Friday – DakarMotos, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Via Colonia, Uruguay
The morning went fast as usual and trying to get down to the post office like I had intended to do to send a parcel home was a no brainer, it opens at 11 and we had to be at the ferry check in at the same time. So, I headed off at 10am with the usual 12 block walk to the train station, then a half hour train ride to the end of the line, this is near the port and this is where I met up with Stephen, did I mention it was a stinking hot day and I had all my riding gear on! Anyway, now we had to ride from here to the port and I must say I had no idea what type of rider he was and I did not feel comfortable being a pillion on the back of my own bike in heavy traffic!
OK, let me correct that, it is not my bike, even though it is still in my name, but it is still hard not to be in control. Not to worry, we soon arrived at the Buqubus ferry terminal and now we had to wait for ages, even though we had paid for the tickets over the phone yesterday, we still needed to book in and there was a line up.
Once that was done, we endured another wait in line and changed some money at the Cambio, before heading though immigration. This was a simple process, no photos of this bit, but basically two chaps standing side by side, hand the passport over and the Argentinean chap stamps me out, then I hand the passport to the next chap, who is from Uruguay and he stamps me into his country 🙂 Now for the tricky bit, now, I will not give out too many details here because there are still outstanding things and I don’t want to jeopardise the process. Needless to say, the bike was taken out of the country by me which clears the way for the bike to enter into Uruguay, this was an hour away across the water which did not take long at all, about an hour in fact 😉 We had crap seats so the views were of the walls and the backs of peoples heads in front of us, but I managed to snap a couple of pix through the windows over on one side, first us leaving Argentina, then the crossing then the arrival into Colonia in Uruguay.
OK, back on the bike(as pillion) and we head off the ferry, this is where we were told we would have no problems because Uruguay does not require paperwork.
Wrong, we were directed to a carpark(everyone else was as well, so nothing special), here Stephen had to produce some documents to facilitate the entry of the bike into the country. Now, it was not a fancy booth or office we are talking about, it is a carpark, so the paperwork was produced and the bike was allowed in.
So, after some bonnet paperwork and a discussion about Seguro(insurance) we were allowed to proceed, with the bike in Stephens name, the whole point of the exercise. This would be an ideal time to turn around and cross back over, but this was impossible, there were no available ferries until the one we had pre booked this evening at 11.30pm! OK, let’s go for a ride and find a beach with a bar and some chicas to look at 🙂 While riding around, we found this bullring, well the remains of one.
This was a rich mans foible, he decided he would build a bullring, then when it was half complete, he found out he could not get planning permission or something and the work stopped, it has been here for a long time. So, that took bugger all time, we had lost an hour crossing the water and it was stinking hot, nothing for it, we needed to find a nice cool shady spot with cold drinks and we did 🙂
The afternoon passed, it was a nice shady spot, there was a nice strong breeze and occasionally a few nice girls went by to please the eye 🙂 At one stage we lost the music and upon investigation the culprit was found!
The little bugger had been chewing on the speaker cables and pulled them out of the contacts, no worries though, the owner came by and pushed them back in 😉 We spotted a ferry leaving the harbour for Arg and it honestly looked like it was on fire, but it turns out the tail wind situation just kept all the crappy black diesel smoke hanging around, lucky the boats are enclosed or the smoke would have been a health hazard for the passengers, then again, it cannot be worse than the busses and trucks up north!
Check out some of the local chicas, loaded up on the step throughs with boogie boards and kids, not one bit of ATGATT anywhere! [AllTheGearAllTheTime]
So, the people were heading home, some of them but not all, the sun was going down and I was a passenger on my own bike(I know it is not mine), so I took a few photos and had a few beers, I am not riding eh! Allowing for time zones, this was taken at 8.30pm, so quite a late sunset.
Well, after sunset we decided to relocate to town and grab a feed, and as it turns out we ended up on the main drag with all the locals cruising up and down doing lappies. Most of them were chicas, riding two up on step thrus, which seems to be the norm, Stephen and myself seemed a tad overdressed in full battle gear, especially in the heat even though it was now full night! We were frankly very glad when it was time to head back to the harbour and board the ferry for the return journey. It was 10.30pm when we booked on-board and repeated in reverse this afternoons effort even though it was totally different boat and layout.
So, another hour later and we end up back in Argentina, this time the whole set of paperwork for the bike is in Stephens name and he now has a 3 month Temporary Vehicle Import Permit, TVIP, well done me old seppo. [seppo, septic tank=yank]
So, now comes the frustrating part for me, because of the paperwork that had to be completed by Stephen when the ferry docked at 11.30pm, there was no hope at all of being able to catch the last train at 11.45pm to get me to within 12 blocks of DakarMotos. So, rather than call a cab from here, Stephen took me to where he lived and had his gatekeeper call me a cab. This was all good, but the wait was a bugger, I had to wait at least a half hour, which felt a lot longer than that, but I eventually found one and although I was a tad under the weather and had no GPS or map, managed to direct the driver to the right place and got back around 1.30am,(OK, I had a business card with the address on it, but still!)
Day –0 miles and km
Trip – 54,042 miles and 86,972 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
WORLD 
TravellingStrom 