire for another 5 years.

We still don’t have our house defined, as it’s only the 6th of February and looking ahead to March is about as alien a concept to the people here as planning your wedding when you’re still in primary school. We were joking with some local friends about this just last night. I will always have my English (mostly my father’s) impatience to get things done and plan in advance. Maybe not to the same extent, but a diluted version of the wanting everything now and not leaving things up in the air to see what happens. When I spoke to him yesterday he told me that they had already sent out invitations to their anniversary party – in JULY – I don’t even know where I will be living in three week’s time. It’s just a different world.

It is going to be an experimental year. I’ve spent most of my adult life residing in chaotic and vibrating cities with throbbing nightlife, street culture, public transport, pollution, noise, bars, restaurants and a 24-hour kiosk on the corner. Can my accelerated and restless spirit be contained and calmed here, in this corner of this tiny South American country miles from any real civilisation? When the winter bites and the harsh, Sothern wind blows and the cold invades my lungs, the carafe of gas has run out and there’s no delivery until next week... how will I react?

The truth is... I don’t know. But I’m willing to find out. I can work from here. I can write. Perhaps I can even find the peace and time I need to complete my novel and inhale pure air. I wonder if I can cure my insomnia and shake of the layers of stress that I’ve been carrying around for so long. I never mention it in my blog, but so much constant moving can be a little, well, unsettling.

I will miss dining out, sipping on pisco sours and hanging out with my friends. Dressing up and straightening my hair, strapping high-heeled shoes around my ankles and feeling glamorous, taking pilates classes, tennis, and massages; just generally being in the city. And the food here is certainly no luxury; the only healthy alternative will be to eat at home. Having a chef as a fiancé comes in handy here as in the main, Uruguayans are certainly not gourmets, at least not in this part of the country. Perhaps in the swanky, 5-star resorts further south or the better areas of Montevideo, but in the rest of Uruguay their idea of a glamorous meal is serving it on a ceramic plate instead of a plastic package and the only way to cook is with a deep fat fryer.

Almost everything here is fried. Milanesas (meat in breadcrumbs), empanadas (Cornish pasties), and a kind of sweet fried dough known as tortas fritas (fried cakes) are all specialities. It’s amazing the people here are not obese with the amount of hamburgers, hotdogs, and general junk oozing with fat that they eat. The Uruguayan chivito is the equivalent of a heart attack on a plate and comes stacked with meat, ham, egg, fries, potato salad, lettuce, olives, cheese and a few other food groups I’m failing to mention, all smothered in mayonnaise. In a country where they eat and appreciate every internal organ of the cow and do creative things with intestines, liver and kidney, I will certainly miss the sophistication of Buenos Aires cuisine.
But for now at least, I am hanging up my heels and my hair dryer, putting always my jackets, skirts and makeup and trading my cocktails for mate and biscocho. My next few blogs will be posted from a small fishing village with a year-round population that doesn’t exceed 1,500. I’ve been to cinemas with more people than that.