Critters

We are living much closer to nature than we did back in the metropolitan DC area.
For example, last night I heard the distinctive slapping sound of a frog hopping around in our kitchen. So I scooped him up and put him out the front door. He will be back. I have lost count how many times I have removed a frog from the house.
The other day, I lifted up the toilet seat (checking for spiders under the seat before I sit is a habit I acquired on a trip to Botswana, when I encountered the infamous spider, from now on known to me as the toilet spider) and saw a dark lump in the toilet. Well, this turd jumped. Another frog.

We also share the house with all of the sparrows with in a five mile radius. Maybe that is a slight exageration, but the walls are alive with them. When they return to roost in the eaves of the roof each evening, we can hear them twittering and jockeying for position in their night-time hideout. Occasionally, one of the falcons who hang out in the back yard will dive by to try to catch one. There is a crash and scraping of talons as the falcon slams into the house, trying to catch the swallow before it disappears into safety. The aerial acrobatics of the swallows are delightful to watch. I would much rather the falcons stick to eating snakes.

Speaking of snakes, we have those too. Last week, Noah found a black and yellow snake next to our front porch. It was a harmless variety called culebra de penarol. Birds, frogs,snakes,what's next? Oh, spiders. One beautiful morning, we were sitting on the front porch having our coffee when a huge hairy thing dropped down from the roof on a thread of silk, about two feet from me. It was pretty cool, but I was thankful it dropped where it did and not onto my head.

Here is its portrait:

I have unfortunately discovered that arachnids are not the only many-legged things that visit us. That discovery came by way of a 2-3 inch long dead centipede in the shower. Creepy crawlies are cool outside, but not so cool when found in the house, especially in a part of the house where one is usually bare-bummed!

Rain - Saturday, November 29 2008

A soft fine rain is steadily falling today. All day it has been raining. We need it. After we arrived, we had brief afternoon thunderstorms for a couple of days. Then the rain stopped and it was lovely and sunny, though extremely windy. Wildflowers carpeted the pastures. The road to our house reminded me of the Wizard of Oz for its abundant yellow flowers on either side. The yard had beautiful delicate wildflowers in hues of yellow, orange, red, purple and white. Then everything started to whither and dry.

It had been dry for weeks before the rain came. Cattle in other parts of the country were suffering for lack of water. Near Montevideo, in the department of Canelones, fires consumed 300 hectares (a hectare is equal to 2.2 acres). The water table in the department where we live is high and we have lots of water, so it is very good for cattle and sheep. But still we needed the rain.

So today is a lazy Saturday. We're not doing much besides watching the rain fall. Later we will join friends to barbeque a lamb, which we bought from the carniceria just for today. The evening will be cool and the frogs will sing out their appreciation of the dampness.

Giving Thanks

It is easy to forget it here in Uruguay, where turkeys are scarce and exotic, but today is Thanksgiving Day. We have been blessed to know some good people here, who hardly knowing us have welcomed us like family. Trying to make one's home in a foreign country is difficult without some sort of support network. Thankfully, our new friends have helped us tremendously by showing us how to do things while providing good company and generally just making us feel at home.

Thanks to our friends and family back home for your love and support and for at least trying to understand our wanderlust. For those who wonder why we wanted to live in a foreign country for at least a little while, one reason is the personal growth of stretching beyond known limits. Having supportive family and friends makes that possible.

We are extremely thankful that our three furry kids arrived safely. The baggage handlers and airport personal we encountered -from the kind gate agent who boarded the plane to let me know our cats were on board, to the compassionate maleteros who whisked us through Customs and gave us water for the gatos - were a godsend. Thank you.

I am typing this enjoying the beautiful view from our front porch, looking forward to an afternoon of fun and good food with new friends and remembering that we do indeed have a lot to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day.

Abre la puerta, cierra la puerta.

Good fences make good neighbors. True for property as well as human relationships, if boundaries are known, they can be respected.
In rural Uruguay, every property seems to have a gate, from the most humble to the grandest. Therefore, I find myself opening and closing gates often. Every time we leave our house in the car, we go through a ritual of locking everything up, driving to the gate, stopping at the gate for one person to get out of the car to open it and then lock it behind us.
When we visit our friend Gloria, she usually leaves the gate opening if she is expecting us at a particular time. Last April, when we visited the owners of the Alto de la Ballena winery, I recall opening and closing behind us no fewer than three gates.
So when you visit, be a good neighbor and close the gate behind you.

Incommunicado

We still do not have internet set up at our house, so my apologies if I have not been the best lately about returning emails. We have two options for internet access, bad and worse. Which is worse depends on the day, or the alignment of the planets, or something totally arcane.

We visited the office of Dedicado today, which provides satellite internet. The plan we signed up for is 128k down and 64k up! Ouch. The cost is $69 per month. Double ouch.

Our other option is 3G and is about half the cost of Dedicado. Interestingly, we were able to use 3G on the road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere and even make Skype calls. At home, sometimes it works, sometimes it fails to even connect.

So, here I am, typing this on the fly from an internet cafe, looking forward to getting plugged in again!

La Gaia

Houses in rural Uruguay seldom have house numbers. If I were explaining to someone how to get to our house, I would say - take Ruta such and such, turn at kilometer marker blah blah, turn right on the gravel road and we are in La Gaia. That is a perfectly acceptable description of our address. Almost all houses in small towns and rural areas have names rather than numbers. Ours is named La Gaia. The name means Mother Earth and was bestowed upon the property by its owners, who live in the U.S. and hope to retire here in the not too distant future.

The property is on 5 hectares (about 12 acres) with a rustic but cozy 2 bedroom house. The house is made of wood, which is a rarity in Uruguay. Most houses we have seen are made from concrete blocks covered with plaster.

For heat, we have a small wood stove in the main bedroom and a fireplace in the living room. It is early summer now and we won't be needing a heat source for quite some time.

Our water comes from a community well. The water is pumped from the well into a huge holding tank in our back yard. Thanks to this arrangement, if the power to the pumps should fail, we would still have a reserve of water, possibly enough to last several days.

It is peaceful and idyllic. That comes at a price of convenience though. If it's 10pm and we're hungry for dinner with nothing in the fridge, we have a 25 minute drive into town. But that is what we are here for, peace and quiet. We have that in abundance.

We have arrived.

Hello from Uruguay, everyone. We have been incommunicado because we do not have internet set up yet at our home. I am typing this from an internet cafe. Lots to do, so I'll be brief. We arrived safely. What a journey. We left for National Airport at 3pm on Monday and finally arrived at our new home around 3pm on Tuesday. Thanks to sympathetic baggage handlers at both airports, we had plenty of help with our three cats, two bikes, and 5 suitcases. The malateros (baggage guys) in Montevideo even gave us water for the cats.

And, a million thanks to our dear friend Gloria who picked us up at the airport in Montevideo and took us to our house!!! Without her, this would have been an arduous trip indeed.

The cats arrived safely, but were pretty stressed from the long journey. As for us, we are slowly getting settled.