Part 32 Closure, Apr, May 18

Part 32 Closure

Our day at Iguazu Falls had been a treat. The display of raw power and the sheer number of falls, 229 is incredible. It was good to see the care that had been taken to keep the daily thousands of visitors’ feet from destroying the ecosystem. We had walked over 10 Km on the raised trails that day without disturbing a blade of grass. The next morning, we packed things up and I backed the bikes down the path and out the skinny gate to the street. It was warm as we began riding south, down highway 12.

Three days of riding and free camping brought us to the Uruguayan border. The last night in Argentina was spent in a large private campground on a huge lake near Bela Union. We paid about $8. The attendant at the on-site store/fast food joint asked if we wanted something when we registered. She wanted to close things up. It was low season. It felt a little unusual being the only guests in the huge park.

We took a morning walk through the park before riding 150 Km to the border with Uruguay. The crossing was easy and took about 20 minutes. Once more there was no line up and we had to see only one person to do all our business. Central American border crossings had taken three and sometimes four hours. Border crossing horror stories we had heard included tales of days long waits, fines and vehicle seizures when things weren’t in order.

The culture of the car has not taken over rural Uruguay

Highway 26 took us across the country near its top. The road began well then deteriorated; soon we found ourselves dodging car-sized potholes. It felt like Honduras again as we avoided sharp edged moto eaters. Eventually, continuous sections of good gravel became more and more common. I detected Isa’s nervousness through the intercom but she didn’t complain once during the 100 km of rough stuff.

Fun bridge to ride

Our first night in Uruguay was spent at a municipal campground in the town of Tacuarembo. It was free but you had to register. The park was gorgeous and boasted clean washrooms with showers, an Olympic sized swimming pool and a variety of sports courts. There was a sign in the washroom informing users that the water is good for drinking. The sign finished with the declaration, “Uruguay, un pais con agua potable”. We chatted jovially with the man in the administration office. He too told us about the potable water saying in Spanish, “We are poor but we are modern”. The Sunday crowd pulled out after dark and we had a peaceful night.

The municipal campground in Melo wasn’t nice so we carried on to a town called, Treinta y Tres. We rolled over a carpet of pastoral landscapes all day. Uruguay is peaceful. Argentinians describe its people as, “tranquilo”. The park administrator had described his compatriots as, “poor but modern”. Gasoline is about $3 per liter; Supermarket and durable goods prices are the same as in Canada. Imported manufactured goods were incredibly expensive.

A majority of Uruguayans have not adopted the culture of the car. Architecture and municipal design and structures do not accommodate automobiles. Main streets have store fronts by the curb and a density of services that favours the pedestrian. There is not a parking lot in sight. Houses are not accompanied by a garage or even a driveway. Most farms are conspicuous to our eyes by the absence of a pickup truck or a car of any kind.

Parking where there is not infrastructure for automobiles

How do people with modest incomes live with such high prices? The answer is simple, they buy local products. They shop on market days and don’t patronize the few supermarkets that exist. They build their own houses. Squatters avoid paying for land and have rights that make them difficult to evict. Tiny motorcycles are common. Gasoline is imported and so are cars. Most relevant to us, Uruguayans that do drive do it sensibly and they often follow the rules. This is a first for us in Latin America.

The treehouse at Buena Onda

We rode to Punta Del Este on the advice of local people. We wanted a beach town to kick back in for a while and the road to this one was said to be the best. It was low season. Most things were closed. We got “third time lucky”, arriving at our third-choice campground, Buena Onda.

Breakfast in the tree-house kitchen

We surprised the owner, Laura by our arrival. She hadn’t seen a guest in a few weeks. The dogs barked and growled noisily. Did they resent the idea of having to share Laura and their home with strangers again or were they just being good guard dogs? Laura welcomed us immediately to her little place. Third choice turned out to be a good choice. Tranquil, except for the overprotective dogs, Buena Onda allowed us to rest after two weeks of nearly constant travel. We really enjoyed our three days there. Fate would later cause us to return to Buena Onda, as a refuge of safety and security.

Resting and reading were punctuated by catch up tasks like laundry, bike maintenance, gear repair and working on the blog. A noisy and drenching electrical storm hit on the second night and our tent leaked. It’s a good tent but it’s not MEC (Mountain Equipment Coop) quality. We miss our MEC tent. We loved the relaxed and eco-friendly atmosphere of Laura’s place, dry composting toilets and all.

Punta Del Diablo lies up the Atlantic coast a couple of hundred kilometers from Punta Del Este. We had booked seven nights in a small cottage that was built on stilts above a sand dune. It was a modern place with all the gadgets, even air conditioning. It was a good price because of the time of year. There was not a gate, not even a fence nor were there bars on the windows. A stroll through town on the first day confirmed that none of its residences had those security features. This relaxed approach to domestic security is rare in Latin America and it made us put our guard down a little. Uruguay is one of only a few category one countries on our itinerary; that is to say, the Canadian Travel Advisory website instructs travelers only to, “exercise normal security precautions” while visiting it. Uruguay earns the same security rating as Canada.

Punta Del Diablo

At 4 o’clock on the morning of our second night in Punta Del Diablo the devil had his way and we were visited by two thieves. The neighbor across the street saw them. He shouted, scaring them off. Isabelle looked through a window and saw one thief running far up the road, away from the house.

One burglar had climbed up to the second floor of the house. He had opened and leaned through the kitchen window. Silently, he had removed and dropped the kettle and some dishes onto the sand, one floor below. Once he had removed the obstacles and eliminated the danger of sending something clanging to the floor he had turned his attention to grabbing valuable looking things and dropping them silently onto the sand below.  His partner played the role of look-out. The two of them scattered when the neighbor began to shout.

The police arrived quickly and the neighbor returned several things he had found on the sand below the kitchen window. Either the robbers had doubted the value of the objects and chose to leave them or they fled in a panic, unable to pick them up. Ultimately, we lost nothing. Our “stuff” has little street value, a conscious decision during trip planning, but has much value to us. We use everything all the time and numerous items have multiple uses.

We drank tea and tried to settle down, eventually returning to bed. Sleep came to neither of us as every click or rustle of the wind set off alarms in our minds. Thoughts of violent home invasion struck us and we realized we had been lucky. Things could have been much worse. We knew we couldn’t stay another night.

In the morning, our host agreed to refund us for the remaining five nights. She looked extremely embarrassed that such a thing had happened in her town and on her property. She understood our need to move on. Internet searching had turned up several possible destinations for us. We set off toward Montevideo.

On the road, we came to agreement about our destination. We would return to a place we knew to be safe, Camping Buena Onda. The dogs barked and growled at first but this changed to wags and licks as they remembered our scent. No one, friend or foe, enters that fenced yard without a loud and mildly threatening challenge. We now understand the home security role of the dog in Latin America.  If we ever felt it, we are no longer annoyed at night-time outbursts from the dogs.

The rest of the month was spent enjoying the pastoral tranquility of Uruguay. We rented a house on a hobby farm just outside Montevideo. It afforded a delightful change of pace. Horses, pheasants, peacocks and chickens paraded past the windows. Only the largest of the three dogs tried to enter the house. His name was Caramelo and he has a strong personality to match his impressive physique. The owners, Martha and Alfredo, had him tied up outside their home, next door to the house we occupied. The proprietors’ philosophy of giving all the animals freedom on the farm had one exception when the guest house was rented. Caramelo’s enthusiasm was reported to include jumping up on people. Isabelle and I made friends with Carmelo and at our request he regained his freedom.

The farmhouse

We filled the weeks easily with tasks and recreation. Several days were spent developing our presentation for the travelers’ meeting in May. The riding jackets and pants got washed. It took three days to properly clean the motos with the intent of minimizing the bacteria, mud, plant and insect material that we might carelessly bring back to North America. The accumulated grime from twelve months of riding and dropping the bikes in every condition imaginable was not easy to remove. Some chain maintenance and a change of rear brake pads finished off the list of jobs. The machines were spotless.

A thorough washing

Daily walks to shop in the village resulted in the “Canadienses” being recognized and greeted. The vendors selling nuts and local cheese at the market knew what we wanted and how much without us having to ask. Small towns are the same everywhere, it seems. News gets around quickly and everyone knows everyone else’s business. Things had been similar during the four weeks of Isabelle’s recovery in the small town of Gobernador Gregores. That Patagonian town was literally in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of kilometers from the next nearest bank or gas station. We discovered through conversations in town that news of Isabelle’s injury, indeed details of our whole travel story had soon become well known to local residents.

Through the kitchen window

"This is My place"

At the farm, feeding and riding the horses was especially pleasurable. Access to the alfalfa pile and to hand fed carrots from the market created jealousies and some back biting in the well ordered little herd of eight. “Vainilla” (pronounced Vaeneedja in an Uruguayan accent) was the boss. Martha had warned us to not get in her way if she became forceful. She pushed past us at the gate more than once to get to the alfalfa pile. In contrast, she was well behaved when I rode her; perfectly trained, she responded without flaw to this inexperienced rider.

Saddling Up

Toto gets a pat

Well Mannered Vainilla

Alfredo had protested in the 1970’s, during the dictatorship. He was thrown in jail but fled Uruguay with Martha when he was released. They lived in France for 38 years before returning to their homeland and buying the farm. We spoke French with them.

Home Cooking on the Farm

The animals, even the birds, began to trust us. The three dogs had been loud and threatening at first. They gave greetings complete with “full-body” wags to us when we rode in on the motos, toward the end of our stay.

Monument to Uruguay's Independence Revolution

We spent a few days in the beach town of Colonia, Uruguay before catching the ferry back to Buenos Aires. It felt great to be back in the vibrancy of that European feeling big city. We were there to do the business of shipping the bikes to Miami but that didn’t stop us from taking several long walks in the familiar place. The energy of the city contrasted sharply with the serenity inside the lodging Isabelle had booked, a Buddhist meditation centre and school.

Lighthouse in Colonia

Atop the Lighthouse

In the Old Town

Old Town Colonia

Colonia, Uruguay

Old Car in New Town

Boat dock under a factory

We finally met Javiar and his wife Sandra at the cargo area of the Aeropuerto Internacional. They are well known in the international motorcycling community and their reputation is solid. They gave up operating a BMW motorcycle dealership in Buenos Aires, preferring to specialize in motorcycle shipping. They were our shipping agents and they made a complicated process seem easy. A full day was occupied by the shipping procedures.

Satisfied that the motos were well looked after we turned our attention to packing. We bought a large cardboard box. It was the maximum size allowed by the airline and it would count as our fourth checked bag. Avianca still allowed two checked bags per traveler.  All our camping and personal gear fit into the box and three large dry bags. The motos could only contain a minimum of gasoline and moto related items like riding gear, tools and spare parts. The idea is to keep the weight of the shipment to a minimum.

Evita Peron

Juan Domingo Peron

Too soon it was our last day in South America. A long walk through the city centre brought us to the area with all the money changers. Money business done, we picked one of the fabulous restaurants in the area for a final feast of Argentinian beef, steak to be precise. We were not disappointed and the long walk back to the Buddhist school helped our digestion.

Weighing the moto

It was with mixed feelings that we packed and prepared for a quick 4:30 am getaway to the airport. The business of the past few days had occupied us and kept us from thinking too much about leaving. After little sleep the 4 o’clock alarm roused us. Thus, began our 25-hour journey to Miami, to another world.

Preparing for Shipping

To the X-Ray Machine

Shipping the bikes and ourselves to Miami then riding north was cheaper compared with landing in Montreal. This route had the added benefit of giving us time to readjust. Culture shock was inevitable. Vastly foreign places and people had become normalized within us. Twelve months of highs, lows and continuous adventure were about to come to a crashing halt. On the bright side, we looked forward with anxious excitement to being reunited with our children and families. We even missed the dog!

View from the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina

What have we learned? We have seen and experienced countless new ecosystems. There was a beauty in each one. Harsh and extreme conditions were often met with human adaptability. We saw flood and animal-proof houses built on stilts in the coastal jungles of Ecuador. We hiked past grass roofed, rubble walled houses in Peru. They were among the hand-worked terraced slopes above 4500 meters elevation. Generations of Quechuan families grew “papas hielado”, or frozen potatoes on the frigid slopes. Too high for horses or llamas, alpacas are the only livestock raised for protein. We saw the terribly poor “sand people” of the cool, rainless coastal desert along the Pacific coast. They sheltered from the biting, humid wind behind the woven reed walls of their houses.

Music is inescapably present. Humans need it; it takes many forms. Instruments in Central and South America are made from all manner of local materials, including turtle shell guitars. Music reflects and even helps to shape local culture. Whether it is to the simple xylophone melodies of Guatemala or to the complex rhythms of tango in steamy Buenos Aires, people dance. They dance at weddings and at celebrations for the dead. They dance for fun and to tell stories. They dance in the streets.

Our motorcycles forced us to participate in, rather than to simply observe, the ecosystems and cultures we encountered. They broke the ice and led to conversations wherever we went. The motos make us vulnerable and visible, easy to approach. Curious people felt comfortable enough to come up and ask questions, interested in our story. One person often led to more, sometimes food or mate appeared and we all shared. We met many people and came to know a few. We made friends.

We heard indigenous languages in remote places. We learned to understand dialects and accents within the Spanish language that sounded equally foreign to us. We’re especially glad we put effort into learning Spanish. Cultural connection is important to us and would not have been possible without language skills.

We learned that adversity can lead to kindness and friendship. Adversity also taught us to persevere. Faced with no option Isabelle rode 100 Km to the nearest town and hospital with a broken ankle. A shattered collarbone simply had to be put up with during six days of clinic hopping and airline travel before being seen by a surgeon. If the wind blows you into the ditch you pick up the bike and try again.

Reaffirmed is our belief that people are fundamentally good. Neighboring cultures often fear each other but travelers can see through to the truth. People really are similar wherever one may go. They love their families and they love food. They walk their kids to school. They proudly watch them play and perform. They honour and remember their dead, they search for meaning. They try to make a living and to find some joy. They laugh and cry and they love football. It’s been a great trip, we will never be the same.