Wise Woman Travel

24 hours of gaylight

Pamela Young

June 27, 2018

Just before the parade leaves the United Church to make its loud and proud way down Whitehorse’s Main Street, Doris Bill, Chief of the Kwanlun Dun First Nation, tells a story.

She recalls a man she knew who was gay. Not only was he ostracized from his local Yukon community but ended up leaving the territory for good to live in Vancouver.

“The Yukon is a very different place now than it was then. I’m so proud of who we have become, a place where our two-spirited and transgendered people can feel welcome.”

A raucous cheer greets her words, the dance music blares from the lead truck, and Whitehorse Pride 2018 is officially underway.

Chief Bill’s observation- that the Yukon has evolved from silencing to celebrating its LGBTQ community- is obvious all along the parade route. Customers come out of restaurants and bars to wave. Shop owners cheer. People smile from their seats on curbs and tailgates. Side street traffic stops willingly, mostly without the enforcement of officials or barriers, to watch the parade dance past. The generous sun smiles down, promising even more than 24 hours of gaylight.

The cycling widow’s guide to Canmore

Pamela Young

2 comments

June 17, 2018

During the summer, if my husband suggests we go away for the weekend, I know there’s likely a cycling event attached to the offer.

This doesn’t really bother me. He’s passionate about cycling, which provides me with the male equivalent of happy wife, happy life. And these cycling events have happened in places that provide great getaways from our Edmonton routine – Calgary, Banff, Penticton and, the newest addition to the circuit, Canmore.

I’ve accompanied hubbie to enough cycling events to know that, while we’ll enjoy some time together, I’ll need things to do on my own. Weekend-long cycling events can feature as many as four different types of competitions: long distance road races; single rider time trials; hill climbs; and criteriums, where riders go round and round on a closed course.

Start of a time trial

While I enjoy being a spectator at criteriums – they’re short and fast with just the right mix of excitement and danger- I no longer get up at the crack of dawn to see my guy cross the finish line at a time trial, or stand by the side of the road to see him go by once or twice during a road race. I also need ways to amuse myself when he’s waiting to pick up his race package at the start of the weekend or napping in the afternoon between events.

For the cycling widow- or any other woman spending time on her own – Canmore is gold. Located 81 km west of Calgary, near Banff National Park, it’s got Banff’s mountain charm without its crowds. Its shops and cafes are more likely to be independently owned so the merchandise and food are more interesting. It’s totally walkable, which is important to a cycling widow whose partner has likely driven himself and his bike to the start line in the vehicle they arrived in together.

The Three Sisters will keep you company in Canmore

Here are seven of my favorite places in Canmore to play while my cyclist’s away.

1) Alpenrose Market and Gifts: The place that stocks what I never knew I needed before I saw it. Provencal linens, tiny tabletop Adirondack chairs, cool umbrellas, nifty candles. I like the airy, uncluttered feel of this shop – they haven’t made the mistake of trying to jam too much stuff onto their shelves. The back of the store is stocked with imported food and snacks so I can imagine I’m at a cycling event in Europe.

2) Charisma Collections: Shopping at this women’s wear store renews my faith in customer service. The staff is interested in helping me find what I’m looking for, knows the stock, and is happy to find me a different size so I don’t have to leave the fitting half dressed to find it myself. As a result, I frequently walk away with a delightful addition to my wardrobe.

3) Cafe Books– When our jobs and lives get stressful, my husband and I talk about selling everything and opening a bookstore. If this one ever went on the market, I’d snap it up. No wonder Chatelaine magazine named it one of the 11 dreamiest bookstores in Canada to get lost in. It maintains just the right balance between well-stocked and cluttered with new books at the front, used at the back, and literary kitsch and gifts in between. The Chapter 2 Cafe in the rear of the store features traditional British fare (how often do you see beans on toast on a menu?), and serves tea in Royal Albert cups. On a sunny summer day, you can eat outside. On a pouring rain afternoon, cozy up inside with a book.

4) Tapas Restaurant: While you’re walking around downtown Canmore, book a table for dinner with your cyclist at this off-the-beaten track, Spanish restaurant. On a warm evening, you’ll be serenaded on the outdoor deck by a Latin guitarist as you sip sangria and sample patatas bravas, merguez sausage, stuffed dates, and other delectable small plates.

Carrots with ginger, maple, and goat cheese

5)Policeman’s Creek Boardwalk: After a little shopping and a little eating, you might be ready to leave the strolling Main Street tourists behind for a closer walk with nature. Amble beside the gurgling creek, listen to the bird chorus, and be glad there are still places in the world where the water’s so clear you can see the multicolored stones glistening in the sun-dappled creek bed.

6) Studio 604: The boardwalk takes you almost to the door of Pat Sullivan’s gallery. I love places where you can see artists at work and chat to them about their craft. Pat’s gorgeous paintings and silver jewelry are on display for browsing and purchase- and she’s a darn nice person to talk with as well.

7) Miner’s Lamp Pub: Later in the afternoon, you might feel the need for something stronger than tea in a Royal Albert cup. Head over to the pub in the Georgetown Inn for a pint and a snack before dinner. It’s got a friendly neighborhood vibe without feeling like a bar and you can sit outside at a picnic table or in by the fireplace.

While you’re there, check out the Inn’s room availability for a romantic Canmore weekend when winter has arrived in the Rockies, the cycling season is over, and the only time trial you and your cyclist need to think about is how long you can linger together in your in-room, two-person jet tub.

A sampling of spring

Pamela Young

11 comments

April 10, 2018

Last Thursday, my neighbor and I huddled onto the bus downtown, talking about – what else? – the weather.

“I can’t remember it ever being this cold this late,” I said. “-21 wind chill in April? Give me a break.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “In Dutch, we have an expression: ‘April does what it likes.'”

If the Dutch are right, then this month is the most oppositional-defiant bully to ever shove Alberta into a snowbank. Over the Easter weekend, several communities endured record low temperatures. And the forecast is calling for more snow. Even the most relentlessly cheerful of my friends have begun to post increasingly pessimistic Facebook memes, questioning what we could have done to deserve getting kicked around by winter this long.

So I was in the mood for an escape when I saw a post on the FB page of Winding Road Artisan Cheese late last week: “Fancy a drive in the country this Sunday? Head Cheese Maker, Ian, will be participating in Serben Farms’ Tasting Day.”

I had met Ian when I went to an Alberta food producers’ market just outside of Edmonton on a freezing cold afternoon last January. He had told me then that he was planning to partner with a sausage-making neighbor of his in the spring, so I assumed this tasting day was the great unveiling. When I saw in the FB post that Ukrainian food would also be on offer, I knew that, come spring storm or high water, I would definitely fancy a drive in the country on Sunday.

I headed out on Highway 28 northeast of Edmonton, warmed by an old albums radio show, the chipper voice of Google Maps, and a sun that wanted it to be spring.* Although the fields and ditches were still buried in white, the pavement was bone dry and I wasn’t in any hurry, much to the irritation of the Dodge Ram trucks looming in my rearview mirror. The turnoffs for the towns along the way read like a personal history: Gibbons, one of the 13 Alberta towns where my mom grew up; Waskatenau, Radway, and Redwater, where my church young people’s group conducted Sunday services when their minister was unavailable; Lamont, where I sometimes had lunch the year I taught in a one-room school on a Hutterite colony.

An hour or so later, the Google lady announced I had arrived at Serben Farms, just as I spotted the balloons bouncing in the spring wind and the barn red building behind them.

A woman in the lot waved me into a parking spot right in front of the door. I assumed she was an employee but she was just waiting for a friend to come out of the store.

“Wait until you taste what they’ve got!” she said. ” You can make a whole meal on samples!”

The place was abuzz with farmers and townspeople nibbling and chatting and loading up on products from the well-stocked shelves and refrigerators. The mayor of Smoky Lake was shaking hands, and the local press was out in full force, conducting interviews and taking photos.

I headed straight for the sausage table, where I gobbled down samples of at least 6 different flavors, including such inventive pairings as ginger and green onion, rosemary and garlic, and mustard and ale. New plates were consistently arriving sizzling hot from the kitchen in back of the store, but I restrained myself and moved over to the cheese display.

I had discovered Winding Road’s Highland Hall variety last January, a creamy, Camembert-style luxury. This time, I found their German butter cheese is also delectable and added a package to my take-home pile at the front counter. I also tasted some of Serben Farm’s pickled vegetables, the carrots providing a pretty and pungent complement to the cheese.

Moving over to the Ukrainian food table, I listened to cook Judy Makowichuk give advice to a woman about how to assemble aesthetically appealing cabbage rolls. Luckily, my in-laws have always kept my Ukrainian food cravings satisfied so I was less interested in learning how to make the recipes than in tasting the results – for reasons of scientific comparison, of course. My research on the perishke, a type of bun topped with cottage cream and dill, was inconclusive during the first clinical trial, necessitating a second round of data collection.

Warmed by the food and good will of the vendors and other samplers, I rounded up my purchases and headed for home. I decided not to listen to the weather forecast, my mood, at least for now, matching the sun in the big old Alberta sky, water-paint blue and whispering spring.

*I borrowed this line from an Instagram post by Edmonton author Thomas Trofimuk.

Travelling around your own snow town

Pamela Young

2 comments

March 19, 2018

The theme in my FB newsfeed this morning: We’re sick of snow, we want it to stop; spring’s on Tuesday but it looks like January; that’s enough. I saw a “snow shots” thread where people around the UK were posting winter white photos of their back yards, and I participated with one of mine from Edmonton.

So, time for a vacation, right? But what do you do if time and money are at a premium, and you can’t answer the call to get away somewhere warm?

Try viewing your snowy old hometown through a tourist lens.

I was motivated to try this by a group of enthusiastic Uruguayans who landed at the Faculty of Extension, where I work, for a two week language and culture stay back in January. They left 36C behind in Montevideo and got here the day that Edmonton hit -36 with the wind chill. Every time I saw them, they looked frozen, but totally happy. “We’re having a great time!” they said. “We’ll probably never get the chance to experience winter like this again in our lives, so we want to do everything!”

They found more wintery things to do in Edmonton than I knew existed. Or rather, I knew they existed, but I’d stopped seeing them as a visitor would – as something novel, waiting to be embraced. Skating is no longer a big deal to me, toasting marshmallows is pedestrian, and my culinary palate is used to poutine, borscht, and pyrohies. But to the Uruguayans? A total delight.

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After they left, my perspective on Edmonton in the winter began to thaw. It turns out Fort Edmonton Park is quite lovely muffled in snow. You can even stay there overnight, in the picturesque Selkirk Hotel, and treat yourself to brunch the next morning.

Just south of Edmonton in Nisku, I discovered Righand Distillery, one of Alberta’s first craft distilleries, and the Cook Shack Restaurant, which serves some of the best BBQ I’ve tasted. With a few friends in tow, we ate, toured, and sampled until it really didn’t matter what the weather was like anymore.

Last weekend, I hoofed downtown to experience Edmonton’s new funicular. All winter, I’d been watching it get built from my bus on the way to work, but now I needed to try it out for myself. Designed to provide quicker, more direct connections between downtown and the river valley, with stunning views from its floor-to-ceiling windows, it whisked me and other curious explorers from the snowy pathways below the Low Level Bridge to the top of 100 Street in record time.

And speaking of fully experiencing daily sights, I finally paused to enjoy the guitar buskers who frequently play at the top of the Central LRT station escalators when I’m on my way home from work. If I’d seen them in the New York City subway, I would have filmed them and raved about their talents on Facebook. So, last week, instead of dashing by to catch my bus, I requested a Mark Knopfler tune, and they were happy to oblige.

So, if winter seems to be stretching out endlessly where you are, why not try being a appreciative traveller in your own town? You may be bypassing sights that will give you the lift you need to see you through to that next vacation. And who knows? You may have such a good time that you’ll decide to stay put at home for a while and see what else is on offer right outside your front door.

Supporting each other’s fabulousness

Pamela Young

5 comments

March 7, 2018

The woman with the steely grey hair and sparkling brown eyes was among the earliest to arrive for my talk on women’s solo travel at Edmonton’s Primetime Women’s conference last fall. So it didn’t surprise me that she was also the first to take me up on my invitation to share a story about travelling alone.

“My friends and I had always talked about travelling together to Italy. But years passed and we never went. Finally, the year I turned 70, I decided that I was going to give myself a birthday present and go by myself. I asked them to come with me but they turned me down.”

“As I started to get ready for my trip, one of my friends said, ‘How are you going to get along in Italy all by yourself? You don’t even speak their language.’ Another said, ‘What are you going to do if anything happens? There won’t be anyone there to take care of you.'”

“The worst thing was that suddenly I started to feel nervous about going to Italy on my own. Maybe I couldn’t actually handle it. Maybe I was doing a really stupid thing.”

“Luckily, I realized that the only reason I was doubting myself was because of what my friends had said. I ended up in Italy for two amazing weeks. I turn 80 this year and I’m looking for another place to go on my own to celebrate.”

The murmur around the room showed that the other women in the audience were just as impressed as I was by this woman’s courage and determination. But I was troubled, if not totally surprised, by how her friends responded to her decision to travel without them.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard stories about women undermining the solo travel plans of their female friends, family members, and colleagues. I’ve experienced it myself when I’ve announced I’m off to have a solo adventure.

“Oh, I’ve heard it’s very hot/cold/crowded/polluted/ dangerous there.”

“Why isn’t your husband going with you? Are you two having problems?”

“Why would you want to go there?”

“I’m really sorry you have to go by yourself. That won’t be much fun.”

When I get home, brimming with stories to share, these same women rarely remember to ask how my trip went. Or, if they do, they manage to change the subject right after I say, “Great.”

It’s likely that, as women, we’ve all been guilty of careless and uncaring words in response to another woman’s accomplishments. Maybe we’ve been unwilling to accept that she chose a different life path than we did. Maybe we’re a little threatened that she seems braver or smarter or more self-confident than we believe ourselves to be. Maybe we’re longing to go on an adventure too but our life circumstances don’t allow it.

But whatever the reason, we need to stop using our words and actions to hold other women back, or to make them feel that their successes aren’t worthy of applause. Bev Esslinger, for many years the only woman on Edmonton’s city council, addressed this issue from the podium at the Edmonton Women’s Initiative conference last month. She reminded us that “When we make our neighbors successful, we’re all successful.”

So, tomorrow on International Woman’s Day (or today if it’s already IWD where you are), find one of your female friends, family members, or colleagues and tell her how fabulous she is. Tell her why you admire her. Let her know that your life would be less inspiring without her in it. And notice that when you raise her up, you walk away feeling just a little taller too.

Nasra Adem, Edmonton’s fabulous 2016-17 youth poet laureate

If you’re a fabulous woman who enjoyed this post, please let me know by giving it a “like.”

Or better still , recognize a fabulous woman in your life by sharing the post with her and telling her why you think she‘s fabulous.

The foodstuffs that dreams are made of

Pamela Young

3 comments

February 1, 2018

By 2 p.m., I realized that I probably didn’t need the grilled cheese sandwich I’d made myself for lunch.

But since it was the first time I’d ever attended an afternoon meeting of the Edmonton Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m not a chef or a restaurateur, but when I found out that this event was going to feature food producers from around Alberta, I knew I had to go. As a part of my new business, Wise Woman Travel, I’m looking for culinary destinations for women’s tours, so I thought I might meet some people who’d be interested in hosting us.

The event took place at Chartier Restaurant, a delightful little place in the town of Beaumont, just half an hour south of Edmonton.

They’d cleared back their tables for the afternoon to make way for the producers to show off their goods and make connections with those of us who were interested in knowing more. And, of course, this being a gathering of culinary professionals, Chartier also provided food- lots and lots of delicious, locally produced, artfully arranged food.

Chartier Restaurant charcuterie

Charcuterie Restaurant knows great snacks!

Chartier Restaurant sweets

When I arrived just a few minutes after the event got underway, the restaurant was already alive with conversation. I decided to ask as many producers as possible who they were, where they were, what they did, and whether they’d roll out the welcome mat for a group of fascinated female travellers.

The owner of the romantically named Winding Road Artisan Cheese, located just outside of Smoky Lake in northeastern Alberta, was happy to tell me the story behind each of his cheeses – how they were made and how he had named them. Two of the cheeses honored his grandfathers and another – a creamy delicacy rolled in edible ash- was named for Highland Hall, a Smoky Lake County historic site. I also stopped at the product table of the Old School Cheesery in Vermilion, located east of Edmonton, close to the Saskatchewan border, and chatted with the owner’s daughter. Since the family has Quebecois heritage, the Cheesery specializes in cheese curds, the authentic kind that are so hard for us to find in Alberta. “We love to host tours,”she said. “Come out in the springtime. It’s so beautiful at our place then.”

Bear and the Flower (aka Jessica and Christopher Fasoli)

I received another enthusiastic invitation from Bear and the Flower Farm near Airdrie, a free range pork farm. Both husband and wife had left white collar jobs to start their business two years before – and business was already booming. I sampled one of the best sausages I’d ever tasted, juicy and studded with blueberries. I need to find out the name of the restaurant in Calgary that features this sausage wrapped in a pancake and drizzled in maple syrup.

It was time to wash down the sausage and cheese samples so I visited a young man pouring tastes of Ribstone Creek beer from a brewery in Edgerton, an eastern Alberta village of 400 people featured on CBC TV’s Still Standing. The exposure brought by this episode resulted in hundreds of new orders for the brewery from across Canada.

I loved Ribstone Creek’s Abbey Lane English Mild

Next up on the beverage list was Righand Distillery located in Nisku, near the Edmonton International Airport. At the suggestion of Joanne O’Hara, one of Righand’s bartenders and also its resident marriage commissioner (some people do more than sample product out there, apparently), I tried a swallow of their Double Double, a creamy coffee liqueur similar to Bailey’s, but much smoother because it’s rum- rather than whiskey-based. “It’s also great on ice cream,” said O’Hara. “No wonder it’s one of our top sellers. And by the way, our tours and tastings for groups of fewer than 10 people are free.”

The Leduc #1 drilling rig inspires the Righand Distillery bottles

I finished off my tastings with a coffee from Roasti, a roastery in the hamlet of Sherwood Park, east of Edmonton. The beans that made the dark brew they served me were grown on an entirely female-owned and operated plantation in Sumatra. No wonder it tasted so good.

By this time, I was thoroughly stuffed with food samples and stories. On the drive back home, my imagination danced with possibilities for tours that would help women to experience the processes, products, and people whose food passions inspire some of the best cuisine Alberta has to offer.

How to ride an Uruguayan bus

Pamela Young

2 comments

December 15, 2017

During our two-week vacation in Uruguay, my husband and I spent 35 hours on long distance buses: west/east to Colonia del Sacramento, east/west to Punta del Este, and north/south to Artigas. Bus travel was cheap, convenient, and gave us a much better understanding of how the other half of the Uruguayan population lives, that is, those who don’t reside in Montevideo.

If you want to try your hand at bus travel in Uruguay, here’s some advice for making the trip as pleasant as possible.

1. Get started by going to the Guruguay post on bus travel.

This is where I got my early education on Uruguayan bus travel. Its link to the Tres Cruces bus schedule, which lists all buses from all companies that come and go from Montevideo, was a total Guru-send.If you cone from a place where only a couple of companies operate buses into the countryside, you’ll be amazed by the choice of companies and times for getting where you want to go in Uruguay. The Tres Cruces bus station bustles day and night!

At this time, there’s not much service between regional destinations: we had to come and go through Montevideo each time, staying overnight at the Days Inn across the street from the Tres Cruces bus station.

2. Get your tickets in advance, even in the off-season.

Guruguay recommends this practice during high season, but we travelled in the off-season and still found the buses busy. On two of our trips, we booked late at the station and either didn’t get seats together or had to sit by the toilet. Although we never had to stand, this is an accepted practice on Uruguayan buses, one you don’t want to have if you don’t need to.

3. Expect the trip to take longer than the listed duration time.

Unless the bus says “Directo, ” you’re not going directo to your destination. Most Uruguayan buses stop on request to pick up and drop off passengers, which can add a lot of time to the trip.

4. Take along enough food and drink to last the journey (plus that extra time I just mentioned.)

Before our advertised 8-hour trip to Artigas, my husband said, “I guess they’ll have rest stops along the way.” I guessed the same, but we were both wrong.

Luckily, we had taken along several bottles of water, sandwiches and empanadas. The only chance to get anything during the trip there happened when a guy selling ham and cheese sandwiches got on briefly at one station. On the way back, the bus conductor gave out cups of Coca Cola and packaged alfajores, Uruguay’s favorite cookie. But that’s only because the bus had broken down and we had to wait over an hour for another one to arrive.

5. Watch your kneecaps.

Uruguayan bus seats recline a long way, and travellers shove them back to their full capacity without warning. Consider this the heads up they won’t give you.

6. Hand sanitizer is not a bad idea.

At some point, you’re probably going to have to use the bus toilet. And, hey, it’s a bus toilet. ‘Nuff said.

7. Appreciate the countryside.

Yes, most of the buses have free WiFi. But why not take the chance to connect with Uruguay outside the window? We followed the Rio de la Plata and the Atlantic for part of the way east and west out of Montevideo. Coming and going from Artigas, we passed by enormous estancias, the ranches where cattle, horses and sheep graze freely (Uruguay has 3 million people and 30 million head of cattle!). I also saw a flock of small, ostrich-like birds, the South American rhea. Sudden landscape changes, tiny rural schools, and lingering sunsets all inspired my imagination.

8. Imagine the lives of the people getting on and off the bus.

Uruguayans flag down buses in towns and along the roadside. The bus conductor throws their bags into the luggage compartment and hustles them onboard. Buses also stop to let off passengers wherever they want. Sometimes, when we stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere and a passenger disembarked, I thought “Where could he possibly be going? How long will it take to get there? And who will greet him when he arrives?”

9.Take lessons on how to give really good bus station welcomes and sendoffs.

In the countryside, putting a loved one on the bus or waiting for the bus to bring a favorite person to town is an enthusiastic affair. People search the bus windows for dear ones’ faces and hug a long, long time. On our way out of the Artigas station, two grey-haired women in floral dresses stood up in their seats waving until their family members disappeared from view. The bus conductor never told them to sit down for their own safety.

Punta del Este Paradise

Pamela Young

1 comment

December 12, 2017

“By the day after Christmas, you won’t be able to book a hotel, find a restaurant, or call a taxi. But right now, Punta del Este is very nice.”

Our waiter has summed up our experience so far in this city that Uruguayans call the Monaco of South America. We’re here for the final three nights of our Uruguayan vacation, and it’s anything but crowded. We had no problem booking a lovely hotel right across from the beach for a reasonable price. From our window, I can see a handful of people sitting on the sand, watching the breakers roll in off the Atlantic. At the hotel’s beachside restaurant, a bevy of workers are hammering and nailing and sanding, making repairs to the boardwalk. They’re getting ready for the onslaught of wealthy Argentinians and Brazilians and celebs from around the world who’ll swell the population from 20000 residents to 200000 chichi see and be seens. But they haven’t arrived yet, and we have. Lucky us.

Today, under hats and sunglasses and SPF 60 lotion (the hole in the ozone layer gapes right over Uruguay), we followed a walking tour map that took us to many of Punta del Este’s highlights. The lyrics to Burton Cummings’ Heavenly Blue and Spanky and Our Gang’s Lazy Days came frequently to my mind. Knowing we’ll soon be back in the northern hemisphere made the day even more precious. Here are a few photos of the peaceful Punta we’re getting to know.

Family portrait at the puerto

I’m ready for my closeup

El Faro

Pretty little parish

Take a look but don’t swim

Reach for the sky: La Mano

100 Years of Punta del Este

Methinks those flag colors were deliberate

Artigas amethyst adventure

Pamela Young

4 comments

December 11, 2017

It was the Canadian ambassador’s idea.

During the business portion of my trip to Uruguay, I met Joanne Frappier twice: once at the signing of a memorandum of understanding between my university and the Universidad Tecnologica, Uruguay’s newest university; and once with my colleagues at the Canadian Embassy in Montevideo. Her friendly, down-to-earth personality made me like her right away.

It was at the second, less formal meeting, that she told us she is a geographer by trade, rather than a career diplomat. When I told her that my husband was also a geography major, and would be vacationing with me in Uruguay for two weeks, her eyes lit up. “I bet he’d enjoy seeing an amethyst mine. It’s out of the way- all the way up in Artigas- but it’s a totally unique experience.”

Which is how we ended up on a supposedly-8-hour-actually- 9.5-hour bus ride from Montevideo to Artigas, which is just about as far as you can go from south to north and still be in Uruguay. (More to come on the bus ride there and back, which was an adventure in itself.)

The Safari Minero runs out of the Hotel Casino, a plain Jane hotel which somehow bills itself as worthy of 4-stars. Their website photos of the buffet breakfast and dinner they claim to serve didn’t look anything like the cafeteria-style food and ambience we experienced. Also, someone should tell them that having a street kid greeting taxis arriving at the hotel and offering to help visitors with their bags up the hotel steps is not exactly standard practice for a 4-star hotel.

But I digress.

At 9 a.m., our tour guide Antonio, a young guy in army fatigues and sporting a day’s growth of dark beard, bounded into the hotel lobby, shook my husband’s hand, and kissed me on the cheek in typical Uruguayan greeting. Immediately, he apologized for his limited English, which was not as limited as he thought. We hopped into a minivan, met a couple from Montevideo in the centre of town, and headed out to our first stop, the workshop where the amethyst geodes are brought in their raw form to be cut, cleaned, and stored for shipment.

Maybe it’s my Canadian sense of mining and other industry that made me expect a much larger operation. Instead, we pulled into a yard with a few outbuildings, a few dogs wanderimg around, and a few men working near a dump truck and a couple of front end loaders, no one wearing the kind of safety equipment that would be required on a Canadian worksite.

The equipment and work areas themselves were also surprisingly low tech.

But one building quite literally dazzled me- the area where the geodes were stored as they awaited shipment. The size and brilliance of the purple crystals, some of them interspersed with contrasting milky-white calcite, produced snowflake-unique designs unlike any I’ve ever seen.

One gigantic geode came with a particularly interesting story. It was awaiting shipment to China, purchased for $100000 by someone who wanted to sit inside it and meditate.

Our oohing and aahing and photo snapping was interrupted only once by the front end loader boys who asked us to move aside so they could load a geode bound for a festival in Artigas that evening.

A few minutes later, we left the workshop and got back on the now-gravel main road for a trip to what Antonio called a gallery to see a geode in its natural state. We bounced along in a cloud of orange dust as the road stones pinged and thudded against the van’s undercarriage and the driver swerved to avoid potholes. Finally, we swung into what initially looked like pasture land and Antonio led us to the edge of a cliff where we could see the openings to the gallery below. He scrambled down and we followed.

Inside, we followed the beam of Antonio’s flashlight, picking our way over stones, avoiding mud puddles, and following a makeshift walkway of two by fours until we reached the massive geode. Antonio said crews had been working to extract it for 5 months and had at least that many more months left to complete the job. But with the market for amethysts currently low, the geode may have to stay below ground for much longer than that.

Colonia del Sacramento serenity

Pamela Young

8 comments

December 9, 2017

Before I started my vacation in Uruguay, many locals gave me advice about where to visit. Although they all had their favorites, everyone mentioned Colonia del Sacramento, a UNESCO World Heritage site 180 km west of Montevideo.

I was well ready to leave Montevideo’s hectic traffic and slightly frayed edges for the Uruguayan countryside. For me, a vacation truly begins when I can match my natural life pace to the one I find more often in smaller towns and rural areas. I also hoped we’d find some slightly more Southern Hemisphere summer weather: the southerly wind that blew most of the time we were in Montevideo came straight from Antarctica and we broke out our jackets and long pants more often than we wanted to.

Colonia del Sacramento didn’t disappoint on any front. Warm, peaceful, and picturesque, I fell in love with it immediately. Wandering its cobbled streets, I was transported back to its 17th century Portuguese roots and the many ways its residents have worked to preserve their town’s heritage.

I also enjoyed its 21st century quirkiness and Bohemian vibe, as though people couldn’t resist shaking up history a little and adding their own contributions.

But the best part of the stay came when we walked through the doors of Las Terrazas Posada, an elegant boutique guest house that became our serene home base. Run entirely by women, its hospitality, artistic design, and welcoming touches had me wishing we had booked more than one night. I enjoyed a quiet afternoon in their library, reading a coffee table book on Colonia while sun poured in from the lofty skylights, Karen Carpenter crooned softly from the next door games room, and one of the posada’s employees watered a tiny adjacent garden.

That evening, we wandered out for dinner, the day’s heat emanating from the cobblestones and the lanterns glowing amber at the street corners. Across the bay where the Buenos Aires skyline was just visible on the horizon, the sun became a blazing ball before dipping quietly into the ocean, and night settled into Colonia del Sacramento.