So I arrived at the Hotel, completely hyped and close to tears of happiness. Linda on the other side was freezing and bored to death, so we were on completely different sides of a potential „hype-scale“. We needed some time to find common ground and we had to be extra empathic with each other before we both were in a similar mood.
After we got ready in the Hotel (I picked up Linda and we threw our luggage in Rosi) we drove with a short grocery stop straight to the Posada Casavieja close to Colonia de Sacramento. Everyone else who picked up the vans was heading east, because of the cold weather, but our plan remains to head first to Patagonia. One mandatory stop was to get fuel for Rosi. Rosi needs Diesel and since she is a European car and is pretty new she has a Euro 6 standard, which means, that she needs AdBlue as well, which is an additive that reduces the fine particulate matter (Feinstaub). This depends on the sulfur content of the Diesel and in Europe our sulfur content is always below 10ppm… since 2009..Not so here. Here the Diesel is sold in different qualities, which is marked at the gas station. They sell „Gas Oil 50-s“ and „Gas Oil 10-S“ and the numbers indicate the sulfur content. We need the lower one to reduce our AdBlue consumption and also not overload the „Diesel particle filter“ (I hope I did get that right and explained no bs here….:-D)) I just wanted to explain it, because we went to three gas stations until we got the „Gas Oil 10-S“ and I have the weird feeling that this whole fuel topic might become a bigger challenge for future Björn, but I am sure he will handle it.
After a beautiful sunset and a short bumpy road we arrived at Posada Casavieja and Ruedi greeted us in perfect swiss german, told us we can park the van wherever we want and invited us in. We felt so welcomed and had a really cool evening with a few beers and discussions about crazy live choices.
The next morning I woke up, opened Rosi and the sun was shining right in my face. This is what I wanted, this is why we chose to make this big project. It felt immediately right…. and we were not even in the wilderness, although it was close to it. Ruedi and Susanne had purchased the land in 2016 and started in 2019 to built a few bungalows. (Not like the wooded ones in Punta del Diablo, this was all Swiss standard) Additionally they welcome overlanders like us. The land has 5ha with lots of bushed and many different birds. We were amazed to see ground owls for the first time in my life
We used the good weather and emptied our bags and Rosi completely on a mat in front of the van, to than reorganise everything, the way we wanted to pack it, and it felt sooooo good. After a few hours we were ready and made a short trip to the nearby beach at the Rio Plata. Linda took her bike and I ran, After 2.5 km we saw the nice dunes and I realised how out of shape I really am. The beach was filled with dead fish and until now I don’t know if it is really due to the too cold weather like Ruedi said. Research afterwards showed that environmental NGOs pressure for research but nobody is looking into it atm.
Whatever, Linda wanted to go swimming in each country and this was our last chance in Uruguay, so we stripped naked, jumped over the dead fishes and ran in the freezing cold water. It was incredibly cold, but when we got out it felt so good and we realised how much we are looking forward to the van life.
On the way back Linda insisted to switch and she ran while I cycled (I was not too sad about it), we took an amazing warm shower in one of the cabins and than had dinner from Susanne, who just had arrived back from Switzerland, and had another great evening, this time even with Swiss chocolate. For us the visit in Posada Casavieja was the perfect easy start and we planned to leave the next day to travel in the direction of the boarder to Argentina.
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