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Faster cycling

Night is fine, I get to take a picture for the 7000 miles milestone and also write it all down. I don’t go for a walk/ride in town and I simply decide I’ll do that in the morning. As it turns out I probably don’t miss much as I suspect La Paloma comes alive only after Christmas for a couple of months and then returns into the mothball for another year.

The cape has the inevitable lighthouse that makes me think that the main interest the colonising powers had in Uruguay was not to get beached on its shores.

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Bad luck, no whales here to be seen in this season.

 

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But chance for a new banner picture

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And this thing that I truly not know what to make of.

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The beard is growing, it’ll be great in April.

It starts drizzling and I think I can pull through just by covering the front bag with the waterproof but soon enough I realise that there is no point in getting wet. At this point of the day I am still thinking of calling it a day thirty five miles up the road in Cabo Polonio and not to go the whole sixty miles to Punta del Diablo as originally planned. I find a bus stop and park the bike, the view is good and after taking a couple of rather uninspiring photographs I eject the Kindle and start reading.

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I haver been trying to get the green parrots for days and it’s in times like this when I really miss the zoom.

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Very home made no pollute sign on the other side of the road.

The rain is not bad and it ceases in twenty minutes or so, the sky is a bit grey but the temperature rises quickly and it makes for a rather pleasant cycling day. After leaving La Paloma the road is rather straight and easy, the wind is with me today and the difference it makes is remarkable.

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It is round about here that I start thinking that perhaps I will get to Punta del Diablo after all.

I am always amazed by the difference the wind direction makes to a cycling day, I should not be by now, but I am. The temperature is good but not oppressive and while riding I have the time to stop for food and drinks as well ad to take pictures of the local wildlife.

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Armadillo like creature that appears rather shy.

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First tries to get away.

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But then decides to stop and pose.

So it is that I get to the entry point to Cabo Pollonio. This cape is a sort of hippy community that, in my opinion has gone a bit touristy. It can only be reached on foot or using a truck transport that costs £2.50 return. I doubt there was anybody at the village that was over 35 apart from me and another bearded guy, it looked like this was a place you’d go to get stoned out of your brain and spend quality time contemplating the meaning of being young care free and stoned.

On the way back I shared the seat with a rather yhaaa couple of early twenties Eatonians that for sure will grow up to be the next Cameroon and Osbourne and which recalled with great longing the month they spent out there, emphasis on out there.

Don’t get me wrong it is impressive and, even if the only sea lion I saw was a dead one, I don’t regret going. What I regret is to have to log my stuff and to be in my cycling gear and therefore not having the freedom to roam free on the coast and perhaps to walk longer along the beach.

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This is the transport to the cape.

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One very dead lobo de mar

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I went up top on the way back.

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The beach

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Welcome to all

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Patriotic

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The pasture.

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The spiritual corner.

As I said, glad to have gone but I think I felt more out of place than I usually do. I wonder if there is a sort of Samsonesque problem developing, whereas I had little or no problem in New Zealand and Australia in being in the midst of people that could have been my children, I feel now that I really don’t belong among them.

Moving on, I recover the bicycle and the backpack which had been left in the custody of the very helpful staff at the information and ticket office, and make my way on to the nightly destination of Punta del Diablo.

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A picture i took for Violet (my co-WorkAway-er).

The route is longish but not particularly eventful and having the wind on my side I make good progress completing the 70 miles of the day jut before six in the afternoon.

Route 3,349,759 – powered by www.bikemap.net

 

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Some street furnishing that caught my attention.

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Here we are.

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The sign is a herald of the nature of the place.

 

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