ODO: 360,200
Another lovely morning, another lovely walk along the beach. On today’s outing, among all the fun shells and rocks, we come across a dead turtle washed ashore. Back at camp, we meet some more of our neighbors. There is a German lady who goes for a swim every morning in the ocean. She does this in the German Atlantic as well, so is very used to cold water. The water here is not warm, definitely on the chilly side. We also get to know the new owner of the campground, while he drives us to the grocery store! He’s a very nice German guy that has lived everywhere! Most notably in New Zealand long enough to have a partly German, partly Kiwi accent. We are invited to join the campground happy hour tonight, where we meet many more of our neighbours. Happy hour is literally one hour from 5pm to 6pm, then everyone goes back home to make dinner. A chilly rain that started mid afternoon drives us indoors for the night right after happy hour.
Another lovely morning, with another lovely beach walk. Today’s catch includes several jellyfish, a lot of sea glass, and a ton of intact, palm sized shells. Too bad we cant keep them all. After another big day of relaxing, we attend happy hour again. Properly this time…Last night, we brought our own beers, as is our custom when attending a community party. For Germans, this is actually very rude (oops), so tonight, we arrive empty handed and drink the beer provided. There are fewer English speakers tonight, so we mostly keep to ourselves. After our beer, we make a big beef stew for dinner, thanks to our grocery run yesterday, and cozy in for the night.
It’s an odd feeling, knowing this is the last time you will do something. It’s Friday, and the campground is filling up for the weekend. And we are planning for our exit tomorrow. Obviously the day starts with a beach walk. How else would a day here start? We get a late start, so by the time we come back, every man in the campground has lost their shirt due to the heat. We don’t have much to pack or clean, our house is very tiny, mostly its the food we need to deal with. Customs at the port doesn’t like it if there is non-perishable food, so we empty the pantry.
It’s Friday afternoon, so we check in with the shipping company for next week. They let us know we should be there at 9:30am Monday morning. This is not the plan, and we are not ready for that. We have thoughts and feelings about how this company has communicated important information with us. A phone call gets everything back on track. Now that we’re stressed out, we decide to empty the fridge in the morning, before we leave. Instead, we make some brownies, and our final fresh food dinner, and settle in for our last night in our tiny home in South America. We do nothing to mark the occasion.
After taking a good look at our shipping schedule, and hotel prices, and taking into account how we’re feeling about this particular moment in life, we decide to stay just one more day. Apparently it’s hard to know when the actual last day of something is. First things first, beach walk. Followed by turning on the stove to run the propane down. All of our fuel tanks need to be empty going into the container. Even though our house is small, we manage to find two duffle bags each, of things to fly back with. Two each! And because we planned to be in a hotel tonight, we make a very piecemeal dinner from scavenged non-perishable food. Our actual last night in our tiny house down here, and we still do nothing to mark the occasion.
And just like that, we’re rolling up the awning for the last time, and deflating our bed for the last time, and packing away the tent for the last time. There are a lot of big emotions as we pull away from our last South American campground. There are three stops left on our map before we get to Montevideo, that we use as a distraction. For context, Montevideo is 90 minutes from where we are. Nothing in this country is far. Stop one is a church with interesting architecture. Unfortunately, it’s on private property, so we only see the outside. Stop two is another church, this one a UNESCO World Heritage Site: Cristo Obrero Church. We catch is just before it closes for the day, and spend a few minutes looking around and taking pictures. It is all brick, and very wavy and curvy. Stop three is a house shaped like and eagles head. It’s…odd, but it overlooks a nice beach.
Our distraction is moderately successful. There are still lots of tears, and lots of big feelings. We find a grocery store as we roll into Montevideo, and grab some groceries and sandwiches. Exhausted, we head for our old standby, Ibis. In the parking lot, we mange to clean out the fridge before dragging all of our things, and ourselves up to our room for the night.
Today’s beach walk is along the promenade in Montevideo. Concrete instead of sand under our toes. The cafe next to the hotel has the most delicious breakfast sandwich we’ve had in ages. There’s real bacon in it!! This is the first time we’ve had real bacon down here! Mid afternoon, Berne checks in on the schedule of out boat, since we will be loading the truck in a container in the morning. To our surprise, the boat is delayed, and we will not be loading the truck tomorrow. Sigh. It’s starting to make sense why they told us not to book flights home until after the truck is loaded…
On to plans we can keep, we have a sunset date at the municipal building with an observation deck, that boasts a 360 degree view of the city. The sky does not disappoint, and we take the opportunity to practice our sunset photography. After we drop our cameras off at the hotel, we go for a fancy steak celebration dinner. It’s delicious. We toast our adventure and our future and life in general. Back at the hotel, the broken elevator is working again, kind of…The door has no patience, and squishes KoKo as she tries to board. We will not be taking this elevator again.
How do we start our unplanned free day? You guessed it, walk along the ocean! Because today is a free day, we take full advantage by relaxing a lot. The chaotic nature of getting the truck onto the boat, and the massive lifestyle change we are about to go through are extremely emotionally draining. Add to that the extremely exhausting 23-37 hour flight to get us home that we will book any day now. So rest is the thing we want most. It helps that it starts to rain, and then rain more, and then rain even more. Perfect weather for indoor activities.
Leave a Reply