The gardener

gardener

Drive UY: use mirrors when passing

BTW, not that you care, but this is my 500th blog entry.

The German touring rig to end all German touring rigs

As I have mentioned before, when you see a conspicuously over-wrought, out of place, ready-for-all-comers vehicle here, its owners probably speak German.

German monster touring vehicle in Atlantida, Uruguay

In case you missed the license plate (or couldn’t guess), there’s a little flag on the side. Ja wohl!

Yuck.

Ugly weather in Uruguay

Yes, just as ugly as it looks.

Farmer’s tan

farmers-tan

Until I took my shirt off on the beach, I didn’t realize how much sun I’d gotten earlier, picking blueberries and cutting grass in the country.

4 nice things about frequent flier miles

boarding-pass

Just 20,000 of them got us from Montevideo to Miami;
“TSA PRECHK” exempts you from the more ludicrous aspects of American Security Theater inspired by the “shoe bomber” and ”liquid bomber” made-for-TV dramas;
Priority AAccess means you can get on the second-rate plane used on the non-competitive MIA-MVD run early enough to find an overhead bin for your carry-on bag;
Between MVD and MIA and LAS (Las Vegas), we have none left to expire.

The last point is not trivial, since 80,000 of my frequent flier miles expired earlier this year.

¡Milagro!

OK, not exactly a miracle, but feels like one after buying plastic ice trays that start breaking within a few days: orange ones purchased at Disco supermarket.

Even after ten days in the land of low prices / high expectations (that would be ‘Murka; Uruguay being the land of high prices / low expectations), I still joy in something as simple as cheap orange ice trays that eject intact ice cubes — the entire tray! — and have shown no sign of cracking after several weeks.