renewing my visa again, again

Manuel and I went to Colonia yesterday. It was a 70s, clear skies day, a perfect day for a visa run. We rented a pair of rickety bikes -- Manuel's was gray because he likes things that are not so black and white, and mine was pink because I'm a girl -- and rode along the water to the old dilapidated bullfighting ring that I first visited about this time 2 years ago. The holes in the fence surrounding it that we'd climbed through then have since been patched, and we didn't go in. Across the street, there was a sign nailed to a tree that said "antiguedades," but there weren't any antiques for sale.

On the way back, we had to climb a hill. It wasn't a very big hill, but it left me winded, and I remember thinking, "How the hell did I ever make it over the Rockies?" But it was all downhill after that, which is a good thing when you're on a bicycle.

Back in town, we didn't go to the historical district, where there's a lighthouse built inside the ruins of an old convent, a tree growing out of the wall of a 17th century house, a museum with a whale skeleton. After all, there's only so many times you can look at Uruguay's oldest church without it getting old. I've been there before, and yesterday I just wasn't in the mood for time traveling or taking black and white pictures of shadows on cobblestones.

What I was in the mood for (as was Manuel) was drinking beer in a plaza, and that's what we did for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to return the bikes and head back to Buenos Aires for another 90 days.

By the town's main plaza, there was a cart selling fried food and drinks (including very cold beer), with some plastic tables on the sidewalk. We picked a table in the sun and leaned our bikes against a nearby tree. Manuel asked an old man at another table if the bikes would be ok like that, unlocked. "No pasa nada," the old man assured us. "Esto es Colonia." He informed us that, in Colonia, people didn't bother stealing old bikes and, after a pause, added "Aca roban los bancos," which either means that they rob banks or that they steal benches. We didn't clarify.

As one beer turned into 4 beers (we could pay with Argentine pesos, but we only had a 50 and, since they couldn't give us change in Argentine pesos, we decided it was better just to spend the whole 50 on beer rather than accumulate a bunch of Uruguayan pesos), our conversation wandered all over the place. At one point, Manuel administered a makeshift IQ test to me that was meant to resemble one that he'd been using in one of his psychology classes (it was all about finding patterns, and I found a lot of patterns, but not the right ones). In another moment, we were critiquing Argentine infrastructure.

It started with me teaching Manuel what the word "gutter" meant. I don't remember how it came up. Maybe I was trying to convince him that we should adopt a dog to save it from a life in the gutter. This is a safe bet, as I am often trying to convince him that we should adopt a dog. Other arguments have included "because they're cute" and "because I want one."

"What's a gutter?" he asked.
"Like, I don't know, maybe where they find you after the mafia kills you," I said.
"I don't think we really have a mafia in Argentina," he said. "It takes too much organization. We only have disorganized crime here."
I laughed and thought about another way to explain the essence of a gutter. "Ok, then, what the water from the street goes into."
"Ah, that sounds like something else you need organization for."

Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that I've been here for 2 years. I like it here, but it can also be frustrating. Argentina, like Colonia, while charming enough, is a little backwards in certain ways. There are some things that I don't think I'll ever fully get used to, like streets that flood and cars that treat you more like targets than obstacles at intersections and inflation rates that make me think of the Weimar Republic (where, so they say, if you went to a bar planning on drinking two glasses of beer, it would behoove you to order them both at the same time because if you waited to order the second one until you'd finished the first one, the price would have already gone up).

Some things, though, have become routine, like going back to Uruguay, over and over and over again. How many times, I wonder, does one have to renew her "temporary" status in a place before she becomes permanent?