I got inspired to cut bottles, but so far have ended up only with a bucket of broken glass. Dumping that that into the trash seemed a dangerous idea, so I took them where the garbage trucks go.

There, huge plastic bags lie as far as you can see, awaiting their turn to be clasificado – sorted out. Yes, there’s a person who goes through everything, finding and sorting the recyclables

Asking to take a photo, I got a tour instead. Unprepared, it didn’t occur to ask about the most ubiquitous item of all: plastic shopping bags.

Next time.

I expect a few more broken bottles.

When I was a kid, a ‘Coke’ meant a six-ounce returnable glass bottle. Recently, these 200 ml* returnable glass Coke bottles showed up here. Hard to imagine a kid these days being satisfied with a drink that small, but somebody bought them.

Behind them is a 2-liter bottle, plastic, also returnable, meaning that all three have a deposit paid on them.

Beer bottles half-liter and larger, and wine bottles 1.5 liters and larger, all have deposits and are re-used.

I like that.

*approximately 6.762805 fluid ounces

Our first friends here (who have since left the country in disgust, having learned virtually no Spanish) went searching for a computer part. Long story short, they were told they would have to go to Texas. Hard to imagine the average Uruguayan hops on a $1,500 flight in order to get a computer part.

Turns out there’s a computer store called Tecsys.

– – – – –

Here’s a Tecsys flier:

Note the banner item. Today at Best Buy in the USA, you can buy a Playstation 3 for $300 with goodies. Here, it costs double. Welcome to Uruguay.

On the flip side, you can find a Verbatim 4GB pen drive for $13.90. Find the same thing under $10 on Amazon, so ‘only’ 40% more here. But look closely:

Here, you can buy it with six monthly payments of $2.31 each, and actually save four cents! I suppose a person buying on credit would have other items as well, but still, the thought of a monthly payment of $2.31 boggles my mind.

Welcome to Uruguay.

This thing appeared on the corner this morning with no notice, and no mention of whether it’s for trash and recyclables, or just one or the other. They’ve appeared around town the last few weeks, but I guessed we didn’t get one because our street was too narrow, and we’d continue using our basket-on-a-pole.

First thought: now I can rid of big stuff that doesn’t fit in the basket!

Second thought: how do they empty that thing?

UPDATE: though a neighbor told me they emptied them by hand (!) they do indeed have lifts on the garbage truck. Instead of running and grabbing bags out of baskets on poles, the two people riding on the back of the truck jump of to maneuver this bin into place.

The beep of a motorbike horn and the bread guy’s here, bringing two loaves of home-baked whole wheat bread as he does every Wednesday. After the first month of buying his bread we found we still had a loaf of store-bought ‘whole wheat’ bread – it wasn’t even moldy.

While locals and foreigners alike moan about the excessive government bureaucracy and anti-business climate in Uruguay, the bread guy shows the free market at its best. In the United States, no doubt he’d run the risk of arrest and imprisonment, ‘for the protection of the citizens.’

Walking toward the beach, a bicycle approaches. A guy my age or more, graying hair, riding at a decent speed. With his left arm, he carries a rake. With his right arm near the seat, he tows an electric lawn mower, cord neatly coiled atop. I turn and watch, somewhat in awe, and listen to the whirring of the lawnmower wheels, quieter and quieter.