Mar 2007

Route Map

Town Ratings
Each town is rated for various categories on a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being best.

Ride Ratings
Each ride is rated for various categories on a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being best.

More details on each category and what it means when I have time.

Trip Summary

Of the 6 major cycling rides we have completed to date, Uruguay proved to be the best of them, mainly because the people of Uruguay are so friendly. We would encourage any cyclists to replicate the route we show here. More summary details to come.

A ruminant, ruminating quietly as the Rollin´Dawgies roll past

Colonia del Sacremento
Saturday, 17 Feb. 2007. Colonia del Sacramento to Colonia Suiza; 50 km, 11-2:30pm

We had never been to Uruguay, had never met someone from Uruguay, and so had no expectations, but the country smelled to us like Wisconsin.

As soon as we lit for the road and rolled out of Colonia del Sacramento, it was there: The distinctive, unmistakable scent of manure.

There were cows and pastures and grain silos. There were fields of corn and potatoes and bales of hay, rolled tight as giant cigars. If the road signs weren´t in Uruguayan, we would´ve bet big money that we had returned to cheddar cheese country, U.S.A. But we were in Uruguay, for in the pastures were palm trees shading the drowsy cows, ruminating quietly in the heat, and the road signs for cheese were for queso and queseria, and everyone greeted us on the first day of the bike ride through the country with a "hola" and a "como esta?" and not with a "hey there, hoser..."


Deputy Dawg hangin´with a Pilsen in Colonia del Sacremento

Colonia del Sacramento is a sleepy town of rosy adobe structures and, as much as we could tell during the three days we were there, untouched by kitsch. Stone pathways wound through the town's center and there were crafts and things made by hand and not in China. We were enchanted and watched the sun set into the water as we drank cheap (but good) Uruguayan wine and hoped that there would be more such surprising delights in the days ahead.

Highlights: meeting Bob & Terri, fellow travellers and adventurers from Colorado; El Drugstore cafe for its strong espressos and live music. The morning before the bike ride, two musicians, one on an acoustic guitar and the other on an accordian, played strains of a haunting music that seemed from another place and time... so lovely.

-- Mad Dawg copyright 2007

Nuts and Bolts for Colonia de Sacremento
Food 4
Shops 4
Cute 4
People 4
Cost 4
Hostel: 4 ($26)
Hostel:La Casa de Teresa
Address: Domingo Baqué 571 ,Colonia del Sacramento ., Uruguay
Telephone: 00598-52-21856
Email: ter@adinet.com.uy
Website: http://www.hb-247.com/aff/hostelz/uruguay/colonia-del-sacramento/10353/
Located in the heart of the peaceful city of Colonia del Sacramento,
Hostel is only ten blocks from the city's Main Avenue.

Nuts and Bolts for the ride
Ride 60km to Colonia Suiza
Roads 2
Scenery 3
Facilities 1
Bathrooms 1
Traffic 3
Difficulty 2

Nuts and Bolts for Colonia de Suiza
Food 2
Shops 1
Cute 1
People 4
Cost 3
Hotel Prado: 2 ($26)

Mad Dawg Ready to Roll out of Montevideo

Sunday, 18 Feb. Colonia Suiza to Montevideo;125 km, 11-8pm.

We started late in the day, getting stocked up on provisions: water and fruit and snacks before we finally made it out to Ruta 1, so we knew we had our work cut out for us to try to make it to Montevideo before sunset. Few things are more frustrating and stressful than getting into a strange new city in the dark. The ride itself was not hard -- a few climbs, nothing major -- it was simply long. We arrived in Montevideo at 8 pm, with an hour of daylight left. Ruta 1 unrolled along the river and we followed it into the capital's port and watched the sun fall into it as the sky burned like a match, and watched it go out as night came.

We had no idea where our hostel was -- we only knew that it was on Calle San Jose and that was nowhere near the port. We asked a taxi driver and he gestured and spoke and gestured some more. He searched our faces and, seeing uncomprehension, raised his hand and flicked it in a gesture that seemed to indicate, follow me. So we did. We biked right behind him and he led us left and right and deep into the heart of the city. We were a curious caravan. After 15 minutes, he slowed to a stop on the side of a major thoroughfare. Here, he seemed to be saying, cashay sahn hosay. We looked up and miraculously, there it was, the street. We thanked him. We were effusive. We were floored. And he, this most generous and patient man, our patron saint, laughed and nodded, then wished us well, buen viaje, and he turned around the corner and was gone.

His name was Marcelo, and he would epitomize the heart of all the Uruguayans that we would meet in the 8 days that we were there: friendly, warm, exceedingly, breathtakingly kind.

-- Mad Dawg copyright 2007

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

Nuts and Bolts of Montevideo
Food 3
Shops ?
Cute 2
People 4
Cost 3
Red Hostel: 3 ($34)
Memorable: Exceptional food at Vaca de Asar (sp?) on San Jose, 5 blocks west of Red Hostel

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

Mad Dawg Outside Punta Del Este

Piriapolis to Punta del Este; bike ride: 11:30 am - 4pm

We miss our son.

I think of him as I ride. It is supposed to be only be 40 km to Punta del Este, but today the kilometers seem twice that long. Some days the miles are relative; how long or hard a ride is depends on the mood, the people we meet, the kinds of winds that blow our way. Punta del Este juts out like an elbow and is where the sea begins in Uruguay; everything south of this point is a river. Despite this noteworthy distinction, I am unimpressed. I miss our son and hope he is well and happy. We haven't had a chance to talk to him since we left the States. Fall semester begins soon at the univ. of Auckland, where he is in his second year, and so my thoughts are full of him as we ride, Rand ahead of me... 20 km, 30 km, onward and eastward to the glittering sea. I have had enough of beauty. I want to be at our hotel, showered and clean, my hair unsnarled and free from the helmet.

At 35 kilometers, with the sea on on our right and as we inch along, fatigued and hot, some kid, passing by in a red car, hurls a water balloon at Deputy Dawg and it smacks his shoulder and explodes as it hits the ground and splashes him across the legs. A direct hit! It startles us both and before I have a chance to think about safety or being prudent, I am filled with vengeance, and I take off after the little assassins, forgetting how tired I was just moments before. There is only the chase.

I keep my eyes fixed on the red car and watch it weave through traffic, my legs pedalling furiously to keep up. I don't even know what I'll say to the hooligans, but I am thinking of something cutting and sharp, something that will make them think twice about attacking defenseless cyclists -- something like, you think that's funny! No, it's not, you punk! but in my hopeless Spanish of confused pronouns, I'm afraid it will come out: you think I'm funny? I'm not. I'm a punk!

I am gaining ground, but the red car runs a red light, then another, and after another half kilometer, the red car eludes me for good, and I am on the promenade, breathless from the hard chase and, quite unexpectedly, in the heart of Punta del Este.

The prankster was like the taxi driver we met in Montevideo, but with a water balloon as carrot, and without the good intentions or the kindness. Still, he did make the last part of the ride exciting, if not downright fun.

We resolve to keep our eyes open for assassins toting water balloons on the next ride.

-- Mad Dawg copyright 2007

Update on the water balloon attack:
According to a friend and fellow travel hound, RS: when it´s Carneval time, everyone´s idea of fun is to blast each other with water balloons, especially if the target is a hot chick or hot guy (in the words of RS). RS said Deputy Dawg should consider the attack a twisted compliment. So, he will.

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

Nuts and Bolts of Punta del Este
Food 4
Shops 4
Cute 3
People 4
Cost 4
Hotel Salzburgo $80 (3)
Memorable: Jorge Ferria, 19-yr-old cinematographer student working at Hotel Salzburgo, who pointed us in the right direction of Cabo Polonio and Punta del Diablo. His enthusiasm was infectious, his intelligence ravenous.

Memorable: Excellent fruit stand about 5 blocks from Salzburgo

Our Own Personal Sand Truck (all the WWII vehicles were full)

There´s a place called Cabo Polonio, which is along the western coast, that reminds us of Keomoku, Hawai'i, if it had a gypsy, Uruguayan soul. You can only get to the this town via these World War 2 sand vehicles, we were told, and the town itself, when we saw it, looked like it sprang up out of the sand, all these shacks cobbled together with tin and wood and whatever else may have been lying around. I managed to talk this young woman into renting us her shack ( a one-room, one-terlet affair) for the night. We had no assumptions about comfort; we wanted an authentically Uruguayan adventure, rustic and primitive was part and parcel of this experience.

The town was full of wanderers and hippies and groovers of the all things alternative and anti-establishment. But there were surprising and delightful things as well, such as the town´s library, which carried heavy hitters like Roland Barthes, a French philosopher, and a clutch of esoteric writers and poets. And there was a huge lighthouse at the far edge of town -- this, in a place that has no electricity, no running water.

At night, we met Martin, a magazine editor from Buenos Aires, there on vacation. He took us under his wing and we went to a fish house. Pretty awesome dinner. But it was the impromptu music making that cast a spell. The chef and his sous chef/host were musicians and late in the evening, they broke out their bongo drums and started drumming. Some of their friends joined in with their tambourines and sticks, making music with the top of the tables, the floors. It was like watching a unchoreographed, but somehow, incredibly complex dance, with the head drummer determining the tempo, the mood, and his ragtag, but fantastically fluent band, following his lead, as though they were part of this moving river. They had such joy, these music makers. We were spellbound, Deputy Dawg and I. Sooo cool. We did not want to leave; we felt part of the fish house and the people in it, and part of a magical night that could create such a pure music.

We needed to get up at 7 am to catch the sand carrier out of town, so we left the drummers and the gypsies and stumbled home in the rain and over sand dunes and tufts of sea grass to our stone shack, with the clear beam from the lighthouse lighting our way.

-- Mad Dawg copyright 2007

Nuts and Bolts of the Ride
2 Hour bus ride to Castillos (bikes were no problem, cost was about $20, including bike fee)
20km ride to Cabo Polonio
Roads 4
Scenery 3
Facilities 2
Bathrooms 1
Traffic 4
Difficulty 1

Nuts and Bolts of Cabo Polonio
Food 3
Shops 3
Cute 4+
People 4
Cost 3
Rent a shack from someone who lives there $50 (3)
Memorable: The entire place, including the blinking red light restaurant, the shack, the shops, the people, Martin from Buenos Aires, and the ride out there on a WW2 truck over the sand

--Deputy Dawg

There was sand in our derailleurs and in our sprockets. A fine wash of grit coated our bike chains. There were pockets of it in our ears and in our hair and in our pockets. We carried the sand from Cabo Polonio with us as we slogged through rain to Punta del Diablo, which translates to Devil's Point in English. I was feeling devilishly unclean, part of the great unwashed that morning on that ride from Cabo. Miserable. But the rain felt good on my sticky skin and by the time we rode halfway to the Devil, I felt almost human again. Oh what I would have given for a cup of hot strong coffee and a banana right then... or better yet, a papaya...or even better, a cherimoya AND a mango and THREE shots of espresso with just a kiss of cream...

Sometimes food is the only thing that can get you from point to point, and that morning, I dreamt of fruit. I didn't know what food was motivating Deputy Dawg -- probably grapes, perfectly fermented...

We were so tired after our ride to Punta del Diablo that we took the first hotel that we saw, 3 kilometers shy of the point itself. There was no shame in this. Tired is tired.

There will be days of ebullience and fearsome power, when we roll into town at the end of the day, radiant, vibrating energy and health -- I hope there will be such days -- but that day out of sandy Cabo was not such a day. All we had were sand in our pockets and dreams of fruit and a shower and wine. Oh, the simple dreams of rolling dawgies...

--Mad Dawg copyright 2007

Nuts and Bolts of the Ride
60km to Punta del Diablo
Roads 3
Scenery 3
Facilities 2
Bathrooms 2
Traffic 3
Difficulty 2

Nuts and Bolts of Punta del Diablo
Food 2
Shops 3
Cute 4
People 4
Cost 2
Hotel just outside of town (3km), $35 (3)
Memorable: The entire place

4 hour bus to Mondevideo, 22 block ride to Red Hostel -- slick

--Deputy Dawg