The fine art of geolocation in Uruguay

OK, red herring. Actually, I think I must have said “hell no” at some point when a web site asked to see where I was located. So this was the result when I looked for the distance to the closest branch of Scotia Bank, whose debit cards are replacing the Tienda Inglesa points cards.

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Hint: we’re only about 40 km away.

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But presumably I know now the geographic center of Uruguay, which is here:

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So naturally, rather than do something productive, I switched to satellite view to find out where I “was.” Looks pretty remote:

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But wait a minute! What are those shapes?

L-shaped forests in Uruguay

Triangular forests in Uruguay

Why, L-shaped and triangular patches of forest, of course.

You can find all sorts of fun tree patterns on Google Earth in Uruguay, which apparently takes the growing of Eucalyptus trees more seriously than its neighbor to the northeast, Brazil.

Ecalyotus trees: Uruguay, yes; Brazil, no

But triangles … why triangles?

 

 

 

Little brown waves

Little brown ocean waves, Atlántida, Uruguay
I’ve never thought of myself as  beach person. The thought of hanging out on a beach for hours makes me a little numb. That said, I love being able to walk to, and on, the beach daily. During summer – January and February – it has to be early or not at all (and I will find sun-worshippers at 8 AM). Off season any time of day works.
But there remain two issues: 1) the waves are tiny, and 2) they’re often brown.

1) Why are the waves tiny? Theoretically, you could sail in a straight line from Uruguay over 16,500 kilometers before making landfall (and you’ve always wanted to visit Myanmar, no?). That much open ocean and diddly little waves? Why?

Lots of water

2) Brown waves – let NASA tell the story (even if they can barely get within 90 degrees of correctly identifying north).

On the day of this photo, we enjoyed blue or green waves ‘north’ (actually east) of Montevideo. A little change in current and winds, and you have brown waves.

Sometimes we have fresh (brown) water; sometimes we have salt water at the beach. So sometimes the fisherman catch freshwater fish, and sometimes saltwater fish. And sometimes the wrong ones get caught in a shift, and their carcasses end up carpeting the beach.