Men at Work

The sun porch--the nicest place in our apartment.

I'm failing as the reporter at large for what-life-is-like-in-Uruguay. The one request that everyone had was "take lots of pictures" and so far the only thing I've photographed is my trashcans. I have a good excuse for this.

Uruguay so far is kind of boring.

It's nice enough. And I suppose I could be taking normal, "look it's a new city," exploration kinds of pictures, but here is an example of why I haven't really taken any pictures: Before coming down here Tim and I wanted to buy a guidebook, but we had trouble finding one. We ended up having to buy one on Argentina in which Uruguay only takes up about 30 pages.  This weekend, being a long weekend, we wanted to go out and explore so we rented a car and then started trying to plan...  but we couldn't find anywhere to go. Then upon discovering that our rental car was a standard, which Tim can't drive, and lacking any real desire to try, we gave up and stayed home for the weekend--utterly uncharacteristic, but indicative of how unmotivating the prospects were.

The view from the porch to the right: Rio de la Plata

There are really only about four destinations in Uruguay that we've heard of so far: Montevideo, which we live in; Punta del Este, which is a beach resort and therefor not much fun in winter; some thermal baths, which are six hours away; and Buenos Aires, which is actually in Argentina and shouldn't be included on this list. There's a famous place called "Casapueblo" that's we're waiting to go to until Tim's parents get here so I'll get back to you about that in two months.

It isn't really a fair representation to say that Uruguay is totally devoid of anything interesting. The city of Montevideo is known for being very cultured. There really is a bookstore on almost every block. There are numerous independent theater companies both large and small. And there are museums all over the city. Apparently, the city also has two zoos. We just haven't done any of these things yet (except the bookstores of course).

Mostly we've just been to the mall. Oh have we been to the mall. We've been to Punta Carretas mall plenty of times. It's a very exciting place because without it, we wouldn't be able to recharge (i.e. buy more time/GBs) for the USB-style modems that we have to use to connect to the internet, and which connect to the internet about as effectively as a piece of ham connects to the internet.

The view from the porch to the left.

 Still... we are bound and determined to find interesting things to do that don't depend on the weather being nice or drinking lots of alcohol. There's always learning the delicate art of self-tattooing or busking for money by performing Abbott and Costello routines on the street, but I think we're going to try to find something with a more local flavor first.

Like enjoying milk in bags.

I thought that Canada was that only country that drank milk out of bags, but I was terribly wrong. A simple Google search probably would have told me that, but I just assumed... Lazy. Anyway now were here and this is how it's sold and I'm only assuming this this pitcher, one of the five pitchers we found in the apartment, is the correct vessel for bagged milk storage (even though the pitcher has oranges all over it?). Who decided that a bag was a good container for a liquid? Don't these pop, get punctured and explode with enough frequency to be of some concern?  I always wondered about the logistics of this and now I know: they're a little shady. These are the kinds of amusements that I haven't been telling you about Uruguay.

A tasty treat.