Our final leg

On our final leg we crossed the border to Uruguay at Paysandú and decided to make a half circle route exploring rural Uruguay on our way to the Montevideo-region. We soon got respect for the extent of Uruguay´s agricultural industry, passing 100s of kilometers of fields of maize, soja, forests of eucalyptus, chicken farms, cattle, and sheep.

The only interruption along the way, literally, is farming towns providing agricultural support services (equipment and tools), and agro-industrial production facilities.

Our half-circle really made us reflect on alternatives to industrial agriculture, the dimension of the industry (and here Uruguay is only an example) and how integrated and embedded everything related to it is in the daily life in rural areas. And of course, the fact that so much capital, territory and other resources already are committed makes any change towards alternative and more sustainable crops and production, for now, almost utopian.

Close to Fray Marcos in southern-central Uruguay, the route we followed was suddenly closed due a road accident and we decided to make a detour to avoid the traffic jam following dirt roads along huge agricultural fields. However, suddenly behind a narrow bend on the road we followed, we encountered an elderly man telling us that the road ahead was closed due to flooding…… We were literally in the middle of nowhere, and admitted while talking to him that we were a little lost… To our surprise, however, he turned around, told us to follow him as he continued down the track and led us to a tina ferry-looking invention. He told us that he would help us cross the river (about 50 meters wide and too deep for a vehicle) with his mini-ferry and his crew of 3 young assistants.

Great – and for the first time in my relatively ferry-intense life – our vehicle was the only one on the ferry!

Later, the same day, we eventually arrived at UY-Storage in Soca, which is not far from Montevideo. The owners of the facility, apparently three second or so generation German brothers, offer long term parking and repairs for overlanding vehicles. While packing out of the Toyota, we chatted with other overlanders and even had time to have a beer, take a shower and say goodbye to the Toyota and the other overlanders.

The photo below is from UY-Storage and one of the other vehicles in the process of “until-next-year” parking.