October 8, 2010
Tacuarembo: A backwater.
The pension I stayed at two blocks from the plaza was run by a sad man yes he never smiled. Whenever I'd be coming or going he would be sat watching TV with a glass of whiskey at his side. He never once spoke or asked me a question about my travel. He was soft and floppy from sitting too much, pink in the face from too much whiskey. I asked him on the second evening 'is there any good restaurants in town' he replied 'no nada, just that one on the corner in the plaza'. That one on the corner without a doubt was pretty awful. The food was eatable just. It was limited till minutes the name for fast food here so it was milanese which is meat, chicken or fish in a batter and fried, pizza and hamburgers. When your order came no matter what you'd ordered it was only a snack. The waiter had little or no etiquette shoving the food on the table in front of you. He put the complementary basket of bread on the table, bread that should have been discarded as it was rock-hard. I wonder how many tables it had been on previously fingered over by countless people.
I did however find diagonally across the plaza a decent place. All places being decent after the last experience. On a corner too it was painted bright yellow on the outside. The inside had a retro sport deco, old football team photos. The 1992 Chilean national team. There were cycle racing photos too. The most prominent being a large picture of a Uruguayan rider on the start-line astride a retro looking machine, the local dairy company sponsor across the front of his jersey and his coach in tracksuit with eighties haircut along side. This place was ran by a cheerful husband and wife team. The only down side was that they would have the TV always on an Argentinean celebrity channel. Famous personalities well past forty still trying to look twentyfive.
Most of the two days in Tacuarembo was spent in an Internet cafe, the wifi availability limited to one network which only worked in short intervals. Since buying a Notebook I've become accustomed to using its keyboard which has a nice firm feel to it. The keyboards in Internet cafes however can be quite elderly and don't have much feel the most usual consequence being when you go back over the text many letters are missing. I found for example, drnk instead of drink or he instead of The. And of coarse there is not the ambiance of sitting in a nice hostel or cafe. There's always the kids playing games on the next terminal or the guy with the mega-phone voice talking on Skype, so sometimes you cannot hear yourself think.
Yet again these couple of days off the bike by lucky co-instance were rainy. Yesterday, Thursday there were heavy showers all afternoon and this morning it looked as if it would be yet another wet day but little by little the cloud broke up with fluffy white cloud and sunshine by noon which was the time I set off after a few last minute errands. I'd one last look around the plaza and a group of locals saw the bike then me and began chatting to me the usual conversation ensued about how far I'd cycled. One guy came along scrutinising the downtube said 'Gary Fisher, is a really good brand' he told me he's a cyclist too but owns a mountainbike. 'but this is a mountainbike' I said 'only with bigger wheels'.
The road out of town was easy as it was well signed. My route was Department road 31 to Salto. It was already lunchtime but I couldn't stop as there were too many houses until 12km outside the city where I found a peaceful place for a picnic. The road onward was narrow having little traffic, quite rough and patchy in places, meandering past laneways to farmsteads before climbing up to rough pasture moorland with a view far and wide.
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This afternoon I saw a gaucho herding cattle along the road with a fair western looking woman on another horse. Seems they do estancia (cattle and or sheep farm) tourism here too I thought. I's right as farther on by a lane to a farmstead five westerners with backpacks were sat on the grass waiting for a bus. As I don't often see many other travelers I stopped to talk briefly. They were Canadian, US and Dutch. Tim and his girlfriend Kate from New York spoke most the others just making short comments. They had stayed on the estancia three nights during the day not just horse-riding but getting involved in the farmwork rounding cattle up and worm drenching against parasites.
It is now early October the seasonal equivalent of April here in the Southern hemisphere and I've previously mentioned the days are getting longer but what I didn't know was that the time had changed last weekend until Tim saw my watch and seeing it was an hour slow he pointed it out to me. But does it really matter that much at the moment? I get up shortly after sunrise and find a place to camp before sunset. The only time the watch is useful is in town where you live by others opening and closing times.
This evening as the sun began to get low in the sky the camping possibilities were not great. The road crossed treeless rough and rocky pasture with fences on either side keeping in cattle and sheep. There was almost no traffic on the road so I could've camped unshielded on the grass verge. Though eventually I came upon a clump of low scrub which perfectly shields the tent.
Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 3,600 km (2,236 miles)
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