29 july 2019: Bye bye Holland, hello Uruguay!

We had a wonderful time in the Netherlands, catching up with family and many friends. Celebrating graduations of nephews and nieces. This picture is quite special. Nienke with her twin sister,  her brother and partners. We all met in the same week 31 years ago and are still all together.

It was a sunny day when we visited the grave of our boys, we planted some new greens, replaced a few items. Still so sad and incomprehensible.

At the end of the same day, after a very nice lunch with my aunt in the port of Scheveningen we were not in the mood for cooking, so we ended up at a Chinese restaurant enjoying a buffet. Oh, those delicious sate's.

I already added a photo and clip in our last blog of Nienke visiting the 'old battle grounds' while in Utrecht to celebrate the lustrum of her student club. She had a marvelous day at 'The Club' on Saturday as well, while I caught up with my own fraternity club. On Sunday Nienkes fraternity club tested their nautical skills on the canals of Utrecht. Us spouses were allowed to board as well.

At times very unsteady weather directed us under bridges to shelter from the rain.

Back in Bathmen it was food again, Dutch mussels with our friends Han and Maaike. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to understand that although we did plan to lose some weight, we failed with flying colours.

And then there was that long weekend with my family. Let's say there was enough food and booze to feed a regiment of hungry soldiers.

So the next day we requisitioned a few bicycles and planned to explore the surroundings of Teuge. Let's say not everybody's compass had recovered from last nights BBQ. The Netherlands probably has more cycle paths than any other country in the world, yet, we managed to have to cross the railway illegally (I'll stop the trains boasted my brother), plough with our bikes through a paddock, lifting the bikes over or pushing them under live wiring and cycle passed amused cows and stunned farmers. We did in the end reach the lake in Busloo, at least I think that was the goal.

On the way back we visited the market in Twello where some extra food was stocked. You never know when you might run out! Here is Nienke at the cheese stall. In the meantime the scents of fried fish from the Spakenburger fish stand became irresistible so the few lost calories from the cycling where compensated in no time.

Preparations underway for the second BBQ with the family.

One of the main traditions during these family weekends is playing Mah Yong, a great Chinese game. Here with our youngest nephew Gijs.

Feeling extremely guilty again in the morning we decided to pick up the bicycles again and go for a 31 km ride. Halfway we met up with the less sporty half of the family at Cannenburg castle. By pure chance (?) there happened to be a 'Monmartre' market (second hand market, specifically for very old stuff).

Unfortunately there was a old fashioned Dutch 'frieten tent' (famous Dutch fries). The owner would not let us pass until we had tried his fries. Well, you can't just ignore so much passion. A few minutes later we increased the speed cycling home in another futile attempt to do something healthy. Anyway, we survived the weekend.

One more lunch to go, with Nienkes uncle and his wife Marya, who gave us many tips on travelling in Chile.
The flight back to Porto Allegre was not uneventful. "Ladies and gentlemen, is there a doctor on board?". Nienke elbow-volunteered me awake. Half sleep drunk I made my way to the rear of the plane to discover that 3 other doctors had already attended to an older man. I was dismissed. An hour later however, when I walked to the toilet he started seizing again at my feet. The three Latino-docs stood and stared so I had a Spanish/French/English/sign language conversation with the purser and the friend of the man. I managed to diagnose him as an alcoholic with abstinence symptoms who was given some valium by his French physician (so nice of the dr. to give the patient an explanatory letter, NOT). As my Latino colleagues had already stuffed him full of valium at the previous attack I could not do more than to prevent them from giving him even more. Without knowing what he used to take/had taken (no jar with a label of course) the best thing was to just wait. The seizing stopped and he eventually fell in a deep sleep. Of course I did not.

It rained in Porto Alegre, so no reason to hang around. We headed down the coast towards Uruguay. In São José do Norte we had to take a ferry. A lot of confusion, no signing, plenty of useless men walking around giving different advise. In the end we ended up parking on the side of a road somewhere. It turned out to be the for the ferry!? Not completely reassured (as we could not even see the harbour anymore) we bought some food at a nearby shop, just to be on the safe side. Eventually a rumour reached our car, the ferry was approaching. Out of nowhere somebody appeared selling tickets for the ferry, so we hoped. Suddenly we found ourselves stuffed tightly on a ferry. Nienke and I agreed that as soon as the dangerously nose diving ferry was making water we would climb out of the windows onto the roof.

Of course nothing happened and so we ended up in a nice hotel in Rio Grande where in order to do something for the environment they collected the screw tops of the bottles they sold to prevent them from ending up in the water. I guess it will compensate for the very small plastic water cups offered to guests! Crossing the Brasilian border the next day was easy. No one noticed the dates on our car import form were different from the ones in our passports. The office of the Uruguayan customs looked more like a medieval stable. Dirty, smelling of smoke, and clearly manned with some people who somehow managed to offend their bosses in the past. Not at all like the rich (so we were told) Uruguay we expected to see.

What we did expect to see were beaches, endless beautiful beaches.

Punta del Diablo, a nice hippie town just over the border with Brasil. We rented a nice little cottage from a lovely couple (always great to get a hug from someone you meet for the first time). As we had a few concerns regarding the temperature (with only 12 degrees during the day we were kind of jealous of the 41 degrees the Dutch were enjoying) Pablo supplied plenty of firewood, even starter packs. The town was an assembly of huts, shacks, container houses and even some decent buildings. I do not think any architects have been involved here. It all looked pretty cool though.

During the night we heard thunder and rain, the wind howling, but the next day it was all blue again, with mighty waves pushing foam onto the beach.

Unfortunately we found quite some dead Magellan penguins on the beach. They looked all right (apart from being dead) so we had to guess what the cause of death was.

Found a dead seal as well, neatly parked next to a plastic bottle. It was shocking to see an awful lot of  plastic particles in all colours on the tide line on this remote beach.

In the surprisingly good Museum del Mar in La Barra we read that these penguins are caught up in oil, manage to clean their fur, but then die of oil poisoning and freezing to death. So proud to be a human being 😕😕😕.

The nearby fortress of Santa Teresa, build by the Portuguese, was beautifully restored, and guarded by Uruguayan soldiers (you never know when the Portuguese might return).

Our little trip to the Laguna Negra was not so successful. We managed to squeeze our Beast through a very narrow opening, but ended up at a spooky forest only to discover that the Laguna Negra is called like that because the water is extremely murky.

Back at 'our' beach this faithful dog was keeping an eye on his brave owner who was surfing in the cold waves.

Walking back to our cottage we passed this, eh.., house (?). Great sign though, it says "Silence please, we are listening to the sea"!