I continued westbound towards Montevideo today from Punta del Este. Piriapolis is not far, from hotel to hotel was only a distance of 27 miles. Oh, but what fun those 27 miles were...
I had to pay for a couple of Cokes I had signed for in the hotel this morning. That was fun. There was a huge group of super annuated Argentines also all trying to check out, all needing to pay for one thing or another, and only two guys at the front desk, both of whom looked very stressed. I eventually paid them off, retrieved my bike from storage, and attached the saddle bags, and was on my way. The old Argentines were all loading themselves onto Argentine plated buses, and all waved at me as I rode by. I actually like this, why should anyone stop going to the beach just because they have reached a certain age. They certainly looked like they had been enjoying themselves.
I rode half a mile to an ESSO station, where I had a Coke and a Conaprole bar, and bought a couple of bottles of Gatorade which I stuffed into a little item I bought some time ago at the Camp SLO PX, a camoflauged mini cooler made to hook on to LBE gear. Two half liter bottles fit, barely, in it, and it in turn fits, barely, in my central little saddle bag that rests on top of the rack holding my two main saddle bags. In 100 degrees, it will keep a bottle cold for over an hour, which is impressive, and much better than my Camel Back will do.
Now prepared, I set off, and immediately ran into the headwinds that had been forecast yesterday. I made about 10 MPH for the first six miles or so out of PDE, at which point the ¨Interbalnearia¨ (Uruguayan highways are numbered, except for the superhighway that runs from Montevideo to PDE. This has no number, and is simply referred to as the Interbalnearia, ¨balneario¨ being a vacation town. It is referred to as ¨Ruta IB¨ on signs.) climbed a massive hill. On top of the hill, I found some shade and drank both Gatorades. Aside from being windy, it was over 100 degrees at 10:00AM.
Coasting down the other side, now about 10 miles out, I found another ESSO where I bought three more Gatorades, for five Pesos each less than in PDE. The wind now really began to kill me, and my speed fell to about 8 MPH as I passed the Punta del Este International Airport by on the right. A few miles past the airport, Route 10 cut back out from the IB, and I took it south back to the coast. The wind temporarily at my back, I flew along, until I hit the water. Here I stopped to drink another Gatorade, and then turned back north west into a wind coming out of the north west at about 25MPH. I was down to 6 MPH now, and, to finish me off, this is an area of sand dunes, so I was getting my face and glasses scoured by sand. I have not been wearing contact lenses much for the last year or two, courtesy of a corneal ulcer, and that was a good thing today, had I been wearing lenses, that sand would have torn them up, but good.
I finally arrived in Piriapolis, rode past the Cerro San Antonio, one of the highest hills (there are no mountains) in Uruguay, and found a hotel for the very reasonable price of 700 Pesos. Showered, I went out and found a bakery where I bought a large bottle of Coke and a piece of bread for my lunch. I then took the bike back out, minus the saddle bags, and rode up the Cerro San Antonio. This was a climb of about 400 feet in one mile, which is about an 8% grade. That was loads of fun. The road corkscrews up the hill, making two and a half loops around it, and passing twice under a cable suspended system of gondolas (like a ski lift) that transports those too lazy to ride their bikes up the hill. On top, there was a view all the way back to Punta del Este. I took some pictures, and then went flying back down the hill at close to 40 MPH.
Piriapolis is a beach town founded in the 1930´s by an Argentine named Piria (ergo the name). He built a huge hotel (where I am NOT staying, it runs over $100 US a night) and began running overnight ferries directly from Buenos Aires. I would say that the majority of tourists here are still Argentines, not Uruguayans. The beaches are very nice, and feature gentle waves, because they are no longer fronting on the south Atlantic Ocean, but rather on the River Plate (Rio de la Plata). The River Plate formally debouches into the Atlantic at Punta del Este, and the southern point of PDE is the dividing line between the river and the ocean.
Something I forgot to mention yesterday is that next week, on December 13, it will be the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the River Plate. On December 13, 1939, three British and one New Zealand cruisers attacked the German battleship Graf Spee off Punta del Este. They damaged it to the point that the captain put in to Montevideo for repairs, something that caused the Uruguayan government to nearly have a collective heart attack; they feared that the British were going to come in to the harbor after it, which would probably have resulted in the total destruction of the city. The British stayed out, and the Uruguayans put a 72 hour time limit on the Graf Spee´s stay, as neutrals are required to do under international law. At the end of the 72 hours, the Graf Spee sailed out and scuttled herself, with the crew fleeing to Nazi-friendly Argentina where they are ¨interned¨ in such a way that they all shortly ¨escaped¨ and returned to Germany. Except the captain. He got a hotel room in Buenos Aires, wrapped himself in a German navy flag (not a Nazi flag) and blew his brains all over the wall. The Uruguayans have a little monument to the Royal Navy in Punta del Este conmemorating this battle.
Tomorrow, I should have favorable winds again, so I will push on westwards towards Montevideo.
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