One might think getting peanut butter in Uruguay is easy.
When your taste buds get the best of you though, it becomes a scavenger hunt to satisfy your suddenly craving taste buds.
The only place I have found peanut butter in Montevideo has been at the Frog, a small mini-grocery you find in small Montevideo neighborhoods where Americans hang out.You guess the Frog carries peanut butter because tourists want it, but I want to shake the purchasing agent’s hand, or give her a kiss, for having it on the shelf.
I know I am ready to go home when I am thinking of a salad bar, a great American hamburger, barbecue ribs, a plate of green enchiladas with salsa and chips, a Chinese buffet with General Tao’s chicken and great green beans.
The peanut butter jar goes into my suitcase to go to Costa Rica tomorrow.
I am especially looking forward to the fantastic breakfast buffet at the Hotel Aranjuez in San Jose.
Waking up to a fresh cup of Costa Rican coffee, a made to order omelet, fresh fruit and pastries you always
like, is long overdue.
I can’t move to a country that doesn’t feed me right, or have peanut butter in more than one grocery store..
As in Montevideo, there are antiquated homes in Salto too.
This old casa, on a street off the main thoroughfare, is one that needs more care than it will ever get. While it waits for someone with a dream to fall in love with it, it is a garden shop – El Nuevo Vivero. Inside, plants and trees for sale are placed in empty rooms and since there is no roof on much of the building, rain waters them right where they stand.
The sign in front says the business is open on Saturdays and Mondays. This morning the front door is open and someone rustles inside. It is Wednesday.
A young man comes to the front door to see what I want and invites me to come inside to look at his business even though he is closed officially.
Guillermo is having mate first thing this morning and shows me some of his plants. He is wearing a Brazil soccer shirt and we laugh about that. People take soccer serious on this continent. How can you be a good Uruguay citizen and not wear a Uruguayan soccer shirt?
In the U.S., this place would be closed for code violations. Here, there is no harm, thus no foul.
When I leave the nursery, the ” Closed ” sign, in the front door, still hasn’t been replaced.
A business, it seems to me, that won’t open its doors for a customer, even when the closed sign is in their window, isn’t much of a business.
Guillermo, owner and caretaker of El Nuevo Vivero, has his finger on the pulses of both plants, and business.
The bus ride from Punta Del Este back to Montevideo takes three hours and ends at the Three Crosses Terminal.
Downstairs, bus companies, representing large and small bus lines that cover all routes in Uruguay, are selling tickets and loading luggage and passengers.
Upstairs, there is a mall with shopping, places to eat, and entertainment. At a place where people from all over the country come and go and have time and money, what better place to put a mall?
Christmas is here and instead of Santa’s elves, we have cute little cows.
Riding the bus is how i most often get around in foreign countries. The bus service in Uruguay is well run, not expensive, and connects you to all towns and cities of note whenever you have to go.
From Three Crosses, I am headed for Salto, a city famous for hot mineral springs and the perfect travel doctor’s prescription for a weary traveler.
Warming up in hot mineral baths is something even the ancient Romans did after a long year of subjugating and taxing their neighbors.
We have hot mineral baths in New Mexico, too.
These have to be better because I had to come so far to get here.
There must be as many real estate sales offices in Punta Del Este as there are places for sale and rent.
No one stays put these days and for all the places here that has someone living in them, you still have plenty of places that are empty. This is a real estate broker’s paradise. Customers come down, fall in love, buy a place, move here, then lose their love and bail out. You get to sell a place over and over and over and you have nothing of yours at stake.
The area is seductive. It is clean, has shopping, has the beach, is easy to get around, is safe. The fact that it is expensive and is a resort community that expands in the good months and shrinks to a skeleton staff in the winter is easy to forget..
If you buy a place here are you going to live in it full time?
How much use will you get out of it?
Who will watch it when you are not here?
Is renting it practical?
Are property values going to rise or fall in the next few years so you don’t lose your reason for investment?
What is the government going to do that will impact the value of your investment, the income you might make from it, or whether you can sell it or not?
Is it really any different here than in Fort Lauderdale or Padre Island or San Diego, California?
If you are in business how are you going to survive lean months.
Wherever I go, real estate is for sale and people are either buying, selling or trading..
As far as I know, Gerardo is the most honest man on the planet and can, for a price,he will find you the castle of your dreams.
My dad was a realtor so I know there are honest ones on the planet.
The need to own a home is not going away anytime soon.
Lunch is hours away but a foreman is already buying food for his troops before it rolls around
A sale unfolds as I stand on the sidewalk in front of a construction site and watch sandwiches and sweets go into a five gallon bucket. A stooped figure is retrieving orders from shelves in the back of a little van and the subs he pulls out look big to me.
“What you got in there? ”
The young man, bearded, points at two front rows of sub sandwiches, and a back row of desserts.
“Did you make them,” I ask?
“No, I have a supplier.”
“How much for the big subs?”
“In U.S. dollars, six.”
“What’s your name?”
“Edgardo.”
We shake and make a sandwich deal for tomorrow morning same time, same place since I didn’t bring any money on this stroll. He wants to give me a sandwich now and I pay tomorrow but I don’t want to do that because there is lots of static that can get between now and tomorrow. It is nice that he trusts me enough to make such an offer.
I don’t see a permit but I don’t need one because his business is popular, and, for that reason alone, advertises itself.
Helping local small business guys is high on my list of things to do, even when I’m traveling. .
When I work construction I eat out of concession trucks when they are close by at home.
I can’t make this sandwich for what he sell’s them for, and, even if I bought from his supplier, I’d have to walk there and convince them to sell to me.
Paying people for their time and money is never a bad idea.
I appreciate being paid for my knowledge, skills, and service too.
The first stop on our day trip is a farm and museum off Route 1 that takes you from Montevideo to Colonia Del Sacramento through some of the best vineyards and cattle country in Uruguay. The Museo and farm are the creation of Emilio Arenas who not only has a world record pencil collection but sells cheeses, jams and jellies, in his little country store.
People collect anything. It can be ashtrays, matchbook covers, ceramic animals, music, books.The list is endless. Most collections,though,never end up in world record territory.They end up on shelves in the living room, or occupy a garage or shop where no one but the addict can be affected by his compulsion. In his case, Emilio’s pencil collection is the world’s biggest and brings customers to buy in his gift shop.
Out in the yard, not far from our tour bus, I sit in a chair under a shade tree and let the world zip by.
It is comforting to be in the countryside and dream about staying in a little house surrounded by chickens and goats and a milk cow. At night a window will be open and the stars will look like little pencil pricks of light, white sparkling dots on a black canvas.
Next time back, Emilio will get a pencil from New Mexico from me.
He will always find a place for one more.
When you travel it takes half a day to do what you do at home in thirty minutes.
At home you drive to Best Buy to get your electronics, order your stuff on line and it is shipped to you at half the price in a couple of days.
When you travel you go forth on buying missions and aren’t sure whether you are going to find what you need. You know that in a big city like Montevideo, where everyone is playing with gadgets, there must be shops selling accessories. You just don’t exactly know where they are and whether you can communicate what you need.
I take the old battery out of my language translator so they can give me the same thing new. My screen protector is still on my phone but its edges are frayed and it falls off every time the phone comes in or out of my right pants pocket.
This electronics shop is on Sarandi Street before Constitution Plaza. It doesn’t have huge window displays and you have to be buzzed in through the front doors by a guy working the counter. Inside, I show him my dead battery and he finds a replacement. He has the screen protector too.
Buzzed out of the store, I take a moment to get its location into my memory.
When in Uruguay, you do it the way Uruguayans do.
This store has a humble exterior but inside they had what I needed, when I needed it.
Finding stuff I need in a new place is gratifying, but it is the stuff I need that I can’t buy that causes me the most heartbreak.
This grocery is a find – the Frog Maxishop. It is on the Peatonal Perez Castellano, a pedestrian walkway that connects the Montevideo port on one end and the Montevideo Rambla on the other. When cruise ships are in port, it is on this street that most cruisers shop.
Doing little cooking, it has become my custom to browse the neighborhood Frog for microwave meals and deli items. More discriminating diners eat steaks in the Mercado, or the Parrillada Bar and Restaurant where locals watch soccer games on a small flat screen TV, mounted on a wood shelf in a corner, near the ceiling, secured with a bungee cord.
This afternoon the Frog’s lunch special is Pollo a la Portuguese dishes that are pre-cooked and only need to be warmed before enjoying. The dish comes with rice and veggies and chicken, a nutritious meal.
It is busy in the grocery this morning and many in the neighborhood walk here to shop. Turistas, as well as locals, browse the aisles, price checking and reading labels.
I take a couple of the dishes home with a six pack of bottled water.
Shopping beats cooking, any day, and finding what I need, this easy, is a major coup.
Shopping local makes the city start to feel like a home away from home.
Walking the streets of the port district, you find hotels you might have stayed if you hadn’t rented a studio. It is human to comparison shop, wonder what that place or this place has to offer at what price.
The two hotels within a block and a half of my studio are the Don Botique Hotel and the AK Design hotel.
According to TripAdvisor, both establishments are clean, safe, well rated, offer free internet. The Don offers a regular breakfast while the AK has a Continental breakfast. Both places get good marks and both hotels have websites with visitor reviews. For the time I have been here, moving into high season, the price for a room for one adult for one night at the Don is $168.00 U.S. A night at the AK is $70.00 U.S. My studio is less than $30.00 U.S. per night.
When I throw open shutters and walk out onto my little balcony, I can see the Don.
For price,privacy, quiet, and flexibility, I like the view better from where I am standing.
There isn’t anything new about pizza.You find it all around the world. What is refreshing about this pizza is that it is made outdoors, you watch the guys prepare it, the ingredients are natural, the taste is great, the price is a bargain.
“What would you like,” my personal chef asks?
I spot a toaster oven with a miniature tomato and cheese pizza on its top cooling. On a linen tablecloth, on the folding table in front of me, are bowls with fresh cut ingredients. There are chili’s, peppers, tomatoes, ham, onions. lettuce, cheese, and other typical choices.
“What are you making, ” I ask?
“We are making you a special pizza,” the young man dressed in black says, “you pick your toppings.”
“How much?”
“60 pesos.”
That is about three U.S. dollars which sounds pricey but yesterday a pollo sandwich with bacon cost six dollars U.S. at McDonald’s with no fries and no bebida.
Elias, the brains behind this operation, scoops his starter pizza off the toaster top with a spatula and puts it on a piece of wax paper on the tablecloth in front of me, then loads on the toppings I tell him I want. It looks like a salad by the time I am through and he finishes by slicing the pizza into fours for me.
This pizza stands up to my taste test.
I get lunch plus entertainment for three dollars.
Small cheap surprises are some of the best.
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