Travels with Brent and Jaik: in three parts

Part Three: Game On! The beach house in Valizas

Yvonne and I were both a bit trepidatious about the beach house we had rented without ever seeing inside. It turned out fine, especially after Brent and Yvonne set to work cleaning every surface and reorganizing the kitchen.

Valizas seemed almost deserted since the last time we visited in January and could hardly drive up the street. This time the town seemed populated mostly by dogs and the odd free-range horse. Jaik gave names to the dogs as we explored the endless beach, took the boat across the river for a safari in the dunes, and had a bbq under the full moon. We were grateful that the pizza place was open, though we will never again order a pizza with peas on it,
and were happy to support the restaurant on the beach staying open and keeping our waitress busy serving up the camarones wok dish not to mention the magical, outdoor survivor type bar under the trees. It was a popular haunt where I continue to enjoy the mojitos.

We had been toying with the idea of a photo contest and once in Valizas, Jaik prepared the challenge. In three days we were supposed to capture photos that expressed words chosen for every letter of the alphabet, along with 4 special categories. The thirty photos were to be revealed in the final Friday night slideshow. This all-consuming game had us marveling at the orchestral nature of the clouds during the thunder and lightning storm, glad for the windy days since it made for quite a few gusts, trying to capture the itch when caught in the mosquito infestation on our trip to Cabo Polonia, searching for visual haikus and generally made us all very avid photographers. Here are some of the winning photos.

Orchestral ( photo B&J)





Memory ( photo B&J)

Vessel

Worry

Haiku

I will upload my images to Flickr once we have an internet connection again. We plan to continue the challenge for round two, shooting in our respective communities and sharing our results on-line. Here was our game plan. Take up the challenge or make your own categories:

a-alive, b-breath, c-cuddle, d-dignity, e-elbow, f-furrow, g-gust, h-hush, i-itch, j-jewel, kkindle,
l-luscious, m-memory, n-netar, o-orchestral, p-purr, q-quiet, r-riddle, s-stir, ttwirl, u-underneath, v-vessel, w-worry, x-x-ray, y-yellow, z –zoom and the four special categories: encapsulate Y&R year off, find a homo, a haiku, and something that reminds you of Beausejour. What a fun time we had with that game. I think I’m addicted!

In Closing

About two year’s ago, when Brent had business in Vancouver and visited us, he had been doing research on Uruguay, as a possible place to retire. Uruguay was a very stable, gay friendly, warm country. During that visit we spent time looking on-line at beautiful buildings for sale in Uruguay at VERY reasonable prices. Why we even fantasized about buying a hotel. Brent was the one to make us first look to Uruguay as a place to spend the last few months of our time off. Later in talking about Montevideo Ian connected us to Bruce and then to Karen and Sergio….so it was very appropriate to have Brent and Jaik join us here…… We were so happy to have such creative, easy going, curious friends with us on this last leg of our journey and as Yvonne said today “Come back it’s too quiet without you!”