En Tacuarembó

We worked today, sampling vegetation at our first site with the exclosure. It was rainy and windy, and not at all what we had envisioned. I forgot how challenging it is to work with plants when nothing is familiar, but it’s even more difficult here because there are no complete field guides or taxonomic keys for the area. We’re working with some borrowed out-of-print texts, including Graminoids of Uruguay, Monocots near Montevideo, and one volume of a set of Vegetation of Argentina. We are out of our element for sure, and I hope we get some responses from our emergency pleas for help.

After working for a few hours and gathering more unknown species than we could keep straight, we headed in and spent several hours in front of textbooks, species lists, and our computers to try and identify some of our collected plants. We unfortunately did not have much luck.

We then set out for Tacuarembó, to go to the nursery office near the mill so we could print datasheets and more plant species information, as well as run a few errands in town. On our way into town, we noticed an entire flock of sheep on the move, some running at “top” speeds, which looks pretty hilarious. Farther up the hill, we spotted the gauchos on their horses, accompanied by their dogs, herding the sheep to somewhere unknown. I snapped their picture from further away, and waited until they got closer for some more.

They seemed confused about seeing a woman next to a fence with a camera in her face, and then hopping back into a truck out of the rain, but they were good sports. When my door was closed and we were on our way again, they raised their hands in a simple hello and continued on their way.

The Weyerhaeuser offices are just north of the city. The nursery and adjacent office are fairly new buildings (on the same road off the highway as the mill), and there seemed to be some office construction and configuration going on while we were there.

On our way out of town, we stumbled into a major parade. I think it was the end of their general election, which actually occurred the night before we arrived in Montevideo. If I remember right, the two candidates for presidency were so close that a run-off election resulted. The scene we witnessed today, I think, was after the final winner was announced.

The commotion on the main street was unbelievable. People stopped on the sides of the road, with flags or just to smile and wave at the parade of cars, and all the cars passing for several minutes had huge flags, horns honking, and radios blaring. I’ve never seen such local festivity for an election before.

On the way back to La Corona, we stopped to take in the sunset. The sunsets are unbelievably spectacular here; either as a result of the weird weather or the rolling countryside, or both. They are absolutely beautiful, and because all you hear are birds and frogs, it is so easy to wander on top of a cerro or plant yourself down on a rock and watch for a long time…