Out of Uruguay and into Brazil…

We’re moving swiftly along…!!

Covered almost 500 km today, but spent much of the time drinking coffee, and enjoying the scenery and the ride…!!

Here are the photos that tell most of the story…

One night in Punta del Este was noy really enough to get the feel of the place, but we wanted to get as far into Brazil as we could, and left the Americana hotel shortly after breakfast...

But before we left, we rode down to the beach to see the "Hand"...!! A large set of concrete fingers on the main swimming beach...

Told you they were "large"...!!

Roger and his Trusty Triumph...!! After just a day's riding together, we have settled into a good rythum, taking turns to "lead the charge"...!!

When city engineers having nothing better to do, they come up with novel bridge designs like this one, just north of Punta del Este... We rode over it twice to see if we could "get some air under the bikes", which we did...!!

False advertising...?? This is a poster for a Bali Holiday I came across on the outskirts of town... Now what are the chances of finding a beautiful, blonde woman amongst the rice paddies in Bali...?? A million to one...?? Well near impossible you may think...!!

A few kilometres north of town, we stopeed at a place suggested to me by Caio Fonseca, the artisit I met in Parrot Cay a few weeks before... Jose Ignacio is an upmarket sea-side town that straddles the main road leading to Brazil...

The first landmark we saw was the Faro, or lighthouse, and we made a beeline there to have a few photos taken...

La Huella is a restaurant that belongs to Martin Pitaluga, a cousin of Caio's...

After finding the home of Martin Pitaluga, and chatting to his son for a while, we made our way down to the beachfront to the La Huella restaurant…

Martin was away in New York, and the best we could do was pass on Caio’s best wishes to his family, and the manager of the restaurant…

We then sat out on the patio, which is being threatened by the sand blown up from the beach, and seems to keep the staff busy with shovels and buckets, to cart the sand off the steps and walkways…

The restaurant is well frequented by both locals and tourists, and even though it was still early, many of the tables were taken up by coffee-sipping patrons… We joined them and sat there for almost an hour…!!

We sat drinking coffe at Caio's cousin's restaurant on the beach... It was a great place to stop, and we regreted not riding further the previous night and finding a place to stay here in this wonderful place...

Martin;s well stocked bar must draw a crowd, judging by the many seats available at it...!!

View of the restaurant from the beach... The wind was blowing and the overcast sky meant very few people had ventured out onto the beach...

Trying to keep abreast of exchange rates when you cross borders as frequently as I do is not easy... I had a wallet full of Uruguayan money and we were crossing into Brazil in a few hours time...!!

The free service advertised proved to be true for a change, but we looked on at the small barges with trepidation...

Finally, we dragged ourselves off the comfortable chairs we had almost become attached to and got back on our bikes to head for the Brazilian border…

We decided to follow the little used coastal road and barely a few kilometrs north of Jose Ignacio, we came to the end of the tarred road, and began an 70 kilometre stretch of ripio, something I had not planned to ride on for a few weeks yet…!!

But first we had to cross the lagoon at Garzon…

The office of the barge service made us wonder just how professional an outfit we were entrusting our valuable bikes to...!!

Waiting for the barge to cross the lagoon... This was as rustic as any I had ever seen...

This little skiff with it's 25 hp motor, pushes the barge from one bank to the other...!!

The gravel road was not at all difficult to ride on, but was littered with a few decent sized potholes which weren’t always possible to avoid… I hit one of these at about 90 km/h when I was trying to catch up to Roger to get him on video…

My new Canon D10 camera flew out of my tank bag with the jolt, and hit ground beside me, and then went spinning off into the bush on the side of the road…

I was pretty sure that it had shattered on impact, but was pleasantly surprised to find that only the blue cover had broken off…!! When Roger came back to see what had happened to me, I took the photo below, and was more than relieved to discover that everything still worked perfectly…!! Viva Canon D10…!!

Despite hitting the dirt at 90 km/h, my camera still worked...!! Roger was as amazed as I was...!!

An hour later we arrived at the frontier town of Chuy, checked out of Uruguay, then rode into the town that sits in no-man’s land, and looked for a place to have lunch…

This was the place where a strange mixture of Spanish and Portuguese was spoken... We had no idea what we had ordered until it arrived...

It was big... Very big, and getting it finished was a task that took almost an hour...!!

The sight of this woman about to take off with her young daughter sitting on the tank, without a helmet, had us shaking our heads in disbelief...!!

It was early afternoon before we legged it to the Brazilian border post on the far side of town… But before we got there, we went looking for an I-Pod to replace the one I had lost… This whole town is a Duty-Free Zone, and the dozens of shops were crowded with Brazilians and Uruguayans, all bargain hunting…

Not finding the old I-Pod Classic that I was looking for, we rode out of town and spent about half an hour waiting for the Brazilian Custom’s officials to fill out the forms for our bikes…

Immigration formalities took only five minutes…!!

By now we had to take a long hard look at our maps to see just how far we could expect to get…

We chose to follow the route that runs alongside the ocean for 200 km, and then head inland and north to Pelotas…

Getting to Porto Alegre was out of the question now, as we had dallied too long over our mid-morning coffees, and our huge lunch in Chuy…!!

Our first indication of exactly how far we still had to ride, and it was after 4.00 pm...!!

The Capybara, some of them the size of sheep...!!

We rode through farmland all the way to Pelotas, and once we turned away from the coast, alongside a wide canal that ran parallel to the highway…

It was on the banks of this canal, which was also a designated wildlife sanctuary, we began to see Capybara’s, the world’s largest rodents… They swam across the canal, and then stood in the shallow waters on the banks, chewing on aquatic vegetation…

Family groups also basked out of the water, lying in the waning sunshine… We passed many carcasses of these animals, that had been knocked down by passing cars…

There were also a number of large Cayman’s, the South American Crocodile, lying on the banks, and in full view of the Capybara’s…

Roger and I stopped often to try and get a clear picture of these strange animals, but they were at least a hundred yards away from us, and a little skittish… When we stopped, they would move off into the undergrowth, but while we were moving, they hung about but watched us closely…

They are as much at home in the water as out, and are a favourite prey of the Jaguar and the Anaconda...

We spent a good deal of time searching for a hotel once we arrived in Pelotas… The sun was touching the horizon before we found a half decent place in a very grubby part of town…

Colonial architecture lines almost every street in the city....

After getting our gear stashed away, we went off in search of an ATM to get some Brazilian Reais into our wallets, and then sat down across the road from the hotel and ate a plate-load of spaghetti each…

We were surprised by the fact that despite all the self-inflicted delays, we still managed to cover almost 500 km… The roads we had ridden on were for the most part in very good condition, and we had been able to maintain speeds in excess of 100 km/h for most of the time, despite the speed limits here being much lower than that…

Brazil has made an appearance on the pannier...!!

Tomorrow we hope to reach Florianapolis, 700 km up the coast… Then we will pretend it is Sunday, and take a rest…!!

©GBWT 2012