Tag: infrastructure

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.

After the rains: haven’t seen this before

muddy street

In almost 4-1/2 years here, I’ve seen lots of rain, but never this: the tosca, road-building material made from soft sedimentary rock, has become so saturated in many areas that it acts as mud. Ride into that on a bicycle and you’ll regret it.

After I wrote the above, my wife mentioned that just a couple hours ago she got stuck in exactly this place—in the car. Had to rock back and forth to get free….

 

Maybe ready in time

Pedestrian bridge under construction, Atlántida, Uruguay

It will be a very long walk (notice switchbacks on far side), but the new pedestrian bridge will be wheelchair- and bicycle-accessible. Because of the distance from the last traffic light eastbound, on January weekends it is almost impossible to cross the road—no gaps in traffic whatsoever. Numerous people have been killed here, including the mother of our contractor, when he was a boy.

A new bridge

Venturing east recently, we noticed some odd construction: in La Floresta at Ruta 35, what had been traffic lights in the middle of nowhere had become a roundabout. Turns out they’re building a traffic overpass, only the third between Montevideo and Punta Del Este, and replacing one of only four traffic lights between the mandatory toll stops.

Why there? Ruta 35 does not have that much traffic. However, examining the traffic lights (red arrows) from left (Montevideo) to right (Punta del Este):

  1. Neptunia: nothing but a small residential area on the north side.
  2. Salinas: the town’s iconic arch wold need to be removed.
  3. Parque del Plata: nothing but a small residential area on the north side.

In La Floresta, no problems, wide open, through road to Soca and beyond.

So they’re building it there because they can. That’s good news for anybody wanting to hit the road east, because after the Parque del Plata light (new since we moved here) things are pretty wide open. Unfortunately, the space west of Parque del Plata is not wide open, and heavily populated, but the people racing between Montevideo and Punta act as though it’s their god-given right to drive as fast as they can past things like this and this and this.

Punta del Este license plates begin with B. Montevideo license plates begin with S. BS drivers are not the only offenders (BA also comes to mind: Buenos Aires), but it was not a local car in this scene.

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.