May day (just a little late)

Today was May 1st… a holiday in Uruguay, equivalent of the northerner’s Labour day.   Except in the north, we celebrate it on the first Monday in September.  In this part of the world, it seems a little more left…  May day. 

This presented an opportunity to christen our new parilla.  My wife’s family from Maldonado drove in and some octogenerian aunts joined us from Montevideo.  We bought a ton of meat yesterday and today, at noon, they showed up with a pile of wood and my nephew started up the new BBQ. 

As those of you who have spent time here know, these things are more than meals.  They are entire afternoons.  To get the coals to the right temperature and volume is an hour right there.  Then you have to cook the meat ultra slow.  I usually end up eating something else while waiting. 

The assado was great.  Churascos, morjillas… and to keep in tune with the progressing times, chicken.  Correct me if I’m wrong but I dont ever recall cooking chicken here back in the 80’s?  In those days, we used to bring live pigs and lambs home and slaughter them in the backyard, just before we cooked them..  Dont ever remember a chicken running around without its head  

Anyway, we live across the street from the Costa de Azul restaurant and all the staff were waving at us… congratulating us on our first assado.  I felt bad because while the house was being built, they kept asking when we would have it and they wanted to come.   Will have to make one just for them in the next few weeks… 

This time of the year, lunch is the best time to do it.  Nights are getting just a tad too chilly for sitting around outside, eating and drinking….   My wife panicked when she realized we didn’t have any beer and she thought all the stores were closed.  Well, most were but some Uruguyans, who own small corner mini supermarkets figured this would be a good opportunity and opened up.  They weren’t wrong.  We went to our corner store for 6 Pilsens and to my total surprise, there were 6 people in line waiting.  I go to this store almost every day and the most I’ve ever seen was one person ahead of me.  And to make it worse, one of the 6 was purchasing what looked like a week of supplies.  The total was over $2000 pesos…  I have never ever seen anyone spend more than 200 pesos in that store.  The owner had her entire family helping out.  My niece went with me and took the family ferret – Noodles – with her and everyone, (except the owner) played with him while we waited.  Ahhhhhh… we love this place. 

So we trekked back with the 6 Pilsens..  Cold beer on the table and ready to eat and the next crisis came.  We need 3 tomatos.  So I trek back and this time, luckily, there are only 4 people ahead of me and they’re  all small baskets. 

I get back with the 3 tomatos and everyone’s started eating.  Well, why wait for me.  I’m just the delivery boy. 

After that, my niece wanted to take the ‘bugie’ out for a spin.  The ‘bugie’ looks like a dune buggy but it’s made in China and if I was dumb enough to drive it in the sand, we would need to replace the engine.  So we drive it on the streets of Pocitos. 

We haven’t used it for weeks and it wouldn’t start.  Fortunately, this is Uruguay and everyone’s a mechanic… and in our case, her brother really is a mechanic.  So after taking the engine apart and putting it together again, it starts.  The air filter was clogged with bichos… a couple of whacks and it was clean. 

So my nephew takes out his sister and then his father and then his mother and as they round the corner to come home, the gas runs out.  So we all pushed it back into the driveway and if I’m lucky, it will be too cold to drive it until the spring .  Did I mention I hate to drive it because everyone stops and stares at you.  A dune buggy in the middle of Pocitos can do that for you.  Today, my nephew tells me a delivery guy on a moto pulls out his cell phone while they go by and with a backhand, and his hand behind his back, the guy takes a photo of the bugy behind him.  The next block, they find some guy crouching under a car taking a picture of them.  I guess my relatives like the spotlight.  Me, no. 

Then it starts to rain and everyone goes home. 

A nice restaurant in Pocitos

   My wife’s birthday was yesterday and although it wasn’t planned, we went to a very nice restaurant in Pocitos.  It’s name is Zarzamora.  You can find it (and a pretty much all the other restaurants in Montevideo), here, http://www.topuruguay.com/es/restaurantes/main.htm. 

We’ve been there a few times in the past, usually for special occasions like birthdays.  It’s a beautiful, medium sized Pocitos style restaurant.  Excellent food, good service, pretty decorations and street parking.  For the first time, I noticed the menu was in Spanish and English.  One of our friends confessed he’d been there the night before and was looking forward to ordering something he’d seen pass by his table last night.  He didn’t have to wait long

This restaurant has a great parilla.  Every kind of meat imagineable,  tastes great and is cooked to perfection.   Most of us ordered meat dishes but I decided to go against the flow and order a grilled tuna steak, glace.  Just like veryone else’s dinners, it was scrumptidelicious.

One of our friends took pictures of all the plates. 

    

We started around 8:30 and finished around 11:30.  They had a buffet style desert bar.   Some of us had 2 deserts, one of us had a few more :).  The deserts were out of this world too.  The peach cake was divino. 

For 10 people, with drinks, wine, large main courses that included filet mignon, lamb, etc, and about 20 deserts, the total was $3500, (U$S150).  Interestingly enough, the bill showed you the total in UY pesos, ARG pesos, Reales and USD. 

Telephone service

Today, we received a stack of telephone bills in the mail.  For some reason, all of our bills come on the same day.  We get a separate bill from Antel, (national telco), for each number and for each ADSL service we have.  Not sure if you can ask them to concatenate them but my best guess is they wont.  Seems the way their computer systems are set up. 

We have 3 land lines.  One for the summer house in Piriapolis.  One for the padres in the city and one for our daughter, (northern habits are hard to break).  We have 2 ADSL services.  One for the city house and one for the winter house.  This time of the year, our ADSL service is cancelled at the summer house.  

You can have the bills mailed to a different address than the service.  Not sure you can have that address outside of Uruguay, but inside, yes.  We added this tidbit because not all utilities will do that.  So be warned. 

The typical home telephone bill includes several services.  The basic service is around $200.  On our run of the mill, basic plan, that fee includes call waiting and no answer voice mail.  Other services are extra, like caller ID, call forwarding or ’0′ call blocking (prevents someone calling long distance or cellphones).  For detailed charges, go to www.antel.com.uy. 

Unlike service in Ontario (Canada), you pay for all outbound calls here under the heading ‘Computos Urbanos’.  In conversation, we refer to them as ‘pulsos’.  Not sure if we’re an average family or not but our monthly fee for this service hovers around $650 for 685 ‘computos’. 

Occasionally, you’ll also see, (as the word suggests), Cargos Ocasionales… like traslado..

The next heading on the bill is in-country Long Distance.  This includes calls to cell phones (the caller pays cell charges here – not the recipient), as well as other cities in the country that are not local calls.  Outbound calls to cell phones are around 4 pesos per minute.  Next heading is Long Distance out-of-country.  Last heading is 0900 service. Last month, we called for an appointment to renew my Cedula and sure enough, it’s on this month’s phone bill…. $186.   

One thing to keep in mnd when dealing with Antel…  Unless you tell Antel otherwise, they’ll put charges on cuotas for you.  We moved a phone line in April so now we’re payng $37.5 every month for the next 15 months.  

Usually, you get a week to pay Antel bills from the time they arrive until they’re due.  If you miss the date, the penalty is 10% and interest on top of that.  We pay ours through bank auto-debit.   All phone bills include the 23% IVA tax.

ADSL comes on its own invoice. It’s associated with a phone number in the Antel computers, but the invoice doesn’t show that relationship.   We used the 1536 service for the first year we were here but we recently switched to the 1024 service.  So far, no one has experienced a difference in performance.   If you’re a newbie to Uruguay and want ADSL, you must order the phone service first.  You cant oder ADSL until after the phone service is installed.  Figure a 3-5 working days for the phone to be installed and pretty much the same for an ADSL line. 

Phone service where we live in Pocitos, is excellent.  So is the service in our summer house unless a lightning storm takes out serivce.  Then it can take several days to restore it.  ADSL service is excellent.  You get what you pay for and downtime is rare.