Jan 25, 2005
I am so bored. This is a one horse town and the horse was put down last week. Fortunately the barefoot dentist who tried to fix my tooth last week took me in.
I was returning from the Cataratas to Buenos Aires, and decided totake a pass through Uruguay and spend the last of my Uru-shekels. Once I got here and turned off the bike to get gas, it wouldn´t start, and the battery was making that whistling sound a kettle makes when it boils over.
To make a long story short, there is no battery of the size I need in Uruguay, and I can either have one shipped from Buenos Aires, or jump start my bike and hope I can cross the border to the other side without turning the bike off, because jumper cables are very hard to come by here. There is a battery 60 miles and a border crossing away.
Uruguay is a lot less developed than Argentina, and much more agricultural. The people here really do have one arm. The other almost always has a thermos tucked under the bicep and a mate in the hand. I have been told there are four different times of the day for mate, but each time of the day apparently lasts 6 hours. They describe it as a friend, or better than a friend, but who wants a friend that makes your teeth brown-green.
The Uruguayans say the Argentinian mate is not as good as theirs, but they evidently overlook that all theirs is imported from Brazil. You can buy a kilo of the stuff for less than 30 cents, and that will last about a week of constantly sucking warm water through the weed.
As I´m writing this, I look up in the mirror and the woman who enters to use the cybercafe is carrying a thermos and mate.
I´ve seen them swerve across the road trying to drive and suck the mate straw at the same time, and I decided soccer is so popular here because it´s the one sport you can do without putting down your mate.
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