October 22, 2010
The leaving drink.
Good red wine many will agree is a wonderful drink and I for one don't have any trouble finishing off a whole bottle without falling over. So I was last night, my last in Uruguay, having a celebration by myself as Is the only person on the camping site. In a function room nearby a birthday party was going on. I know as at one stage the music and the chatter was interrupted by a sung 'cumple anos, feliz' happy birthday in Spanish. The person whom the party was for most have been my age as all night the music was eighties hits which brought back happy memories of my youth. I was patching an inner-tube while drinking my wine and soon was quite merry too singing openly a song from two decades earlier.
I did however while being carried away forget the pasta water that when I returned from patching the inner-tube had boiled over down into the alcohol stove so this morning it took forever to boil eggs as the flame was so weak because there was so much water inside the stove.
In Artigas Portuguese is often heard and in the morning you see many people commuting to work across the bridge a couple of blocks from the city centre from the smaller town Quaria on the Brazilian side of the frontier. In fact many here speak a combination of Portuguese and Spanish. Such was it with one of the guys working here on the camping site. Most of the time I couldn't make out a word he was saying. And he didn't make things easy as when I put my hands up and said, 'no entende' he'd repeat what he said in the same rapid mumbling style with his lips firmly closed. This is only important as I mislaid my adapter for electrical appliances and could I ask him did he see it?
There was no fuss crossing the border. Locals passing through aren't stopped so there wasn't a queue. One of the policemen had a big smile as he held a big mate cup oozing with the smell of the green yerba plant soaked in hot water. The official sat at the desk fingered through my passport, had difficulty seeing my entered stamp, barked 'when did you enter Uruguay'. 'Three weeks ago' I replied. 'What date exactly' he demanded, as he still couldn't find the stamp. That day, I remember, when I entered Uruguay the guy at the border check point was being careless in not pressing the stamp in the ink beforehand and I know when I looked at it that day it was indeed very faint but didn't think anything more about it until now. 'Eh, don't remember' I sounding stupid. The smiling policeman with the mate pointed to a calender on the wall saying 'today is the 22th'. 'So it is and it'll be three weeks on Monday' So I count back one week ago was the 15th, then the 8th and that was Friday and Monday of that week was the 4th. 'The fourth' I say relieved. The federal police handle migrations on the Brazilian side and there a woman quickly filled out a few details from my passport on a slip of paper then stamped my passport and Is gone.
I cycled away from the border town Quaria. The countryside was pale green cattle pasture with a yellow blooming weed everywhere. The only interesting feature were low rocky outcropped hills ahead but these were soon past. It was quite humid and I's beginning to regret not having bough a bottle of coke before leaving town, but I need not have worried as this was Brazil and not Uruguay. Soon there was a house and a kiosk were I could buy a cool bottle of coke. There was one other customer there, a man nearing seventy with a good head of white hair swept back, pink complexion and clear blue eyes. He was smartly dressed in baggy trousers a white shirt and wore a flowery neckerchief. He was a gentleman of German descent. He asked me where Is cycling from. I could understand his Portuguese as he spoke slowly and plainly. I went on to tell him Is cycling to Iguazu falls. He breathe deeply and expressed astonishment and disbelieve. He'd never heard of anything so incredible before and thought I's amazing.
The road changed from secondary to national road, BR290, after a junction with almost constant passing cattle trucks and car transporters loaded with Japanese cars nearing the end of a transcontinental journey from the Pacific. The shoulder luckily was wide but poorly surfaced with my wheel crunching on big awkward chips.
Approaching four there was a service station with a cafeteria where I only notice how humid it was when I bough a coke and took a seat. The sweat ran down my forehead into my eyes. I used serviette after serviette drying my face each time it quickly became a dirty wet tissue. An old car pulled up outside. The driver got out. At first I thought he's wearing an ankle length skirt but when he stepped inside I saw that he wore bombaches, the baggy trousers worn by the gauchos. He wore cowboy boots, a wide belt round his waist and a smart shirt. He was thickly built about sixty and revealed a bald head when he removed a Beret and took a seat. There was another gaucho sat at the counter slurring over his words while the boy and the woman behind the counter looking on smiled. He then got up and staggered across the room his eyes rolling around in his head, almost crashing into a table as he made it to the door. Out he went falling flat on his face. The woman and boy were now in hysterics laughing as they looked out the window. There was no harm done as he picked himself up and sat on the step, out of it.
Today's ride: 116 km (72 miles)
Total: 4,187 km (2,600 miles)
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