Oooorooogway….!!!

The ferry docked in Colonia at about 12.30 am, but Uruguay was an hour ahead of Argentina, so we lost another hour of daylight… I was told that Colonia is a beautiful town and well worth spending time in, but “time” was a commodity that I had precious little of…

Safely into Uruguay and no inconveniences to report as yet...!!

As I was leaving the ferry, I met the biker on the Triumph Tiger 800, registered in Guatemala… I immediately saw that he was not from Guatemala, and that was why I never got to meet him on the ferry…!!

I had been looking for a swarthy Latin American, not a white as driven snow European…!!

Roger Arnold was a New Zealander, who had bought a new bike in Central America, after the Suzuki V-strom he was riding was smashed beyond repair in an accident…

His left knee was also very badly damaged in the same accident, which saw him flying back to New Zealand for a year to recuperate…

He and his wife had been on an “Alaska to Ushuaia” ride, but she returned to New Zealand when they reached Mexico… Roger went on alone and had been on the road for a year already…

He wanted to see Rio de Janeiro before riding back to Buenos Aires and flying the bike home…

After a short conversation wherein I guess we were both summing each other up, we agreed to ride together until Paraguay before he went south and I went west across Argentina…

The customs official filled in all the necessary documentation for us, and wished us a pleasant stay in Uruguay… We were allowed to stay in the country for a mere 365 days, according to the documentation…!!

We would need only two of those days…

We bombed down the Rutas al Este, Atlantic bound...!!

We agreed to make a dash for Punta del Este, which lay over 300 km to the east on the Atlantic coast…

The first thing that struck me about Uruguay, was how neat and tidy it was… There was hardly any sign of litter and the streets were clean and well sign-posted…

Once out on the highway, we made good time to Montevideo, the capital city… This despite the speed limit being only 90 km/h and in some places much slower…

When I questioned Roger about the speed he thought we should ride at to avoid prosecution, he replied with a phrase that we now use every day…

“We’re exempt…!!”

I had to laugh at this, and every time we rode up a one-way street or parked where we should be, we would look at each other and shout, “We’re exempt…!!”

Uruguay was all countryside… The smell of crops and freshly baled hay was a change from the dry and dusty smells of Southern Argentina, where I had made my last long rides…

And speaking of long rides, this was the first decent outing on the Big Fella since the 27th of January…!! It took a bit of time to get comfortable in the saddle again after almost a month…!! I also had to contend with a bike that felt very different to the one I had ridden into B.A. on…!!

The shock had been set up to carry more weight, and the handling was a lot lighter if anything…!! With his tail up, the Big Fella took off down the highway to Punta del Este, Roger on his Triumph in close pursuit…

Much of the road to Montevideo from Colonia, is line with these huge Date Palms...

Roger Arnold on his Triumph Tiger 800 XC...

Our riding styles are similar, and we can both turn on the gas when we want to… We are also happy to tootle along at the recommended speed limits when we feel the need… Which isn’t very often…!!

We coasted into Montevideo which I thought was strangely deserted, until I realised that it was late Saturday afternoon…!! We rode all along the many kilometres of beach front, which was fat prettier than keeping to the main highway…

This was the first modern building we saw in Uruguay... Entry to Montevideo..

Cruising along the beachfront in Montevideo... Plenty of beaches, but not many people...!!

Although there were many hotels along the seashore in the capital, we decided to keep going and went back onto the highway to make the final run to Punta del Este…

I ran out of fuel just as we reached the signpost welcoming us to the city…!! I explained my penchant for riding until the tank was practically empty to Roger, which had him shaking his head…!! His bike has a smaller tank than mine and he has to stop and refuel more often than I do… He has never run out of fuel, and despite my urging him to do so, he always fills up before he reaches the bikes outer range… This despite carrying 8 extra litres of fuel with him…!!

Beachfront apartments, Punta del Este...

While I was emptying fuel into the tank, I looked ahead down along the stretch of coast that we could see, and said to Roger,

“Can you smell that…?”

What …??” he replied, sniffing the air…

“Money…!!” I said, pointing to all the fancy apartments in the distance…

Punts del Este is the “millionaires playground” of this part of South America… Many wealthy Brazilians and Argentinians have beach homes here, and during the course of the afternoon and the following morning, we would pass huge stately homes, tended by armies of gardeners…

We ventured out to the very point of land that extends out into the Atlantic on the northern side of town, and were buffeted by the wind coming off the Atlantic…

We parked our bikes and went to look for a place to stay...

The Hotel Americana in Punta del Este....

We decided to find a place one street back from the beach where the wind wasn’t so strong,and settled on the Hotel Americana…

Our room was small but comfortable enough and after getting all our gear off the bikes, we ambled about looking for a place to eat…and drink…!!

Roger enjoys an evening beer or two, and before long we were comparing notes on our respective journeys, and getting to know each other better…

Meeting up with Roger had been rather fortuitous from my point of view… He was able to describe the various routes he had taken on his way down the Central and South American continents, and much of where he had been was on my own list of places to visit…

He allayed many of my concerns about riding though Bolivia, by explaining that this particular country was one of his favourites…!! This was the very first time I had heard Bolivia described as anything but, “dangerous, dusty, and a nightmare to ride in”…

The streets of the city were alive with holidaymakers and many European languages floated out of the crowds that passed us as we ate…

We planned our route up the coast for the following day, and set our sights on reaching Pelotas… We had no idea how complicated the crossing into Brazil would be, so figured a ride of about 500 km was the best we could hope for…

With no internet available at the hotel, we slipped into dreamland relatively early…

©GBWT 2012