In blogs you probably don’t read how boring a country can be. Experiences must be great, exhilarating and fantastic. Not on this blog. Uruguay has me waking up in the mornings thinking how I can make this day a memorable one. I have to come up with my own ideas to have something like, still far removed from, an exciting experience in Uruguay.
When I ask people where it is beautiful in natural surroundings, they slowly shrug up their shoulders, their eyes start looking into their minds cabinet, and they come up with no real answer. When I trow ‘Tucuarembo’ in, they reply with a lukewarm ‘yeah, it’s hilly there’ or ‘that is the real Uruguay still, with gaucho’s’ or ‘the road to there is 200 kilometer with nothing’.
When Koen squeezes his fists together, he comes to an abrupt halt in front of the door I sit behind. We meet at the Shell station, a person I have never seen before, with a twinkle in his eyes, moving with the ease of an adolescent youngster, one of 45. He’s having a bright smile, and when I see him I jump of my chair to greet him. Funny, not to know a person except by typed words over Messenger.
Cycling in the Pampa is nothing spectacular. Since December the vast agricultural lands have changed into swamps, large masses of wetlands have become plain lakes. Mosquitoes dwells happily alongside snakes, storks, owls, foxes, nutria’s and everything in between with wings, feet or no feet crawls around, is caught against the speeding wheels of trucks and cars and… receives the occasionally secretive hair cut.
Cycling Cindy