Alone in Valizas

March 23, 2010

Today was an absolutely beautiful summer day. The ocean was perfectly calm and you could actually swim in it rather than wave hopping, not a cloud in the sky, just hot and sunny. We have just one more day left in Valizas, one more day to hope that our faulty umbrella does the job while we read on the beach as if we were on holidays.
The past couple of weeks have been turbulent; we missed our friends terribly after they left. We had our minds on home; our comfortable bed, friends, being fully fluent in the idiom, even planning what restaurants we would head to first. We were having trouble being here now!
Meanwhile, here in Valizas, we have definitely reached “the far end of summer” again. Fall is in the air; it has been very windy with blowing sand and rainy, (though we have been to the beach every day). Why we even found out a few days ago that the clocks have fallen back an hour! The sun basically sets at 7PM now. Valizas has been given back to the locals and it is a very sleepy place in March.
We were on the verge of changing our tickets and going home early, part of the panic was due to finding our favorite restaurant on the beach closed on a Monday. Generally the produce at the local stores is of poor quality, the bakery is practically never open. All the locals must shop in the bigger towns around. Anyway, the crisis was averted, our restaurant opened again on Tuesday and now is open, noon to 4 every day (except Monday) for lunch, and we are their faithful daily customers.

The chef /owner and his wife are just lovely and they know we like things spicy, so he has been spicing up his regular fare: woks and beautiful fish with a variety of sauces and he even made this fantastic shrimp risotto for us, delicious. The local wood burning pizza place opens on the weekend and we have found the best combinations there, so we settled down on the food front. Suddenly it just seemed crazy and wrong to take this long luxurious year off and then just rush home.

So we are enjoying our last days, alone in Valizas now and have fallen into a very pleasant routine of reading, playing scrabble and beachcombing. We have paid the boatman to take us across the river a few times to the dunes and the beautiful beaches on the other side.

Last Saturday we walked to Cabo Polonia along the shoreline, about a three-hour journey. It has got to be one of the most spectacular walks on the planet, surreal and beautiful.

Locals are now saying ‘ola’ instead of staring and we are very glad we outstayed our leaving early desires. Tonight, we burned Yvonne’s paper cowboy hat that she got in Greece, end of an era, and my favorite little stray dog who often sits with us on the beach, came home with us and she is now well fed and sleeping comfortably on the couch of our deck. Apparently many dogs get left here or lost after the summer rush. I am hoping this bit of fortification keeps her going till the Easter weekend when perhaps some kind tourists, with a car, will scoop her up and take her home for the winter. She is such a sweet dog and as you can see the perfect apartment size!

Last night we watched a very sweet Uruguayan film; “El Bano de mi Papa” (My Father’s Bathroom), about the pope coming to Uruguay and saying a mass in this remote little town which looks to be around here. All the locals invest everything to supply delicious street food and our hero builds a bathroom, since certainly the faithful will need such a place to relieve themselves. Well, all does not go as planned and the faithful are few and nobody makes their million.

There is the sound of chains saws and weed whackers all around us and a crew is sprucing up the town square with brightly painted benches and chainsaw art birds. It almost seems as though the town is expecting a special visitor. But our time here is done, this time next week we will be home to spring in Vancouver!