Bike lane in Montevideo

Bike path in Montevideo, Uruguay

Rincón, near Plaza Constitución. Horrible street (like most of them), but this is pretty cool.

I (almost) want this car

fiat-500

Silver antique Fiat spotted in Montevideo.

More my style than this.

If you’re new to Uruguay, and think it would be fun to fix up one of these (you know, buy one that needs some work for a few hundred bucks), you’re in for a surprise.

Yours for only …

Surfboard-kayak contraption for sale at Saturday market, Parque del Plata, Canelones, Uruguay

No, I didn’t ask. Sorry. A long surfboard. With seats. And one paddle.

Palm tree and purple Fiat

purple-fiat-500

To each its own

Trippy and tippy VW bus, Piriápolis, Uruguay

Somebody went to considerable effort to make a VW bus much more likely to tip over.

Speaking of getting it wrong

A friend pulled off the road in a quiet neighborhood of Montevideo to make a phone call. As he was talking, a local woman decided to park in back of him, something she proved incapable of doing without slowly but forcefully driving into the back of his car, trashing it.

The body repair people put the Suzuki label back on, but off-center. The next time the car went to the dealer, they were so upset that the logo was off-center — to the left — that they “fixed” it.

Quality control in Uruguay — A shame, really, that there‘s no easy way to determine the centerline of the car.

More curupay and the “pobre Meriva”

Curupay decking in car — One of many loads in the “pobre Meriva,” the poor Chevy Meriva, which functions as the pickup truck I don’t have.

I’ve mentioned curupay wood before, so when friends said they were replacing their deck and I could have some, I immediately made plans to build a table (better than this one). I didn’t want to be greedy, because what remained they’d use as firewood.

Dinger joint curupay strips — Finger joints: in the north, the strongest point in the board. Here, the weakest, since they didn’t use waterproof glue!

Then they announced plans to leave Uruguay, so I thought “why not?” They’d consider it a favor if I cleared it all out, cleaned up, and re-stacked their firewood to make the place look neater.

Back home, many hours of removing screws, stacking lumber. Many possibilities for projects. And some incredible firewood too.

Drive UY – 30 seconds

Change of opinion

VW Beetle paint, Uruguay — Apparently in the past people have been of different minds about what color this car should be.

Yay! Water!

So far, this is the most insufferably hot day of the summer currently reporting 35° C (95% F) in Montevideo. Clouds are piling up, and it has that “this has to break soon” feeling: i.e., rain.

And the little joys — the sudden sound of water filling a toilet tank after several hours without water. We never lack for drinking water; I tend toward stockpiling (horoscope: Cancer) and my wife knows the value of water having experienced the Cyprus coup and invasion of 1974 somewhat intimately.

Regardless, to suddenly lose water on the hottest day of the year is disconcerting. I was reminded, in the heat with no water, of the drought in neighboring Brazil. Even though rain in January here is unusual — except for last year and this year — I can’t complain …

… as I hear thunder in the distance.