Quincho

quincho

For six years, I’ve walked past this house whose past-prime quincho roof has reminded me of a mangy dog. It’s finally getting groomed, to stretch a simile. It appears the back half is nearing completion, and the facing side is being torn off.

What’s the deal with quincho? Glad you asked. Denise (“day-NEE-say”)  has answered your question exhaustively (and perhaps exhaustingly; we have different styles) here.

Ebay and China to the rescue

A few years ago, I bought a bath/back brush at Tienda Inglesa. By now, it was showing its age, so I went to check on getting another. 650 pesos, or over $20 US even with the “strong” dollar. The nice lady said it was Italian, and yes, expensive, but it would last forever. Properly explaining what I thought next seemed a little beyond my vocabulary at the moment.

Three weeks, and $4.02 US later (shipping included!), I have a replacement:

bathbrushes

Better still, it was delivered to my door. No summons to the Customs office in Montevideo.

 

 

 

Meet Luis, Señor increible

The bearings on my 6-year old wheelbarrow broke. You can’t replace them. You can’t buy a replacement wheel with the same size axle.

A South African guy named Geoff told me about buying a replacement wheel, then taking it to this guy who fabricated an axle to make it work on his wheelbarrow. So I went to buy the wheel, then after some discussion with the muchacho at the ferreteria (hardware store), decided it might be prudent to discuss it with Mr. Fixit, Luis, before purchasing it.

Luis said he could make a solution out of plastic that would solve the problem for a long time. Come back at the end of the day. So I did, to find custom-fabricated plastic bearings (they would be a T in cross-section, with perfectly fitting rubber grommets.

“Put a little grease on it when you put it back together,” he said, “and you’ll have no problem.”

luis
“You should see what I can do when I get serious about this shit.”

And the cost? 200 pesos, around $7 US.

 

 

Yes, this is my 3rd post about plastic ice trays in Uruguay

I must admit, my first post from two years ago now strikes me as sort of silly, because the nesting ice trays design now seems quite clever rather than flawed.

And perhaps my second post, almost a year ago, struck some people* as somewhat silly, when I considered it a miracle to find ice trays that worked and didn’t break. (FWIW, I kinda still do.)

Orange plastic ice tray in Uruguay - that has lasted a year!

Well, here you go, muchachos, the orange plastic ice trays from Disco in Carrasco (Montevideo), almost a year later, still releasing ice cleanly (85% of the time) and not breaking.

  • not mentioning names, mm-k?

 

Not that you care about our dogs, but.

walkway

Gita (origin Doguita, “little dog”), on the right, finds it a challenge navigating the boardwalk to the beach with continual flank assaults from the enthusiastic puppy.

tugofwar

Settled down, they have friendly a tug-of-war with a stuffed bear. Which, ironically (or not), was a gift from a cleaning lady to the third, and smallest, dog Bandito, the Shit-Zoo (Syd will appreciate this spelling).

Pecking order? Notice the paws.

Cajun-style comadreja

Cajun-style comadreja, with essence of plastic

I’ve spoken of our trash collection system before.

Last night, for the third time, our closest container was burned. Yeah, it makes some kind of great sense to collect trash in flammable containers.

dumpster-burn-3

Just as it makes sense to purchase for Uruguay trash containers from a country with absolutely no UV problem: Germany. Plastic doesn’t fare well here.

However, the irony—or synchronicity—in this current destruction is that my wife took a shovel yesterday to remove the body of a dead possum (comadreja) from the road, and threw it in that container.

So the little critter got a proper cremation.

Well, almost. From the attention our garbage-hound Gita gave today, apparently there are some Cajun tidbits still edible by her standards (shared by almost no other living thing besides ants and bacteria).