Dia de los Muertos

Because everyone and their mother celebrates Day of the Dead here, and we’re still waiting on equipment to arrive, we had another free to explore yesterday. We spent the morning close to La Corona, checking out some of the interesting things near the estate.

There’s an awesome old tree in the middle of grasslands, just off the main road coming up to the house. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that it was a fig tree (or two, possibly). The shape of the tree is incredibly beautiful from a distance, and when you get closer you get to see how awesome the structure really is. The stems and roots are wound intricately around each other and through the short rock face in which it is rooted. At some point, it looks like a lightning storm hit the tree, splitting the main branch into two. These two offshoots have since re-rooted themselves where they fell and are now sprouting huge sections of the tree.

We also went up to check out the nearby fire tower that overlooks La Corona. Here, we met Benjamin, who mans the tower. He was open and friendly, and probably appreciated the company for a little while. He lives in Tacuarembó and commutes to the tower by dirt bike. After radioing his supervisor to ask if it was okay, he helped Scott into a harness and hardhat to make the treacherous climb up into the lookout. (In reality, the tower was probably 20 ft high, with a safety platform halfway up. It seemed like it possibly made the climb more hazardous trying to fiddle with the carabineer attached to the vertical rope than the climb would have been without all the superfluous safety gear.)

The weather has now turned (notice the gray in the fire tower backgrounds, giving us an indication of today's weather now) and we're experiencing some interesting stormy weather. Hopefully we'll still be able to get some work done. Time will tell...