ODO: 360,150
It’s a grey morning to match our grey moods. Time to get out of this town. But first, a quick stop for some empanadas, and a lap around the skatepark to look at the graffiti. Our short drive today takes us past a large number of roadkill we cant seem to identify. Uruguay (Oo-rah-gwhy) is a gringo haven, and as we get closer to Montevideo, we are starting to see more signs of this, for example, incredible grocery stores with lots of imported food we haven’t had in ages like…SALSA!!! Once we’re stocked up, we drive in a couple of circles between Laguna Garzon Bridge and Jose Ignacio looking for a spot with a view. We find one, but it smells awful, so we keep looking. In the end, we don’t find a view, but we do end up in a private spot with ocean sounds and a nice sunset.
Today is one of many lasts, our last South America laundry day. We make it to Punta del Este for laundry drop off. Yup, back to laundry drop off. This is a beach town with money. There is a realty office next to the cafe we have breakfast in, and we learn the condo towers lining the beach are million dollar plus condo towers. Our big adventure for the day is a couple of local museums. First up MACA, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Atchugarry. Pablo Atchugarry to be specific. There is a large sculpture garden that we wander, followed by several galleries across three buildings.
Our second stop is the Museo del Mar, aka, the Museum of the Sea. It’s less a museum, and more a hoarders collection of stuff they found from the sea. Also bugs, and antiques. It’s wildly overwhelming, including several whale skeletons, tons of taxidermy sea lions and birds, fish exhibits, and on and on. It has that old stuff smell, you know that smell.
On our way back into town, we swing by the Fingers of the Dessert, which is another large hand sculpture by the artist that made the Hand of the Dessert. We wait our tun and take a lot of fun photos.
After getting our tourist fill, we find a hotel. We’re gross. We get half clean for dinner, a shower, but back into our dirty clothes because everything else is in the wash. We are hopeful about the steakhouse we’ve chosen. The appetizers are incredible. The vegetables, sweet potatoes and sauteed peppers are incredible. The dry aged ribeye is extra incredible, the waiter cuts it for us with a spoon! We grab dessert to go.
One of us is up and out early for a walk along the beach before it gets too hot, and one of us is exhausted and in desperate need of a sleep in. Punta del Este is a very active town, lots of people are out walking and running throughout the day. We move from one hotel to another. There is a half Ironman triathlon in town this weekend driving up hotel prices. While waiting for check-in time of our second hotel, we set up shop in a restaurant to get some work done. We order some food, and watch the small birds try and steal little bits. And then the rain starts. Light and slow at first, building quickly into a serious storm. The wind howls and the rain is severe. For hours. For the rest of the day, well into the evening. It’s still happening when we head out for an early dinner sushi snack, and still later when we pop back out for food tour. Uruguay takes after Argentina, and dinner starts around 8:30pm. Once we have our food assortment, we head back to our new hotel to hide out the storm.
In the morning, over breakfast, we decide we want to be outside of town before the Ironman starts, but still close enough that we can watch part of it. We also have the blahs. Are we burnt out on traveling? Or is Uruguay really boring and we’re having a hard time finding things to see and do? Either way, we are just over everything. For being a country that is comparatively safe and easy to navigate, it is taking maximum effort from us both today. We grump our way over to a “castle”. On the way, the truck makes a horrific metal on metal noise in the rear end. Hang in there buddy! The “castle” is very underwhelming (or we’re lame, could be either), however, there appears to be a LARPing event just getting started. We watch a few groups in full costume and weapons getting their pictures taken.
Next stop, zoo/park space. It’s labeled as a zoo, but is very, very small with mostly local animals and a few big cats thrown in for funsies. The first stop is a giant pond full of nutrias (gross), capybaras, turtles, and birds. So many birds. They have a Zorro de Monte (Bush wolf) which we rename the Corgi Wolf due to its very short legs. It was actively being menaced by at least fifteen vultures. They kept getting closer and closer, surrounding it on the ground and the tree above, until it retreats into its fenced-in pen, for some peace. And no public place is complete without coatis running around. We saw a couple climb into one of the enclosures to eat the animal food. Smart.
We wrap up our day in a beachfront parking lot along the triathlon bike route. A guy comes by to look at the truck, his dog on his shoulders like a parrot, and gives Berne the dog to hold like a parrot too! A handful of other people come by to talk about the truck until the sun goes down. And then we start reminiscing on our grand adventure….
We reminisced a little too hard last night, and now everyone is in rough shape. Our morning is spent laying around, and watching the bike section of the triathlon go by. We make a big move today, a whole 45 minutes down the road. Which feels like a big move, the state that we’re in. Unexpectedly, the campground we make it to is PACKED! It appears to be a European retirement community. Everyone speaks German. We are the youngest by a lot. We’re close enough to the ocean that we can hear the waves, but that doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is making some dinner and going to bed early.
A warm sun is out today, which leads to the discovery that our awning zipper is done. Its broken in several places, and it doesn’t look like we can fix it this time. KoKo manages to half MacGyver, half force it open. Good thing this is the end of the trip and we can wait until the truck is back in the USA to try and fix or replace it. It’s a blueberry pancakes kind of morning. We spend the day around camp, meeting our various neighbors. There is a couple who is just starting their time here. There is also a woman who would like to be starting her time here, but her husband is very sick, so she is only here to renew the temporary import permit for their vehicle. She needs more time to figure out what to do with their vehicle because he will not be back. In the evening, we walk down to the beach, a short three minute walk from the truck, before settling in for dinner and a relax.
Welcome to another lovely morning! We need a little produce to go with our non-perishables, so look up the closest store. It looks like we can take a nice walk down the beach to two small stores in town. When we arrive, both stores are pretty rough, in terms of produce. The first one has a lot of fresh bread though. We do manage to find a few small apples. At least it was a nice walk. The goal is to cook as much as possible, our propane tank needs to be empty to go in the shipping container. We even bake for the first time in months and months, cornbread and brownies!
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