The ride into Carneval, day 5

Deputy Dawg Breakin´the Rollin´Rules

Monday, 19 February, bike ride: 11:30am-8:30pm

There was no carneval in Montevideo, but in Piriapolis, 125 km away, carneval was everywhere. The entire population of Uruguay seemed to be out, partying in their bikinis and speedos, tanning themselves golden on the shore of the Rio de Plata, which looks like the ocean after a day of heavy rain: flat and swollen and gray. It is immense and moves like the sea, but it is a river. That difference matters not a bit to the Uruguayans who have come here to this beach town to celebrate this holiday week.

We ride into town, feeling overdressed and sticky among the half-naked and the thonged, the tanned and the burnt. They swarm around us and make room for us as we search for our hotel along the strip crowded with white pousadas and hotels with striped awnings... Piriapolis feels like Vegas, but without the casinos, and with the rolling river as a backdrop. Everyone has come to be near or in the water. And what water it is. It laps up against the shore, then surges back and returns again. It looks like the ocean that I've always known.

I am exhausted and hungry; I wish not so much to rest, but to simply stop moving. Deputy Dawg is ahead, pushing on, his stores of energy seemingly undepleted. The banana and handful of almonds I had for a snack a hundred hours ago seems to have done me no good. My tummy is as empty as a cave. Where is this damn hotel?

After 20 min. of biking and searching, we find it and we dismount (thank goodness!) and wheel our bikes and think to lean them against the post in front of Hotel Atlantico and lock them up while we register. This idea offends this woman who has come from nowhere and is shouting at us and is thrusting her hands in the air, scowling all the while. Her gestures are so violent that I become convinced that I have run over her cat or some little animal that she loves. I check our bike tires. No house pet there. There are a handful of people sitting against the wall of the hotel, watching us as the woman shouts and scowls. Finally, a good Samaritan translates: you musn't put your bikes there. He sounds like the well-heeled, gentle portenos that we met as we travelled through Buenos Aires, kind and warm, and his eyes suggest that he might be as well.

Lo siento, I say to the woman when we return from locking up our bikes a safe distance away from the hotel. Lo siento. But the woman's shakes her head, her face a tight mask. She clearly doesn't like us. It turns out that she is also the proprietor of the hotel inn. Ooooh. This does not look good for the rolling dawgies. Undaunted, I tell her we have a reservation for the night. Here, I say, at this hotel. Aqui.

She looks stricken, as if I've just told her she dresses badly and her haircut is a horror.

No, she says, no es possible.

Si, I say, we do. I spell out the last name. She checks the register log, slides her finger down the page, and looks up at us and with pleasure in her eyes, says, no, no. No buckrawt.

It is too much trouble to ask her permission to use her computer to log in to gmail and prove to her that yes, indeed, we have reservations and confirmation, so we say, fine fine, we'll go somewhere else.

But it is carneval in Piriapolis and there are no rooms in the 20 or so hotels in town. We implore, we beg, we beseech the concierges, but we are met with a solid unwaveringly line: no hay un habitaciones.

We are down to the last hotel on the strip and I muster up all the charm I have left, and in my best Spanish, which, you know, sounds like a retarded child playing with food in her mouth, ask if there are any rooms. We have travelled a long way, I explain. They lost our reservation. We're not picky. We'll take a broom closet.

She smiles at me with patience, and starts to tell me no, I can see it in her eyes, but there must be something in my face that moves her, for she checks the register and says, yes, there is a room, but it is not available until 10 pm. Would that be okay?

Si, si, I tell her. I whoop and clap my hands. I tell her she is an angel and that I love her.

She smiles again and shows me the registration and we sign it and return to our bikes and to the noise of the crowds against the dying light of the sky, happy to have found a place across from the riverine sea during the time of carneval.

--Mad Dawg copyright 2007

Nuts and Bolts of the Ride
Roads 3
Scenery 3
Facilities 2
Bathrooms 2
Traffic 3
Difficulty 2

Nuts and Bolts of Piriapolis
Food 3
Shops 2
Cute 2
People 3
Cost 3
Hotel Atlantico: SUX -- managers/owners are worst people we met in all of Uruguay
Hotel Colonial: 3 ($40)

-Deputy Dawg