Welcome to Uruguay...and you really are welcomed!
Taking a road break...flat countryside and bad weather
A typical roadside scene in Uruguay...beautiful trees along most of the roadsHello Uruguay!!!! As we are getting a little tired of the flat, monotonous scenery of eastern Argentina we decided to take a short side-trip into the small country of Uruguay. The border crossing was short and simple (so simple that they forgot to complete the paperwork on our MC´s but more on that later!)
As per our usual practice one of the first things we do when entering a new country in get some local currency (especially when there are no money changers at the border which was the case in Uruguay) and in undertaking this mission is when we learnt our first lesson about Uruguay. The people here are insanely friendly!!!! In the first city we stopped at people swamped us wanting to know everything about us, where we came from the Hondogs etc. I had women wanting to give us perfume etc. and when we left we were literally chased by a woman that just wanted to kiss us and wish us a Bueno Viaje (good voyage)! The guys were just as friendly minus the kisses and perfume!
Our short impression of the countryside: incredably clean with beautiful rows of trees along the roads, all immacuately clean. Huge, obviously very rich ranch owners so one travels long distances without seeing any houses or villages etc. Very flat terrain...the highest point in Uruguay is 400 m ASL! Lots of forestry plantations (alot of ranchers obviously plant trees on their land)
The cities: The cities are not very clean and the outskirts are covered in slums ...not a pretty scene but even in these areas the people seem very friendly.
General conditions: One of the most expensive countries we have visited with oil costing about 8 dollars a litre, fuel just over 1.20 US litre, food and room well above Argentina but slightly less than Chile.
We ended up riding about 1000 kms in Uruguay and actually cut our journey short when we got lost in one city about 4 times due to poor (like no) signage (thats my story and I am sticking to it!) and as usual really crappy weather. (This was the same time as Buenes Aires was receiving its first snow since 1918!)
So after a few days of riding around and enjoying the company of the very friendly Uruguay folks we turned north and had a very quiet border crossing. The crossing was total chaos as we were sent from one office to another (back and forth between Uruguay and Argentina customs etc.) and although the crossing took over two hours not a single vehicle went by...very strange..until we left and realized that some sort of protest was taking place and the road was blocked with trees. No problem on the Hondogs and the protestors laughed and waved as we rode through the ditches around their blockade.
