But I digress…

Since it was a holiday weekend (Columbus Day), we decided to stay in Piriápolis for three days. Accordingly, we loaded up the Land Rover and a rented car Friday afternoon in the drizzle, and headed east into a lowering sky and strengthening rainstorm. By the time we reached Atlantida, the rainstorm had turned into a monsoon—by the turnoff from the highway to Piriápolis, we were wondering if we could trade the four-wheel-drive for pontoons. Somehow, we made it to Piriápolis. Of course, as soon as we were no longer driving, the rain reverted to a safe and almost pleasant drizzle.

Since we had three dogs, a hotel was out of the question. (“Pet-friendly” accommodations are virtually unknown in Uruguay.) However, we were most graciously accommodated in a house near the beach, owned by Mikey’s father. It was a wonderful summer house with two parillas (inside and outside). It was also fenced, which made it nice for the three dogs.

After unpacking—it was only lightly sprinkling now—we huddled together to tackle the most pressing problem of the age, or perhaps at least of the moment: food. After some discussion, my suggestion that we “eat out” was adopted. Piriápolis being a beach community, and this not being “the season”, our options were somewhat limited. We opted to eat at La Pasiva on the Rambla (every street running alongside the water seems to be called Rambla). Despite the fact that La Passiva is as common in Uruguay as Kentucky Fried Chicken is in the South, I had never been to one—I had eaten some of their food via home delivery, but I had never set foot (or wheels) inside of one. The food was decent middle fare and the portions were huge. I had a small mixed salad, which came on a foot-long platter ringed by sliced tomatoes—it really is was enough for four.

After dinner, I exercised my usual good sense (brought on by age and exhaustion) and opted for bed instead of partying. My colleagues being younger, stronger, and with much less mileage opted for partying. Each being content with his choice, I curled up in bed by myself, unless of course you count Harry, the West Highland White Terrier sleeping on the pillow next to me, Lucy the now pregnant German Shepherd, at my feet, and Santiago’s yellow Lab puppy Luna, who threw herself against my left side—at least I wouldn’t be cold.

The next morning broke bright and sunny and warm. I was thrilled. So were the dogs because the backyard was covered with mud at least 6 inches (15cm) deep.

As Harry and Lucy were both mature dogs, they were both fairly fastidious. Luna, on the other hand, with the wild abandon of a college freshman on spring break, dove into the mud with gusto. She spent 30 minutes digging out a muddy pond so she could get really soaked. The best part was when she decided to go wake up Santiago, and jumped up in bed with him: now she was a yellow, black and brown mud covered retriever. Fortunately, Santiago is an amiable guy, so no blood was shed. As he came staggering into the kitchen, it was however immediately obvious that he had been the recipient of Luna’s mudd slathered affections.

What a way to start the day!

In a very short time (as Uruguay counts time) everyone was up, the mud had been washed from the bodies of canines and humans alike, and Harry and the humans left for lunch on the way to Ken’s house. (Harry had been specifically invited to attend—The Southron was only invited as a courtesy to Harry!) Prudently the two big dogs were locked in the house before we left in order to prevent their re-mudification.

After a wonderful lunch at the port, we headed towards Ken’s house, but only after our previously mentioned tour of possible ice sightings on the east side of Piriápolis.

Ken, Marlyn and the children were perfect hosts: the ambience was friendly and informal, and both the potables and comestibles were ample and excellent (of course it was Asado). It was a real joy to see so many of our eastern “family”, that I had not seen, in many cases, for months. The gathering was everything Sociedad Southron could hope for; it included Uruguayos, Europeans, Canadians, Aussies, Southrons and even even some polite Yankees. People had come from as far away as East of Punta Del Este, Atlantida, and Montevideo in the West.

There was some discussion of trying to keep these gatherings going on, at the least, on a monthly basis until the fall. This would certainly be a great idea! I understand, from the people at www.CoastalUruguay.com, that they are going to host a similar event in Piriápolis in December. My hope is that these gatherings will grow where ever there are groups of immigrants in order to help foster their integration into Uruguayo society. My plan is to visit as many of these gatherings as I can (o r to which Harry can get me invited.).

Thank you Ken, Marlyn, Lia, and Ethan from The Southron, Harry and the Gang! Borko was sorry he could not be there, but it is a long commute from Montenegro—but he’ll be back for the next one!

(By the way: the warmth here in NOT from global warming, it is from the Uruguayos themselves—but that is something I don’t think Mr. Gore would recognize, even if it jumped up and bit him in the butt…)

NOTE, FOR THOSE WHO READ THIS RIGHT AFTER THE INITIAL POSTING: I have not gone senile–I wrote this with voice recognition (???) software–I think it needs some work…

]]> http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/10/21/maybe-al-gore-was-right-%c2%bftal-vez-al-gore-tiene-razon/feed/ 2 http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/08/14/the-two-faced-weather-gods-of-the-rio-de-la-plata/ http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/08/14/the-two-faced-weather-gods-of-the-rio-de-la-plata/#comments Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:48:04 +0000 The Southron http://www.uruguayliving.com/2007/08/14/the-two-faced-weather-gods-of-the-rio-de-la-plata/ Just a over two weeks ago we had the coldest weather on record in Uruguay—in some places it was -6C (20F).  Prior to that, the lowest recorded temperature was -3C (25F).  Either way, both are a serious departure from the average low in July or August of 6C (43F).  Last night the weather was horrid—it was cold and so foggy I could not see the Rambla, just the street lights like lightning bugs hovering above it.Today the weather gods flip-flopped the other way and we tied the highest ever recorded temperature for August of 26C (79F).  This time we were way above the average high temperatures of 15C(59F).  It was great—we had the doors open and it felt like spring had come. Hallelujah!  Time to get out my crip scooter and start buzzing through the streets again…

But that is not to be:  the forecast for tomorrow is rainy and cold—winter is back.  Damn, I went and missed spring.

One thing I can say about the weather here is that it never stays the same for long.  I remember this is clear juxtaposition to my last year in Florida, when I ran the air conditioner all but 5 days of the year; and ran the heater those 5 days…

There is an even more stark contrast when I remember my 27 months in Costa Rica:  always warm, but only two seasons: six month when it never rains, and six months when it never stops.  By this time I would have been covered with algae…  I did finally figure out why it is always so hot in Central America—they are a lot closer to hell than we are here.

Regardless of the weather, it is great to be home in Uruguay!

The warm days go up to the mid 70s, but now the cold nights can go down to around 40, or even lower on occasion.

The fool was me, and boy, was I wrong!

This year the warmest days are bare nudging the 60s (15C+) and the nights have been known to go below 32F (0C). In fact, Sunday night it was reported to have hit 20F (-6C). It was 28F (-2C) when I checked at 9AM Monday morning. Some of our staff told me about slipping on the frost—they thought it was sand on the grass.

The fact is that Uruguay has had one of the worst winters on record. As far as I can determine, the low this past Sunday night was the lowest ever recorded here.

It has to be somebody’s fault!

After careful investigation—mostly conducted while tasting various vintages of fine Uruguayan Tannat—so of course the results must be excellent. The list of probable offenders includes:

• George W. Bush—it is his fault because he changed the usual path of the jet stream when he visited (invaded?) Uruguay with 25 jumbo airliners full of troops.

• Argentina—it is their fault because their old fashioned paper pulp plants have pumped so much pollution into the air and water that it has caused a climate shift.

• Piqueteros—it is their fault because they have blockaded the warm weather from crossing the Rio Uruguay.

The Copperhead has an alternative theory: he says that I am so large that I create my own gravity and that gravity has pulled the hole in the Ozone Layer out of whack—so I am responsible…

But change is on the way—they are predicting Snow for the weekend!

At this point you may be thinking: Thank you Southron for the weather report, but what the heck does this have to do with Supergas?

Because of the mild temperatures nine months of the year many houses (and even apartments) here do not have any heating system beyond a fireplace or two. During the cold months they rely on very efficient space heaters fueled by Supergas, more commonly known as propane gas, bottled gas, or simply LPG.

The sole importer of Supergas is ANCAP, the state-owned company that provides oil, gasoline, propane, and (believe it or not) cement. To the best of my knowledge, ANCAP does not distribute Supergas directly to the public. That task is handled by a goodly number of distribution companies.

In normal times, this system works very well. Each of the distribution companies have rolling fleets of trucks which deliver the gas in 13 kg (28 lbs) tanks, usually within 30 minutes after you call in your order. But, because of the extreme fog over the last few weeks, several shiploads of Supergas were delayed, and a shortage developed here in Montevideo. To my knowledge very few people actually ran out of gas, but in many cases, our own included, we ended up using our entire backup store of gas before we could get any refills.

The response of the “powers-that-be” at ANCAP was amusing. It was a perfect example of a bureaucracy making matters worse.

In order to reduce the amount of Supergas consumed, ANCAP allowed the distributors to reduce the amount of gas per tank from the standard 13 kg to 8 kg. Of course, some scalawags took advantage of this situation and started putting only 4 kg of gas in each tank. But ANCAP moved with alacrity to counter such gouging, and ordered that tanks that were sold with only 8 kg of Supergas would be required to have a black sticker over the nozzle instead of the usual red one. (This is almost as good as the childproof bottles in the US that only children can open.)

I guess the idea was to more evenly distribute the amount of gas that was available, but what ANCAP neglected to factor in was that tanks with less gas would need to be replaced more often, thus burning more gasoline or diesel in the delivery trucks… then again, since ANCAP is the primary supplier for gasoline and diesel fuel, perhaps they did factor it in. ¿Quien sabe?

The good news is that the fog has lifted, the weather is back to normal, and Supergas is super again!

On the other hand, I could be hiding in the West Indies waiting for the latest killer hurricane to try to blow me away. (It would have to be a darned powerful hurricane to be a little blow me away.)

What you hear is like neither of the above–it is a bit more akin to the Chinese torture known as “death by a thousand cuts”. When I woke up this morning and open the shutters at nine o’clock it was so dark and cloudy all the outside lights were still on. The rain was pouring the wind was blowing–it was generally sell ugly that even the ducks and the seagulls weren’t out.

In all fairness, and we all know how much I hate being fair, the temperature here has been pretty good. Most days it has been in the 50s Fahrenheit (10+ C) and on sunny days is even gone into the 60s (15+ C).

The best thing that can be said about the winter is that it is never boring. If it rains today, it will storm tomorrow, will have near hurricane force winds the day after, and end up with a bright sunny cloudless cool day. Somewhere in that mix of days we will also manage to have fog.

The fog here is amazing! It is so thick even the English are impressed by it. My office window is less than 150 m from the Rio, and on any average foggy day I can’t see the water. The fog is particularly therapeutic if you are a fern or other form of plant life that needs a lot of humidity. If however, you are human, and happen to have any kind of difficulties breathing or with your lungs in general, it’s deadly. I am literally death afraid of going out in the fog. Last winter I made the mistake of venturing out when the temperature was just 1° above freezing and the fog was at its thickest: I walked 10 feet(3 m) from the door of a hotel to a taxi, and by the time I got to the taxi my lungs had stopped working–fortunately an inhaler restarted them. Frankly, because of my health, I plan on spending June and July and August of 2008 in either Brazil or Europe.

If however, you are not transported to death’s door by the humidity, then, the winter isn’t too bad. Despite my generally lousy attitude towards the winter, I must admit that I thoroughly enjoy those sunny and cool days that occur once or twice a week. I guess the best part about having winter here is that it follows autumn and presages spring. After growing up and spending most of my life in season-less Florida, I have come to thoroughly enjoy the changing seasons–even if that means enduring winter.

I guess winter in Uruguay really is relative: if you are comparing it to Moscow, Idaho, Michigan, or Outer Mongolia; it is wonderful! If however you are comparing it to Florida or Southern California, this is a bit more sketchy.

And, if you have the wherewithal and inclination, you can take advantage of the reversed seasons in the southern hemisphere, and spend your southern hemisphere winters by enjoying northern hemisphere summers.

Then came April.  At first I thought it was an April Fools’ Day joke perpetrated by the cosmic weather powers–it was just too nice.  But now halfway through the month I realize that this year, March has come in April.  I’m not exactly sure how that works, but I guess I’ll just add that to the list of Southern Hemisphere phenomena that are beyond me.  (Those who spent their lives researching the secrets of the Bermuda triangle should take on something really challenging like explaining how the laws of nature and science work in the southern hemisphere.)

The anomaly having been noted, I cannot help but enjoy the beauty of the day: a blue sky filled with puffy cotton ball clouds; gentle breezes wafting in from the river; and a temperature of 23C/74F with low humidity.

Whenever the weather is nice, Uruguayans are outside.

The local football team is practicing in the park in front of my house, the sidewalk along the Rambla is slowly increasing in the number of runners, walkers and bikers taking advantage of its magnificent vistas, and the professional dog walkers are unloading their jostling packs of canines from their pickup trucks for a romp through the park.

All in all, it is a fine day to be in Montevideo, Uruguay; and I for one and glad to be alive.

I know many of you have been wondering exactly what was going on: whether I had abandoned this project, or was injured, or ill, occupied, or perhaps even imprisoned.  The short answer is: ill and occupied.

As many of you know, I am handicapped and have had to undergo a goodly number of physical challenges, not the least of which has been a six-year-old Staphylococcus infection, which has done its damnedest to kill me.  The good news is, that God-willing, the infection appears to finally be beaten.  The bad news is that it has left me with a left leg ravaged as if I had third-degree burns.  My particular version of the infection was the kind known as “the flesh eater”, and it did a fine job of living up to its name.  Because of this, the healing process is extremely painful and I cannot promise you, at least for the next few months, how productive I’ll be.  I can promise you that I will do as much as I can as often as I can, and that under no circumstances will I give up.

Every time I feel like giving up I remember a section in C. S. Lewis’s book “Screwtape Letters”, in which Screwtape tells his nephew that there is no greater joy in Hell than when someone gives up just before they would’ve succeeded–I have no intention of giving Screwtape, Wormwood, or Lucifer himself that joy.

In the words of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, “never, never, never, never give in, except to convictions of honor, or of good sense”.

This is a full-sized, 8½ x 11 inch paper back, with color covers and black-and-white inside. Because of its large size is much easier to read than the pocket-sized edition produced locally.  The price for the full-size paperback is the same as the retail price for the e-book, US$30. For payment, lulu.com accepts Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express and PayPal.

One other note: there was a Yankee Naval vessel holding station a few kilometers offshore for my house–obviously they were here in connection with that politicians visit.  I didn’t mind the ship that much, until I noticed that as I went from room to room its weapons readjusted accordingly…

In Florida, during the last year I lived there, I ran the air conditioner for 360 days, the other 5 I ran the heater.  When I lived in Washington, DC, the winter seemed endless.  For those of you farther north, by about February it must seem like frozen eternity.  In many ways Costa Rica was the worst; it was warm and dry for six months, and then rained for six months—to the extent that dreams of building an ark to escape the deluge were almost palpable.

Uruguay is not like that!  Here the weather seems to move in gentle cycles, none of which seem to be longer than a week, and most of which seem to be for three or four days.  For example, during the month of July last winter, the daily high temperature ranged from 62°F/16°C up to 77°F/25°C.  The daily low temperature bottomed out at 35°F/1.5°C up to 48°F/8°C.  Thus far this month, which is the middle of high summer, our daily high temperatures have been from 73°F/22°C to a sizzling 96°F/35°C, while our lows have reached all the way down to a “polar bear” comfortable 50°F/10°C and ranged upwards to 62°F/60°C.

But the really nice thing is that no temperature range has dominated for more than four or five days; after a few days of the infernal heat, we would have a blessed cool reprieve.  (I hope I have kept my bias against hot weather sufficiently hidden.)

The wind is similarly changeable, except they cycle over a period of hours instead of days.  Our offices are just one block from the shore across an open park.  From my desk I have an unobstructed view all the way out to the ship channel.  During the course of almost any day the waters of the Rio de la Plata change from a mirror-like calmness to a pattern of ripples, which in turn can change to whitecaps, which some days grow into breakers–which on rare occasions even becomes surf-able (or so I’ve been told).

Taken together, this makes Montevideo’s climate a very nice one in which to live–changeable enough to not get boring, but with changes sufficiently moderate to not be alarming.  In many ways the climate is a good mirror of its people and its culture…

There is simply way too much sunshine and warm weather in Montevideo in the Spring. And we know that all that sunshine is not good for you: it ages people prematurely and can cause skin cancer and sun tans that turn your skin to leather and other such things.

And there does not seem to be any sign of respite–not a cloud in the sky; AND as we get closer to Thanksgiving the weather is only going to get worse. The latest predictions include Sunshine all week with temperatures gradually rising to 31C/88F by Thanksgiving Day.

I don’t know how we are going to cope.

Don’t you feel better safe and snug in front of your fireplaces with your skin protected by sweaters and long ants and jackets?