Two for One

For the lazy readers out there, this entry will be a winner, two countries for the cost (in eye wear) in one blog.

We finally managed to find an agency to ship the car back to the USA, a company called Transpack in BsAs. It would seem we are the first people in history to do such a thing and it took two full days, mostly waiting and having transpack do yet another inventory of the car. This was very frustrating and Kim spent most of the time calming me down. But enough of inificiency, the cars having fun on the high seas and with luck will arrive in Norfolk, Virginia in a month.

We left Buenos Aires on a boat for a town called Colonia in Uruguay and then hopped on a bus for Montevideo. In BsAs we had tried to get Kim's visa for Brasil but were told it would take the rest of the week at a minimum, so we figured it couldn't take any longer in Montevideo. And, as we had already seen so much in BsAs, figured Montevideo would be a better place to spend the days waiting. I won't get started on the idiotic political visa thing, but be assured that its very stupid.

Montevideo is a pretty grey town, and after being spoiled by the amazing Argentine coffee and pastry botiques we almost starved to death. It did however offer lots of walking around and even a dead guy in a box gaurded by 2 very serious soldiers. Artigas was the 'founder' of Uruguay and not only was his wee box of ashes in a tomb in the middle of town, there's a statue of him at about every corner.

We found a great little hotel to stay in, most notable for its wonderful marble staircase and bed sheets with more holes than cotton. The proprietor was completely zany and proper mad, amusing us at every turn.

There's also lots of antique shopping in Montevideo. We did a fair bit of browsing but having sent the van on its merry way didn't have any way of carting back all the beautiful stuff. We've managed to pack super light for this short leg up to Brasil and are trying to keep it that way.

From Montevideo we caught a bus to Porto Alegre in Brasil. A really different bus trip, we left our passports with the driver and woke up, unmolested, in a different country. Wow. And talk about comfy, the seat reclined to almost horizontal and there was dinner and drinks and breakfast served. Wow. As my Dad was off vacationing himself, we found our way to his new house in Santa Cruz do Sul. Gabriel met us and showed us around town and took us to Kim's first Churrascaria, a distinctly Brasilian way of cooking. She hasn't stopped talking about it since. The meat just keeps on coming.

Once my dad got back we immediately started making plans for a trip around the south. We decided to head to Cambara do Sul. This is where the highland fall, quite precipitously down into the Atlantic. Cambara is a sleepy cowboy town on the virge of a tourist explosion for its rustic charm. We stayed with a family sitting around the wood stove eating pinhão and drinking Chimarrão (mate). You should certainly follow the previous links to learn more about this. The pinhão is a seed from the huge pine trees and are either boiled or roasted on a fire. Both are delicious. Erva mate is a green tea that one make in a gord and drink through a metal straw. Most every Brasilian, Argentinian, and Urugayan has one of these gords in their hand and a thermos of hot water in the other.

We saw Fortaleza, a beautiful canyon where the river has cut into the flat prairie all the way down to the Atlantic and then on to Itaimbezinho water falls. This is where David almost died as he was washed over the edge before I gallantly saved his life. Well, OK, I was nearby. Its too hard to describe what a beautiful place this was so you're going to have to wait till we can upload the photos.

From there we decended to the coastal town of Capao de Canoa for the night. A wonderful Brazilian beach town with multicolored tile covered condos and fisherman with bamboo poles and fish dangling from their bicyles handlebars.

Finishing out our tour we passed through Porto Alegre for lunch, another churrascaria. We all got just the buffet bar, a common precursor to the onslaught of butchered animals. This works great for me as a vegetarian. Poor Nevia called over a waiter with a huge skewer of meat and said to him "look, I'm stuck with all these vegetarians, won't you do me a favor and slice off a chunk of meat for me". Poor woman, she almost went one whole meal without meat.

It's hard to believe that tomorrow we will begin heading back to BsAs and from there fly north to North Carolina on Monday. We are amazed that what took us 5 months to drive will be over in 12 short hours. We are sad too. We are happy too. We are excited to get home and see Saira and everyone else. We are more in love now than before we started. This was predicted by many, well, in the context of "you'll either be more in love, or divorced" at least.