On the 6th August 2015 I left Canada for the three day journey to Uruguay. I was travelling to a new country for me where I would take possession of Winnietwo, a 16 year old Fiat Ducato 2.8 Diesel compact motor home, that we had bought via the internet 9 months previously from Steffen and Rieke. They had shipped it over from Germany and used it for a 6 month, 20,000 km journey through various countries in South America with their two daughters and had put it up for sale before they'd even left Germany.
Well, one of us had to fly down to get it and that person was little old me! Kirsten stayed in Canada until mid October then wrapped Winnie up in a tarp to try and keep him dry over the winter in Canada. We'd be returning in June 2016.
The journey down to Uruguay took three days and I almost missed the cut off time for the first flight from Vancouver to Mexico City because the Greyhound bus was late. It was a great journey over some mountain passes to get to Vancouver but my stress level went up when I realised just how little time I would have to transfer by SkyTrain to the airport. It was going to be very close!
I quickly got my bag wrapped because it would have to go through Brazil and only just made the cut off time for luggage. I went straight to the gate and asked at the desk for my boarding cards which weren't issued to me because there had been no time. In front of me in the queue were at least three people who were being told that the flight was overbooked and asked if they would accept $800 to fly the next day!!
I was concerned that I wouldn't even have a seat on the flight. Oh boy!! Not a good start! When it was my turn they told me they'd already given away my seat because I was late! But they did have a seat for me!!!! So I was back to being in the middle of the middle - where I tend to end up no matter what I try or which airline I fly with! At least it was only a 5.5 hour flight.
Next problem - in Mexico City I pressed the button at customs and got a red light so they wanted me to open my bag!!! NOOO!!! I'd had it wrapped to get through Brazil. Well tough, they insisted!!!
So they cut it under my close instructions to try and at least keep most of the plastic on and then all they did was take out one plastic bag on the top and paw through it a few times! That was it!!! Total waste of effort.
Then I wished I'd had my camera handy because one of the women went and fetched a roll of not so good plastic and I had to keep rolling my heavy 21kg bag over and over whilst she pushed and pulled the plastic!! I'd been so annoyed but couldn't help but laugh and then I broke a nail!!!!!
No I'm not turning into a girly girl but my bag was now re-secured and of course the nail file and scissors were locked and wrapped inside again!!!
I stayed at a small hostel near the airport for the night and then went back to the airport for the three flights from Mexico City to Sao Paulo (absolute chaos with everyone telling me I had to pick up my luggage and sending me back and forth because everyone else was saying it would be checked through to Montevideo) to Rio de Janeiro (4 hour wait and the reason I wanted my bag wrapped in the first place) to Montevideo in Uruguay.
I finally arrived just before 5pm and got a shuttle to a nice hotel in the city centre. I sent a long email to Kirsten to tell her that she would need to pick up her luggage in Sao Paulo and ignore everything else she was told along with numerous other tips about the journey - she would be taking the exact same route and staying in the same hostel in a couple of months time. I also sent an email to Steffen and family and arranged to meet them at a campground called Paraiso Suizo between 10 and 10-30 am - a 45 minute bus ride from the main bus station in the city.
That information turned out to wrong - there was no bus at 9-15am and the next was at 10am, plus it would take 90 minutes on the bus and I would have to take a 20 minute bus to get to the main station first. I was going to be late anyway but it certainly didn't help that my alarm clock didn't work!!! The alarm flashes but there is no sound to accompany it - pretty useless as an alarm clock!
I tried to send a quick email to Steffen to say I would be an hour late. That took an aggravating 30 minutes because the internet was so slow. I got to the bus station and had a 30 minute wait for the bus. I didn't get there until 1pm.
I finally met up with Steffen, Rieke, Lisanne and Annelie who we'd been in contact with and skyped with for 9 months. The girls seemed to be very taken with me and were busy drawing pictures for me whilst Steffen showed me the motor home. Thank God I took videos because there was a great deal of information and I would never have remembered it. We spent 3 hours going through the engine, driving a diesel and some of the interior.
I had to leave at 5-45pm to walk back to the main road to try and wave down the correct bus. Fortunately I had already booked and paid for the return journey because I couldn't see the numbers on the buses that flew past in the dark and none of them even tried to stop! Only the right bus actually stopped an hour later by which time I'd thought I would have to go back to the campground and try and get a taxi!!
I spent the 90 minutes on the bus writing notes and realised just how much there was left to do. At least it had been warm and sunny. What I didn't realise was that it was highly unusual and that it would be cold and rainy for a long time afterwards. Well it is still winter down here!
The next day I tried to get a sim card for the phone which didn't work, never would, and I didn't get any money back either! Grrrrr! I caught a bus down to the lighthouse in Montevideo where I met up with Steffen and family again. We spent almost 5 hours going through everything else inside the motor home including how to get to the spare tyres and change them. It was foggy with rain so not ideal.
The following day I checked out of the hotel and got a taxi back to the lighthouse and then drove to the airport so that Steffen and family could fly back home. They took some last photos of their home for the last 6 months and I waved goodbye to them. It was sad to see them go even though we have only just met. They are a really nice family. We'll certainly be keeping in touch and I'm sure we'll see them again someday.
Then it was just me and Winnietwo and time for another big adventure.
Winnietwo is the first diesel I've ever had. It's also a manual which means I'll be sitting on the wrong side and having to use my right hand to change gear. It was going to be very different. I got into the drivers seat and the first thing I realised was how high up I was sitting and how much bigger the steering wheel is. It felt like I was driving an 18 wheeler!
I've been driving an automatic for so long I had to keep reminding myself to change gear and to do it with my right hand!
The first thing I did was drive over a curb with the back tyre at the first corner in the airport car park - Steffen had told me that the wheel span is a lot longer but I guess that piece of information got lost in the deluge! Not a problem because I was driving really slowly to get out of the car park anyway. It is so different from driving Winnie because I was so high up and had a panoramic view. It felt like I was sitting on a 6 foot ladder doing 90 km/h!
I managed to drive out of the airport, stopped at a supermarket where I found out that Uruguay really is expensive and got to the campground Paraiso Suizo by late afternoon. It would end up being my home for the next 2.5 months whilst I waited for Kirsten to join me so we could start travelling.
I thought I might use the time to improve my Spanish but Uruguayan Spanish is very different including the pronunciation. I ended up learning Swiss German because there are so many Swiss people that stay here and trying out Swiss specialities in the restaurant at the campground! Certainly not what I had expected!
I did try out one of the main Uruguayan specialities called Casuela de Mondongo. I bought it freshly made from the supermarket I stopped at en route from the airport. The lady had told me that the meat in it was chorizo - sausage, so I bought a container of it and heated it up. Yuk! I knew something was wrong when my first bite into the "chorizo" was horrible and so tough I couldn't eat it. When I found something that looked distinctly like octopus I gave up! I found out the next day that it was tripe and innards! It would be the first and last time I tried typical Uruguayan food!!!
I spent the time sorting everything out inside the new motor home, checking how long we can last with the solar panel, checking out where to find a new back battery and finding out how much power our compressor fridge actually uses. There were also things I wanted to change - like the child's bed. After I'd hit my head on it for the third time I started thinking about options for removing it or changing it and looking into how to get everything done here. I realised that nothing was going to get done very fast - you need a lot of patience in Uruguay.
The weather didn't help either. I was told that they hadn't had rain for 6 months until I got here and there were several deluges which caused flooding. One broke a 30 year record for the amount of rain! It was also extremely cold. It went down to zero degrees on too many nights to count. It doesn't sound very cold but it is sub tropical here which means the humidity is extremely high so it feels a lot colder than it actually is.
I had gale force winds on numerous occasions, thunder and lightening were frequent and there were also a few hailstorms. So I took advantage whenever the weather wasn't too bad to go walking on the beach. I met lots of other travellers and Sylvia and Heinz, the campground owners became family. I also became good friends with Agnes from Switzerland who has lived here for 10 years and even took her dog Bella out for long walks on the beach.
I spent a lot of time with Agnes in her huge villa and visited her on almost a daily basis. There was always a cup of tea and cake waiting for me. We watched the US Open and various International football games including England versus Switzerland in the European Championship qualifiers. Fortunately Agnes didn't hold out much hope for the Swiss so when England won 2-0 we were still friends!!
There was also a big forest fire that was heading towards the campground. Heinz has cut out trees and laid sand down on a wide stretch to provide a fire break for the campground because they get large fires every 3 years or so. The wind turned and seemed to take the fire towards Agnes' house so I walked there and saw that the fire was really close!
About 5 of the house owners and two Uruguayan gardeners were using 100 foot hoses to spray the other side of their fences and were also chopping down trees in an effort to keep the fire away. There wasn't much for me to do except to help move the hoses. When the fire seemed to pass by Agnes' house and move to the neighbours I helped move the water pump over there.
It wasn't easy dumping the huge and heavy hoses back onto the rig which one of the gardeners hooked up to an ATV to pull across to the neighbours house. I ran behind trying to keep the hoses from falling off! Wish I had a video of that - it must have looked really funny!
Another fire seemed to come from the other side and things got a bit hairy but in the end the wind turned and it looked like it might burn itself out. My eyes were stinging from the smoke and my clothes stunk to high heaven. My shoes were a muddy mess. After a few hours it seemed like the danger was over even though the fire had come within 10 meters of the back fences!
I left to shower and clean my shoes but then I saw the red sky and new it had started up again. So I went back to Agnes to see if they needed any help. They didn't but they had had to move the pump back to Agnes's house about 45 minutes after I left as the wind had stirred up the fire again and brought it over towards her back fence. This time they actually used it to douse the fire nearby and soak everything. The fire brigade turned up just afterwards and they stayed the entire night and following day, going out on foot with water pumps on their backs to soak hot spots. Apparently, the fire brigade only turn up when houses are in danger but they came a bit late this time. If the home owners hadn't mucked in together it could have got to at least two houses and somehow I managed to pick up a new nickname - Helen Bombera (Helen the fire fighter!)
Big forest fire at Paraiso Suizo
Finally it was time for Kirsten to fly down. I drove to the airport to pick her up and she was almost the last one to come through the gates. She didn't have her luggage with her!!! It was still in Sao Paulo, Brazil! I had told her to ignore everything that she was told and that she had to pick up her bag there and take it through customs but she'd been swayed by everyone else telling her it would go straight to Montevideo and consequently had only her carry on luggage with her.
At least the long wait was over and we were finally back together. Wonderful. We went to the information desk and gave them the address of the campground so that the bag could be delivered. It would arrive about 8 hours later at 1am and then someone would drive it out to us in the morning. We got a website address and email address to contact and then Kirsten got to meet Winnietwo in person for the first time.
We already knew that the interior was compact and very well thought out for a motor home which is why we bought it but she was still impressed when she got to see it with her own eyes. She was also impressed with the high up panorama view and thought I drove like a professional despite it only being the second time I'd driven and having to change gears with the wrong hand! Winnietwo isn't slow and has far more power than Winnie - no more being overtaken by everything else on the road! We're the ones overtaking now!
Kirsten was tired after the long journey but at least we didn't have much to unpack! She even had to borrow some clothes from me so she could have a shower and get changed for a meal in the restaurant. I'd put us down for meals for the first two nights so we had time to sort everything out and the food is very good here.
After all the cold and rainy weather I'd had, Kirsten promised to bring the sun so it was a lovely day when she arrived. The next morning we took advantage of the cloudy but dry weather and went for a walk on the beach. Later that afternoon her bag arrived and everything was intact. We spent 8 nights at Paraiso Suizo whilst Kirsten had a rest after all her hard work. Bit by bit I explained everything about Winnietwo and she looked at all the videos I'd made where Steffen had explained everything. He'd done a very good job and as I watched the videos again, I realised that I'd forgotten a great deal of it!
It was hard for me to say goodbye to everyone as Paraiso had become my home and I'd made a number of very good friends, especially Sylvia and Heinz, the campground owners and Agnes. But it was time to set off on our next adventure and head off to see South America.
