The flete

Anticipating holiday guests, a friend asked me to arrange transport (a flete) for her stuff, filling the guest space, to another friend’s shipping container in the country. With a local reference, I produced a hard-working driver with an ancient truck that did not inspire confidence.

But it worked just fine. The second of two trips. Truck: 1954 Commer.

Consumer goods in Uruguay tend to be shoddy, so bringing decent things when you move here makes sense. Linens and towels. Clothing. Hand tools, even comfortable chairs and a couch. Still, I marvel (sometimes poetically) at the quantity of stuff people feel the need to import.

Or perhaps I should say, feel the need to possess.

The 40′ container is now perhaps 60% full. Of unused stuff.

Inspiration from the other Guay

Landfill Harmonic

Put aside a few minutes to watch this. Just too great not to share!

More road excitement – not.

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When the grader came through the other day, I thought that was it for road repair. But no, there’s all that tosca to deal with. This truck backed all the way down our road, then went forward, slowly unloading, pausing here to let a car by. Then the grader returned, and ta, it’s done.

I realize this is tremendously boring, but hey it’s my blog, and nobody reads it anyway.

Here come the Porteños

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Actually, smells like rain. But the sight of this rig reminds me – despite the un-summer-like weather today – that we will soon be inundated with Argentinians. Summer season starts in a week; continues through March, with another hiccup for Easter.

Can’t subject the visitors with money (they hope this year, given Argentina’s current cyclical economic crisis) to the potholed, rutted roads that tear our vehicles apart the rest of the year….

Since most of the Argentinians come from the port of Buenos Aires, they’re referred to as porteños – best not to their face, methinks.

Problem solved.

I kept forgetting to bring our workers in the country a broom handle to replace the one that broke (goods sold in Uruguay being generally shoddy).

AAH, indeed

Won’t last long at this price!

When I asked the clerk about this, he said the oferta referred to the bulbs in the black boxes.

Then he saw the humor in it, smiled.

Did he change anything? Probably not.

Why pedal?

I saw two guys on a motorbike, an arm extended and a bicycle rolling alongside.

Didn’t get a picture ’til the end of the road. The passenger had already dismounted.

I figured they were parting ways.

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Silly me.

Another perspective

You may have seen the picture I posted of our little farmhouse here.

Here’s another view from the back corner of our property:

That white dot almost dead center is a neighbor’s horse (trees mark the property line) and there are a few cows as well, from the neighbor on the right. All with permission; happy to have them keeping the grass down.

Guy on a pink bike. Big deal.

It’s so common to see a man riding a woman’s bike, or a teenage boy riding his little sister’s pink bike, that I forget how threatening that would seem to a young male’s ‘manliness’ in the USA.

As with the need for punctuality, unlimited consumer choices, and total convenience, much of the message for stressed northerners living in Uruguay comes down to three words.

Get over it.

Put on your best foreign accent and repeat after me: Life is to be livid!