The Polenta Files

what day is it??

HaPPY dAY MiSs  j. ShoUt ouTS to Mango Mitzu, and an AnGel tOo.

Its the Birthday festivity Season.. Did someone say ThIrty? Que? Oh no, that was Biz saying _thirsty_ "Mais Uma"! Someone BRing me another CAipairinha. quick.

Pacha Mama

For several days before the full moon, Matias had been talking about how important it was to make an offering to Pacha Mama. For those who don't know, Pacha Mama is the earth goddess, worshiped by several cultures across the Andean Altiplano and as far east as the Warani indians of Uruguay and Brazil. Pacha Mama is the earth, the day to day reality in which we live. When we hurt the earth, we're hurting Pacha Mama, our mother. Kind of makes a lot of sense to me, more so that those crazy sky god religions that talk about some old geezer sitting on top of the earth deciding who gets into the great big disneyland in the sky when their number comes up.

Now, after a lot of abuse by the whiteys who came and tried to wipe out Pacha Mama's people, she's kind of pissed. Pacha Mama needed a sacrifice to restore the balance, and this is what Matias was on about. As the moon became fuller in the night sky, he would say the time was approaching, that on the full moon, we should become extremely drunk and throw ourselves into the sea, naked.

Sounds good to me, thought I.

The full moon was scheduled for the Sunday night, which as a school night, didn't look hopeful. Saturday night had been another big Parilla night and everyone was knackered and slunk off early, hoping to avoid being dragged off into some mad fool adventure that would result in a couple of drowned gringos washing up on the beach the next day. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed.

The next day the weather was too rough for Turtle hunting, Pacha Mama wasn't pleased. Our hearts were pure but we needed to cleanse our bodies in the light of the moon. The following day, our last, we were more successful, one turtle in the net and another so close we could smell his cloaca. Triumphant turtle hunters with the smell of algae in our nostrils, we returned to the house to prepare our farewell meal. Things rolled along quite nicely until Steph suggested we play "quarters". I'm sure this game exists in other denominations, but it's fair to say that the coins of the evil empire, which look like they've been punched out of tin foil in someones backyard, are eminently suited to the task.

"Quarters" involves bouncing coins off a table and into a cup. The loser of each round has to scull a beer and on it goes until either the beer runs out or you lose the coins somewhere in the backyard. After the latter, we retired to gaze at the stars and drink the last remaining bottle of beer.

"We're out of beer" said someone with a voice that sounded like mine*

"Well, we'll just have to go and get some more" said a voice that sounded remarkably like Matias's

"Good idea, let's go" came a gringo accent that could only be Steph

So we stumbled off into town, where I caught up with some Artisans who I had bought some precious gifts off earlier that day. One of them looked exactly like Frank Zappa.

"They call me Flaco (skinny) or Frank Zappa" he introduced himself, "but I don't think I look anything like him"

We whiled away an hour or so, slugging beers and cheap red wine while Frank and I kept the aromatic hand rolled cigarettes coming. Then Matias decided it was time.

"It's time" he said.

"For what?" one of us who still had the power of speech asked.

"To make our offering to Pacha Mama" replied Mattias.

"I'm outta here" said Frank, knowing crazy talk when he heard it.

So off we staggered to the beach. When we hit the hard sand, we broke into a jog until we were standing a few meters from the lapping waves. The moon was almost full and was shining brilliantly. The sea was calm and inviting. My head was spinning gently as the world of Pacha Mama spiraled around me.

"Beautiful" I said, and began to strip my clothes off.

"Whoa! Slow down tiger" said Matias, "We have to prepare ourselves first"

So we sat in a circle and drained the remaining beer while Matias waited for the right moment.

"Now is the time" he announced and we got to our feet.

In a flurry of sand and clothes, we were crashing into the waves of the ocean butt naked as the nearly full moon shone down upon us. It was a truly magic moment.

"This is a magic moment" said Matias

We waded around for a period of time, which owing to our inebriated state, could have been anything from 10 minutes to an hour. The water was warm, like the womb (gratuitous hippy inference) and as we stumbled back onto the beach, I felt as if I had been reborn.

As we pulled on our clothes (and I discovered my jocks were missing, taken by the tide) Matias announced it was time for the offering. Above his head he held a tattered pair of reg grundies**. In silence, we watched as he cast them into the ocean.

"For Pacha Mama" he said

"For Pacha Mama" we replied and I meditated on my own offering to the earth goddess.

We stumbled back to the house, stopping along the way to stare at the stars and moon for a while longer before we collapsed into our respective beds.

"This has been the best night ever!" chortled Matias as I bid him goodnight. I was inclined to agree.

*All conversations in this article are translated from Spanglish
** Undergarments, in the peculiar dialect of the Antipodeans

New photos

Greetings from Ilha da Santa Catalina, Brazil. A place with an all round happy vibe where you can get drinks in melons. Last week, we finished one month at project Karumbe, on the Uruguayan Coast. All the photos of Valizas and Coronilla are loaded into the Uruguay album. Thanks to Mariana, Matias, Phillip, Ben, Shayla, and Steph for a fun 2nd fortnight. Biz has deepened his relationship with Patcha Mamma.

¡Che, cuñado!

Well, our little stint in Uruguay is coming to end, next stop Brazil. On reflection it has been one of the most surprising and enjoyable stopovers of our trip so far. In addition to being a fantastic country, the Uruguayans are incredibly warm and friendly people, until you mention the football, that is. Even then, they're much more well behaved then I'm sure many Australians would be were the shoe on the other foot.

We've just spent the last 2 weeks in a place called Valizas, which is kind of like Byron was 20 years ago. Shacks line the unpaved streets that lead to impressive sand dunes, pristine coast and awesome surf. In the center of town is a hippy crafts market where you can buy most of the supplies you need to make the stay truly enjoyable. I think that Uruguay is probably one of the most underated parts of South America. Of course, it would probably get boring pretty quickly if all you did was sit in the sun on the beach or rocking out in groovy small town pubs to bands dressed as pirates while slugging Grappa with Honey. I don't think I could handle more than, Oh, I don't know, 2 or 3 years of that...

In between catching, marking and releasing green sea turtles, we've been invited to several Parillas (Uruguayan BBQ), have walked the coast in both directions for several hours counting the dead things that have washed up on the shore and worked on our respective tans. Yes, it's a tough life saving the sea turtles, but someone has to do it, and I think that Bsharp and I are made of the right stuff...

Well, that's all for now, I'll try and put up some more photos soon.

I love the internet

Well in the last day there have been 3 visitors to polenta files. One of them found us through this search:  "pics+of+EE+cup+tits". * The funniest part is the combination of extracts that gave us the fifth ranking:

"I'll post some pics in a day ...ee-da), has rhyming slang tetas caidas (tettas cay-eed-as) which means "saggy tits". God ... qualifies for the World Cup! Now I'm ..."

Hi there numnut! In the words of Betty Sue .. no boobies here! What we do have is photos - inlcuding me looking like a sporty shorty in a wetsuit... here.  Also in today's post..update from Uruguay:

• We love marine turtles.
• We have seen approximately 5,000 dead, stinky swollen sealions on the beaches because they do a foot census here once a week.
• We dig Valizes (current place of residence to watch turtles).
• We really loooove Cabo Polonia. (An uber hippy town 9 km walk from where we are..no direct road access and a scattering of hand made houses right next to a sealion colony and miles of beaches).
• We saw a procession to the sea at night on 2 Feb - where the local fishermen send a candle-laden ceremonial boat into the waves to ensure good conditions for the season. Five strapping young men carried it into the surf to wild applause after half the town accompanied it throught the streets to traditional drumming. The beach was lit up by candles placed in holes in the sand. Beautiful effect.
• Its hot and I have tan lines.

Thats all for today folks. Hasta proxima.

*nb. Don't worry we can't see details of your server or IP address, only the "referrer" or site where you clicked over from. We respect your privacy. :)