Trash containers, over time

It has been 2-1/2 year since the trash containers appeared. And less than two years since the one on our corner was burned to the ground (for the first time).

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The spray paint on this one has mostly disappeared, showing the UV protection it offered the otherwise now-faded plastic.

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I don’t know if this resulted from rough handling or solar ultraviolet. Probably a combo. It’s not the only one, by a long shot.

No engineering needed

Just send out a crew with shovels and concrete, no engineering needed

It’s classic palm-to-the-forehead “the work how she is done in Uruguay” moment. You’ll recall we just went through a poorly thought-out repair on the corner nearest us, and seeing as elections are coming up, it was quickly fixed.

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Here’s the main thoroughfare, the bus route, a few blocks down the same street. You’ll notice in the foreground a new strip of concrete, so people turning off won’t hit potholes immediately. Instead, they’ll go one meter before hitting potholes. Eventually, but inevitably.

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You’ll notice on the other side that they made the concrete patch lower than anything surrounding it, so that it collects rainwater. As you can also see, the puddle extends into the dirt section of the road, which means the potholes will start forming with the first vehicle to drive through.

We’ll see if they’re as quick to fix this. Your guess?

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Lo barato sale caro

It wasn’t so long ago (one week to the day, in fact), that I speculated that the road crew might have solved our chronic drainage problem. But I did harbor some concern that the plastic culvert, covered only by a thin layer of dirt, might not stand up to the weight of garbage and delivery trucks.

As I see today, I did not. It broke. Within a week.

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Proving once again what everyone here knows, but none seems to understand: doing things the cheap way ends up being expensive.

Expensive assuming they fix it. With general elections in the fall, the odds are better now than after, I’m told.


If you’re not a Spanish speaker, but want to show off, it’s lo bah-RAHT-o SAH-lay CAH-ro, with crisp Rs: English, not ‘Murkan.

What is cheap ends up expensive.

 

No había nada.

cat

Usually I walk the beach too late to the road repairs in action, but with today’s balmy weather I went early, and paused a while to watch the surprisingly quick maneuvering of the huge backhoe. The operator was really efficient. Of course, I also saw two guys sitting nearby, doing absolutely nothing.

I asked one of them what lay at the other end of the big pipes they had installed. Una cámara. An underground storage reservoir. Where did the water come from? I wasn’t too satisfied with the answer, since I still didn’t see how water would get into it.

¿No había nada? I asked, guessing there had been no drainage before, which is why the road kept getting washed out.

Nada, he replied with a smile, as if to say, can you believe this?

Tourist season past; time to repair the big attraction

roadwork

Well, now, looks like they’re getting serious about fixing the collapsed Rambla. Instead of just dumping dirt in the hole where the road had been, as before, some serious drain work is in progress.

As I walked down to take a look, my unofficial dog Huma (silent H, remember) went tearing ahead, and when I could see over the ledge, I didn’t see her. But not for long: didit, DiDit, DIDIT and she launched out of one of the tubes like a projectile, veered around and went flying into another. I tried to catch her emerging again, but she was too fast: you can see her if you look very closely in front of the nearest tube.

She stayed in “crazed mode” the whole time we were on the beach, running back and forth, in and out of the water at full speed. Something in the air, I guess.