New Clothes, New Mount, New Language

Days 196-199

It came to our attention recently that when we get to Rio for carnival we will want to have some clothes that aren't completely travel-weary. This is how the shopping spree in Buenos Aires started. Having found way more nice, cheap, original clothes than we could ever justify buying, and Emily having bought most of them anyway, we needed a new bag to put them in. Unfortunately that left room for a splurge at the antiques and artisan markets. We then picked up the motorbikes from their service along with a huge bill and so once we'd booked the rather pricey ferry to Colonia in Uruguay we were really done – Buenos Aires has to have been the most expensive city stop for us so far.

Buenos Aires isn't just one big shopping centre though, it's also the birthplace of Tango (the dance, not the drink) and as well as there being lots of Tango shows, mainly for tourists, there are lots of “melongas” (music and dance nights) for the locals. After being inspired by a show one night, the next day we had some bad luck trying to get to a class and melonga in a dancehall, but happened across a small open air melonga in a plaza and really wished we knew how to join in!

Days 200-202

Our entry into Uruguay was rather relaxed - they waved us straight through off the one-hour ferry from BA to beautiful colonial Colonia, so we had to go back to hunt down the customs office... which turned out to be the back of the custom guy's car. It was air-conditioned though so we weren't complaining!

From the coast we rode inland into the heart of Uruguay – cowboy country. Driving in southern South America we'd passed loads of estancias: ranches that cover much of the land, many of which have adopted a bit of ecotourism alongside the farming. Since we were soon to be leaving them behind as we got into the more populous areas of Brazil we figured we really should pay one a visit. All we wanted was a horse ride but we decided to go all the way and so stayed at San Pedro de Timote, a beautiful old place with numerous buildings (including its own stand-alone chapel), lovely rolling grounds, and lots of communal areas for relaxing and playing games, including no less than three swimming pools. Obviously we made full use of the facilities and after a day of horse riding, visitng a nearby cheese factory, tennis, table tennis, table football and swimming we were pretty sore (we haven't done much except sit on the bikes recently!) but managed to console ourselves with the fantastic buffet and a nice bottle of red.

Days 203-204

From the estancia we rode to the Brazilian border feeling quite excited about reaching the last country on our trip. We did all the border work in Uruguay no problem and rode into Brazil expecting to see some signs of border control but there were none. We managed to find the police station where immigration is done but even they didn't seem to know where customs was. After a lot of complicated asking around we eventually tracked it down and our suspicions that not many motorbikes come through this way were confirmed when both the receptionist and the security guard asked to have their photos taken with us! We were then taken to a nice comfy office to do the paperwork with a man who spoke neither Spanish nor English, just Portuguese. We do not speak Portuguese, but we were all pretty good at Pictionary and this helped the process immensely. While the officer was finishing off the paperwork we decided to make a start on working out this new language. And quickly gave up. It looks like Spanish so we can understand a lot of the written word but it sounds like dutch (the double variety) and even having read the little language guide in our guidebook we have no idea how to pronounce it. Apparently “restaurante” is pronounced hess-to-roch. Enough said.

A lack of ability to communicate continued to be the main theme of our first few days in Brazil. Everything from filling up with petrol to getting directions to ordering food is proving to be quite a challenge, but fortunately the Brazilians are a nice enough bunch. And being on two big motorbikes and answering “Alaska” to the second question everybody asks (“England” is the answer to the first) is continuing our celebrity status, so people do like to get involved. Generally that's a good thing, and we don't mind the odd photo being taken of us by petrol attendants etc, but it was a bit much when someone took a video of us with his mobile phone whilst overtaking us on the motorway!