A la pehca!

I had yet another half day on June 9th due to a citywide general strike (Paro General) of all government employees. My mentor had to stay home to take care of the kids because schools are also shut down from 8am to 1pm. So as usual, I spent this time walking around, seeing the places that need to be seen. I was hoping to see some demonstrations and perhaps join in on the fun, but there was nothing but papers littered all over la Calle 18 de Julio. It is possible that I missed the commotion, and I only saw the aftermath. Otherwise, it was yet another day. The transit system was working fine and besides the papers on the floor, there was no other indication that there was a demonstration/strike. Below is a picture of the Plaza de los 33 Orientales. The number 33 is a reocurring number throughout the country - there is a city called Treinta y Tres, but I am not sure of the history behind the 33 easterners.

Recently, I've also started walking to lab and to walk around the centro rather than taking the bus everywhere. I've gotten pretty good at dodging cars and playing real-life frogger. So on the left is the obelisk that I walk by often, when I walk towards the centro. It is the entrance to a very large athletic park called Parque Batlle, and it has some other touristy attractions within. Since Montevideo has the fame of being one of the safest metropolitan areas in the entire world, I decided that I would take the shortcut through the unlit park to get to the centro. Besides the occasional homeless, there is usually no one in the park. And the good thing about walking through the park is that it I don't have to deal with traffic noise, traffic light and traffic pollution. I also learned that wine can be sold in cartons like milk - when I showed my surprise, I was told in English "Welcome to the third world".

Today, was the day that I went to fish at the Laguna del Sauce with some of the University students as well as the institute faculty. I woke up somewhat late, and still decided to walk to work. After some diversions and distractions, I finally asked for the time because I don't have a watch and I had a feeling I was going to be late. Turns out I was about 10 minutes away and had about 5 minutes to get there before 8am (the agreed upon departure time). And so I ran and got to the institute at exactly 8am. After walking around the entire institute, I didn't find anyway and thought that everyone had left. I thought to myself, of all times that I wished the Latin American laxness on time didn't apply, it would be the day that I finally got a chance to go into the field. But it turns out, nobody was there and I was actually the first one. We ended up leaving at 9:30am, after being warned many times to be on time at 8:00am...

 The Laguna is about an hour away from Montevideo and we drove there (gas is $6 per gallon!). It was a mix between an educational excursion as well as a general task to get the fish that we need to do experiments on. As they are electric fish, there is a special way of fishing for them that does no physiological damage to them. Because they live in the shallows, we walk into the water with waterproof wear and use an electrical probe to locate its position. If a fish is present, as a pulse gymnotid, Gymnotus carapo produces pulses of electrical discharges and it manifests itself as a constant battery of beeps. Once its location is confirmed, we use the large net to go under the vegetation to attempt to scoop it out. With the students, all we did was a couple of demonstrations as well as an on site dissection. But after they left... the fun was about to begin...

After the education portion of the trip, it was time to take care of the business of the Instituto. Ana, Lucia, Roxanna and I stayed behind to carry it out. Our goal was to capture 20 Gymnotus for experiments and bring it back to Montevideo. Using the techniques learned, we went to a different pond from which we would fish. The first pond where the students had the chance to fish themselves was like a kiddy pool compared to the pond we had to fish in. Whereas, the water would only go up a little past the shin in the first pond, this pond had the entire bottom half of our body submerged in water. I spent most of my time listening to them talk as we looked for fish, and I realized that there was a very good reason why it has taken so long for me to get used to their Spanish. Uruguayan Spanish oftentimes omits the "s" sound and replaces it with a quick outward breath. So, pesca (fishing) becomes peh'ca. That is fine, but the problem is that the omission of the "s" sound is apparently random, so they can choose to say it or they can choose to omit it. My Spanish wasn't that good to begin with, so this only makes it harder.

After the course of about one or two hours, we finally got our 20. Despite the freezing water, being in the pond was actually more comfortable than walking on land. The boots were a couple sizes too small, and the result was...

And now I can't feel my toes...