I took this photo a week or two ago. I can pretty much make out what’s available.
This is the cuenta we got yesterday when we went with friends. I just realized it has nothing to do with what we ordered. Apparently.
Category: UY
Santuario Virgen de las Flores
An odd sight on the road between La Floresta and Soca (34°43’38″S – 55°40’58″W):
Cold, dreary day. Warm, dreary church.
Sheep, bees…whatever.
When we visited Harold and Judith near Soca, we always noticed a very unusual structure, which we assumed was a church.
This weekend celebrating the Día del Patrimonio, many things open to the public that do not ordinarily open to the public, and the dreary weather and prospect of crowds in Montevideo led to the idea of eschewing metropolis in favor of lunch at the Parador Fito on rural Ruta 8, followed by the Día del Patrimonio offerings in Soca, including the Capilla de Soca (page 56 in this thing). Turns out it’s a private family chapel.
Alas, the concrete tetrahedrons, with their bunker-like entrance, exuded anything but welcome. The handwritten cardboard sign said something about sheep (or so I figured, not looking closely since this was not actually the entrance gate, just a nicer view, and I’m used to misspellings in Spanish, especially given Bs and Vs, which are pronounced the same).
So we got to our next destination—I think—the Antiguo Cine, the old movie theater:
El antiguo cine de Soca es un emblemático punto patrimonial, es parte de la identidad local y será recuperado prontamente. The old Soca cinema is an iconic heritage item, part of local identity and will restored soon. (Which probably means, before your last grandchild has shuffled off this mortal coil.)
We went to the location, took a photo of the most likely candidate,
then asked in the nearby bakery, where the best answer seemed to be, sorry.
We then explored another unusual church (see tomorrow) where a couple from Montevideo explained that the Capilla (chapel) was closed because it was infested with bees.
When I got home, I could see in my photo the cardboard sign:
It is not possible to enter. There are ________. Closed.
Ovejas=sheep.
Abejas=bees.
Wind shelters for little transplanted trees
You might recall that I planted fruit trees in the wrong place on our chacra. I finally got around to transplanting them: pathetically poor root structure in the impermeable soil that turns from incredibly sticky mud in the winter to something resembling concrete in the summer.
I planted one each on the two piles left from the installation of the septic system, complete with wind protection with fencing and shade cloth I had on hand.
The only other shade cloth I had had stripes, so now we have this jaunty little display in our back yard. But this is by far the wettest year we’ve had here, and particularly bad for mold in houses and plants in the ground. Will they fare better in their new location?
We’ll see soon enough.
Another cold feast and wine tasting
A few kilometers from here, we have a vineyard and winery that produces exquisite wines: Viñedo de los Vientos (Vineyard of the Winds). Once a year they serve a gourmet meal with their wines, and it always seems to be very cold. Last year it was in April, at night, and they had huge and welcome bonfire and heaters in the covered area. This year it happened at noon, and not only was there no bonfire, neither did the propane heaters inside work, nor did they have the plastic windows that used to block the wind, and it was rainy and windy.
This picture, taken from where I sat, looking into the wind, illustrates the absence of at least five people who apparently made reservations and thought better of it, given the nastiness of the day. Fortunately I had a couple of knit caps in the car.
As usual, the menu was themed, meaning the same thing was served over several coarses, in this case lamb (cordero). It was delicious, and the company—a gringo and Uruguayan couple at our table—fun.
Badgers badgers mushrooms mushrooms
Well, OK, no badgers. Our last organic gardening class was all about growing mushrooms. In a plastic bag, I placed alternating layers of boiled wheat straw, and two types of white gunk of ‘shroom spores (because, given the choice of one or the other type of edible mushrooms, I replied “yes”), inoculated in wheat and sorghum.
Mycelium? I’ll get up to speed on this.
The problem is that now, equivalent of early December for you northern-hemispherians, trying to maintain germination temp of20-24°C (68-75.2°F) inside your single-brick uninsulated Uruguayan house presents, um, challenges.
I have found a solution, but it won’t arrive in time for this batch: ebay > temperature controllers > free shipping from Hong Kong / China. Build a little insulated enclosure, connect an incandescent light bulb inside to the TC and chau (ciao in Italian), let the electronics do the heavy lifting.
Worth pursuing: while any mushrooms (much less fresh) were scarce here when we arrived five years ago, you can usually buy fresh now, but freaking expensive.
The exercise triggered an avalanche of other “project” ideas: aquaponics, which involves in my case explorations of solar panels and related electronics (again, eBay), since interruption of grid electricity in the country is not an emergency in the eyes of those who fix it. Fish make for awesome fertilizer, but I don’t really want fish I’m raising to eat to become soil amendments because of an electrical outage.
One of these days I may actually DO something. Stay tuned 😉
Our innovative outdoor shower
When planning for a windmill, it seems a good idea to consider the height of the tower and the height of your storage tank, as well as the distance and the number of bends in the pipe between. Because, given enough resistance and a strong wind, you may end up with an outdoor shower.
This is fixable. But it’s also kind of fun.
The view from the top
Last year, we installed a windmill over the hand dug well at our chacra (small farm). I got an upgrade by taking a larger-than-quoted demo unit in place of a brand new one. Hey, why not, these things last a long time. They had to disassemble this unit; win-win. Almost: sometimes when you engage it, something sticks and the tail fin doesn’t go perpendicular to the rotation of the fan blades.
In other words, it does nothing. Which it did the other day.
And the something that sticks is way at the top. Where I have never ventured. But now it’s out of warranty, so up I went the wire ladder, consoling myself that it would at least make an awesome photo op.
Which it didn’t. Oh well.
The more I looked at the mechanism at the top, the less I could understand where the problem lay. Then I looked further up, and saw the tail fin perpendicular to the fan blades. In other words, the mechanism worked. But the windmill didn’t, given the unusual and complete absence of wind. Problem solved? Ya veremos. We will see.
We visited with our country neighbor, Mariana the veterinarian, who boards dogs and took in the lovely dog in the upper right, Benji, whom we rescued from a neighbor’s yard (with their permission; poor thing was on a 5-foot chain and yowling all day long in misery). Unfortunately, Benji has the people skills of a database technician (due apologies, yada yada), and during his last “interview” with an enthusiastic family with kids, walked away from them, curled up under a tree, and went to sleep.
Windmills that work, but don’t; dogs that are lovely, but aren’t. Must be a Zen thing.
Birds and fruit
A year ago, our neighbor in the campo’s flock of guineas was down to two, from six.
And they were both males. So they got six more, expecting similar attrition (which hasn’t happened). And they’re more sociable than ever. As I was leaning on the gate talking to the neighbor, one, then another, then two more fluttered up next to me.
Then they all followed us back to our place, where one of these days I’ll get back to making kitchen cabinets. (Found a stainless steel 20-tube 150 liter solar hot water heater the other day for USD 675 🙂
Then we got back to town, wondering if we had really left a bag of garbage on a chair with the gate open? Last time we did that wandering dogs left a mess. But no, simply several kilos of oranges left for us by another Uruguayan friend.
Nice.
Wandering around Carrasco
After a delicious lunch inside this splendid pile of rock yesterday, we wandered around Carrasco.
I know what you’re thinking: Look at those buildings! We must be in South America!
Amazing dwellings seem to be the norm.
And look at this—a fixer-upper! Some paint, a little TLC, and …oh. Actually, I don’t like the look of the vertical steel “I” beam outside the front door. Maybe we’ll pass on this one.