Montevideo, Uruguay

A sign over a drinking fountain just after one passes through customs at the Montevideo airport reads, “Uruguay, a country with safe tap water.”  The corners of the sticker were loose from someone who had tried to make a souvenir of it.  Uruguay may be the only country in South America with drinkable water.  That is no doubt a factor in Uruguay ranking as the Latin American country with the highest quality of life, a position it has held since 2005.

My early assessment would not dispute that.  I enjoyed a pleasant eighteen-mile ride from the airport into the city, most of the way on a bike path along the ocean, much of it lined with beaches, with traffic at a minimum on the adjoining road.  With a late spring temperature in the 80s there were plenty of people enjoying the beach, even on a Monday.  The life guard stations every couple of hundred yards were all staffed.  Others were out on bikes, some wearing helmets and some not, meaning the controversial law of 2013 requiring cyclists to wear helmets was not being enforced. That same year Uruguay became the first country to legalize cannabis.  The country also distinguishes itself with the world's highest percentage of wind power and the legalization of same sex marriage.

The drivers are almost as considerate and peaceable as those of Japan, where rare is it that anyone dares to go over the speed limit.  I could sense on my flight full of Uruguayans their relaxed and sophisticated nature. I've already been the beneficiary of the kindly Uruguayan sensibilities.  The first was at the airport when a customs official who had just x-rayed my bags and wanted a closer look, asked if I had any food.  I had food spread around all my panniers and in my handlebar bag too—energy bars, ramen, peanut butter, cherrios, leftover Halloween candy, bread and more.  He said animal-based food wasn’t allowed into the country, so I’d have to turn over my three hard boiled eggs and cheese.  I asked if I could sit there and eat it all. He said that would be okay.  After I’d eaten the first egg and was still working on peeling the others, he relented and said it would be all right to take the rest with me.

Several hours later at the Museo del Futbol I was invited to bring my bike into the lobby.  The museum adjoins the football stadium built for the inaugural World Cup in 1930, the first stadium in the world built specifically for soccer.  That was a nice introduction to this fantastic museum that also gave entry to the stadium.  It was packed with trophies and photos of all sizes and a wide assortment of artifacts and included four monitors showing footage of Uruguay’s greatest triumphs beginning with victories in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, followed by its twin World Cup victories in 1930 and 1950.  Among the massive wall-sized photos throughout the museum was one of  Montevideo’s Independence Square jam-packed with fans celebrating one of its World  Cup victories with the caption “This nation of two million people celebrated as if it was one person.”   

There was also acclaim given to the 2011 team that won the South American championship besting present-day powerhouses Argentina and Brazil, the Goliaths it is sandwiched between.  Paul McCartney was also included, as he gave two sold out performances in the stadium in 2012 and 2014.  

I dropped in on the museum on my way out of town late in the afternoon, just a couple of hours after I arrived in Montevideo. I had intended to make it a day two visit, but after meandering around the city for a couple of hours I thought I’d seen enough of this somewhat tepid metropolis of 1.8 million people, more than half the country’s population, and gave in to the call of my tent and headed out.  There were a handful of stately old Beaux Arts buildings, but their magnificence was choked by the proliferating bland, weed-like constructions that now dominated.

I had intended to stay at one of the several downtown hostels, but I had no desire to make my first sleep in the country in doors and possibly in the company of others, though I would have welcomed the opportunity to hobnob with fellow travelers, if there were any in this pre-summer season.  There weren’t any on my flight, fully packed with Uruguayans returning home.

The prospect of camping gave me all the energy I needed, despite not much sleep on the overnight nine-hour flight from Miami after a nine-hour layover.  If I’d had one of those tight lay-overs after my flight from Chicago I would have been in a panic, as Frontier Airlines had a snafu getting my bike to me, which I had to transfer myself to my next flight on American.  Security procedures wouldn’t permit it to be brought through a door beside the small hatch that all the standard luggage, including my duffle, passed through.

A Frontier agent awaiting with me at the luggage carosal was flummoxed.  He was in communication on his phone with several officials that were giving him contradictory instructions. It took over an hour for him to figure out how to get my bike to me.  At least the delay allowed me time to scavenge a discarded cart, renting for $5 at this airport, to transport my 45-pound duffle, and almost as heavy bike box, the long hike to the American check-in.

All was working out, just as it had in Chicago when Janina had to return to the airport when I realized several minutes after she dropped me off, that I was still wearing the down vest I meant to wear just for the sub-freezing seven a.m. drive to the airport.  I didn’t need it for the hot temperatures that awaited me in South America and had no space in my panniers to carry it for the month-and-a-half I’d be away as I ride the 3,000 miles from the bottom of Brazil to its top before crossing into the Guinanas where I’ll visit the lone Carnegie Library on the continent in Georgetown, the ultimate goal of these travels. 

I’m starting in Uruguay as it is one of four countries, along with the Guianas, that I have not biked in South America on my previous four rides about the continent.  I was just across the river from Uruguay on my first trip in 1989 when I spent six months riding 7,000 miles from Colombia to Tierra del Fuego, then another 3,000 from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janiero. Though Uruguay is nestled to the east alongside the northern third of Argentina, Montevideo is actually south of Buenos Aires, making it the southernmost capital in South America.

On my ride around Venezuela fifteen years later I intended to slip into the Guianas, but Venezuela has no diplomatic relations with them, refusing to acknowledge their existence, maintaining they belong to Venezuala.   I could have crossed into Brazil for just a few miles and then crossed into Guyana and then the other two, but that would have required a $160 Brazilian visa, which was absurd for such a short period of time.

I was on the verge of making this trip starting in Uruguay last year and was in the process of acquiring the Brazilian visa, having to send my passport to the embassy in Washington D.C., but the process threatened to take too long, pushing me deep into the brutal heat of the Brazilian summer, so I delayed it til this year allowing me to leave earlier.  During that interim the newly elected Brazilian president paid Trump a visit, during which Trump got him to drop the fee for Americans to visit Brazil, perhaps the most notable accomplishment of his presidency.  If he’d made that one of his campaign promises rather than building a wall along the Mexican border, I might have wanted to vote for him.

Potential hundred degree temperatures await me on the Equator and in the Amazon, so I was happy not to linger in Montevideo, putting me a day ahead of reaching the ovenish region before the temperatures reach their peak in January.  I’d like to be back in Chicago by then, ice-skating with Janina on her suburban outdoor rinks.

Days were shortening when I left Chicago with it getting dark before five.  The days will be on the lengthening cycle for another month where I am now, allowing me to ride until eight p.m. on my first day in Uruguay, all the time I needed to find a forest thirty miles out of the city so thick that a tree plucked a pack off my bike as I pushed through it, giving me a fright when I stopped and noticed it missing, fearing it had been stolen when I stopped at a supermarket a couple hours before.  But I quickly remembered that I had slipped a tin of sardines into the pack, so it hadn’t been swiped there, and had to be nearby, which it was.

I had a blessedly tranquil night eager to resume my riding, just sorry that I’d only have three hundred miles of it in Uruguay before crossing in to Brazil for the bulk of my time away.