Since we’ve recently had painting done, we thought it time to try to address some persistent moisture problems on parts of the wall that couldn’t be painted. Inside, our new do-anything guy removed all the revoque (surface) of a section of wall, drilled lots of holes, and set bottles of Igol Infiltración, which eventually empty themselves into the surrounding brick and waterproof it. We hope.

Outside, despite being almost directly below a valley in the roof where the most water pours off, the owner/builder apparently made no provision for waterproofing the subterranean part of the sunken living room wall. Even though fixed in place, the pretty-but-shitty window on the right allows water into the wall as well.

Meanwhile, our Namibian tenant in the campo sought advice from a local South African with lots of building experience, and the two launched into solving water problems on the flat roof there. Typical of Uruguayan construction, the bottom of the drain pipe was slightly above the lowest part of the roof, leaving pooled water to soak through the inevitable cracks in the concrete.

I helped somewhat, but mostly watched and listened, trying to sort out what they were saying to each other in Afrikaans.

Between the to-and-froing, I managed to take Benji walking with all his buddies, and saw this decent-sized spider casually making its way across our path.