“I put my hand in my pocket, only to find someone had been there before me’’ (Anon.).

The navigator isn’t pregnant with a boob-mounted ruc-sac, nor am I hunch-backed by a haversack. Neither of us are festooned with the golden tethers of touristic paraphernalia, no papperazzic lenses for peeping Toms, nor blinkering guide book to stick our faces in, neither do we have the Westie, the Yorkie nor the jeba maté, still, the tout leaches on. I do have the rolled up brollie, but not the cravat, the caffé con leche but not the pressed jeans, the erudite book but not the tooled leather brogues, the battered walking boots but not the nonchalantly draped cashmere, the self confidence but not that ‘je ne sais quoi’, I do have his age, but not ‘this season’s’ blond for my arm. We’re further isolated by the impediment of three extra inches, fair hair :and the fact that we approach the kerb like lost Britons and look both ways. Of course we attract the attention.

We’ve shed down to the bare essentials for a Sunday morning wander through the centre of town, attempting to blend in, into what looks and feels like a European city. A place that claims to have the clothes sense of Italy, the gastronomy of France, the sophistication of Spain and the post-boxes of Great Britain. We’ve carried out our research in the privacy of the flat, we know where to find one of the most unusual of cemeteries, a different book store, as well as the more mundane airport bus stance. It and we, BA and PB, are such a long way, from the dusty towns up on the Puna. Yet, still I’m convinced that I’m tethered to a giant banner that screams: ‘gringo’, ‘mug’, ‘plata’. A long red arrow is pointing down at me. We’re ripe for attention.

The spread that is Argentine café. The array of sugar sachets, the gelata biscuit, the soda fountain’d glass of water, sitting beside that small cup of deep froth and intense caffeine. Taken today, on the stage of a converted theatre, that is now the Alteneo Grand Splendid bookstore. More emporium than shop. The gold gilded boxes, now quiet reading areas, the orchestra pit, a den of video games, the stalls given over to politics, maps and cookery, the tiered circles to the departments of university study and in the foyer, patrolled by armed security, dance tango and block busters. I graze the glossy coffee table books, mentally ticking off the ‘been there’ photo’s, whilst accumulating a new list of possibilities. From here it’s downhill, throu’ the Recoleta graveyard, and the road for home.

The shadows slowly creep away from the pure shade thrown by the monumental rubber trees, we move into the scattered, glazed high-rise towers, castles of wandering chess pieces, that have spilled out from Puerto Madero. It’s a Sunday slumberous plaza in up-market, down-town Buenos Aries. Quiet, un-edgy territory, subconsciously we’re alert, it’s a habit. I’ve noticed the sleeping body on the bench, the woman wandering some distance away, there’s nothing unusual there, I’m more interested to see if I can photo’ align the flowering tabebuia tree in the glazed façade of the Sheraton Hotel, whilst heading for the airport bus. It’s our last moments of freedom before the purgatorial cattle mart that is air travel. It’s at this moment that we get caught by the ‘attention’. The ‘Incontinent Pick-pocketing Parrot’.

A faux concerned lady approaches us from behind, to point out that we’ve been splattered by a bird’s poop, hat to heel. I suggest that it’s good luck, she suggests that she can help. Of course she has a supply of tissues to hand. The Good Samaritaness. We are uncommunicative and are trying to move off, she suggests the gent’s toilets are just around the corner, the divide and conquer tactic, I counter with the suggestion that we’ll make our way to the bus station. I know that there’s a police presence there. She’s persistent, dabbing down the navigator’s back, I’m getting twitchy, there’s too much over familiarity here. We’ve managed to get around the corner, when a man materialises, who miraculously has a bottle of water to hand, he too offers to help me. Oh so generous to give up his sleeping bench, and to use purchased bottled water in such a magnanimous manner. Two machinations are now being played out at the same time. the divide and distract maneuver. The navigator realises that her bag has been manipulated around behind her back, retrieves it, realises that it’s rather light. The purse is missing. It magically re-materialises in the pick-pocket’s hand, she hands it back and they disappear.

It’s annoying to get caught in such an amateur scam, to be marked as a sap, a suitable target, when you make an effort to blend in. At the same time, pleased that our security precautions have proven effective. They got nothing. We, on the other hand got a story and two pseudo parrot pooped shirts. That stink. We’ve also got 27 hours of cooped up, air-conditioned travel with a vague, clinging smell-memory that’s going to linger. Is it me, or the great unwashed across the isle?

It’s later, piecing together the sequence of events, that I remember to give thanks to our guardian angel. Was it luck, divine intervention or just good travel management?

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It seems a strange fact, with the exception of a certain international frontier, I’ve not managed to misplace the significant other; that is until we’re within the last kilometre of another adoptive home. I get caught behind some traffic and a driver who asks if I’m going far?…no, just home. The Navigator escapes. For some reason she reverts to ‘Brit think’, a condition epitomised by orderly queuing, a defence of personal space and an adherence to San Isidro’s one-way traffic system. I, on the other hand, am inappropriate, forgetful, don’t see, couldn’t care less, nobody ever does. Contrarily, I rat run the wrong way, and as a consequence I arrive back at the flat first. There to wait, there to watch a minor vignette. The preening ‘cock sparrow’.

Adonis in a fig leaf of green Speedos. A polished, sculpted exhibition of summer’s body tanning, an egotistical product of weights and pills, a narcissus that’s escaped from the iron pumping room from across the street. Into his wind-down stretches in the cool of the later afternoon, a glistening display that the aristocratic matriarchs and elegant grand-dams who frequent the cobbled and leafy suburb, studiously ignore. The white-smocked schoolgirls just giggle.

My outer eye amuses to this immodesty of stranded beach porn, whilst my brain eye, involuntarily superimposes another mental image, an overlaid transparency that lies behind me, up on an Andean highland. It’s of a dark, weather-wrinkled Qechuan farmer, shouldering the burden of a wooden plough, his ancient wife leading a brace of oxen out to their potato patch. Both men are labourers; one for personal pleasure the other for subsistence necessity. A dichotomy of images. An apt summation for our journey: One continent. Two worlds.

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That fiend friend. That providor of succor and angst. Do I want you to cool or push, to blast midges or clear mists, to costruct cloudscapes or build storm cells? You, who have too many prods for controlling my moods.

Gone today are the winds out of a polar southern ocean, with their promise of cool nights and spring tides, of blessed relief and Pampero. Come are the predicted winds from a northern interior. The tang of river and jungle, the humid rot of recycled vegetable.

Yesterday we rode the seashore on compacted sand. Slaloming through distractions and hazards. The parade of derrières and fortification of traps. The fashion is for thong, the tradition for moats. You help your children to dig a hole then encourage them to use a toddler sized bucket to fill it with sea water. The distance and porosity make for a near perfect perpetual activity, leaving you free to start the holiday novel. Today, same place, same time, no sand. There’s little tidal range, but a gale pushing an ocean’s quart into a river’s pint, that makes for a very different shoreline. Today’s ride will have to take a different route and collect some different, telling wall art.

Wind. It’s an ever present component of Uruguayan weather. Rare are the days without it’s effect or presence; taking it’s instructions from either a hypercontinental north or a maritime oceanic south. Even in the utter silence of deep night, the wind memory in an ocean swell, thunders on the shore. Wind; a story and an image.

We’ve ridden north up the Uruguayan Atlantic coast as far as the Devil’s Point, close to the Brazilian border, ridden into a hot humid wind that is tolerable on a daytime bike, that leaves nighttimes to a slick of sweat, for any fickle wind refuses to enter the tent. Yet camping is still an Uruguayan activity, and the locals have some tricks to teach us.

Entering the campground in front of us is an aged Fiat500, whose bubble car effect has been inflated with the roof adornments of four deck chairs, two mattresses and a sail’s worth of tarpaulin. Then to help tether it onto the asphalt, there’s an overcapacity of occupants. It’s holiday season so the grounds are busy, yet everybody congregates on the west side or coagulates in a clannish clump under the shade thrown by the tall pine trees in the middle. Which leave a vacant east side and our first lesson. The sun rises in the east, ergo, mornings and you’re going to be evicted quickly. Latino campers are not early birds. Fact is, we can turn this trait to our advantage, the early bird maybe doesn’t catch the worm but it does get a quiet night.

Lesson number two comes a little later. To encourage some through draft we pitched in a more exposed site and then omitted to storm guy. Big mistake. We weren’t alone in our omission.

The omens have all been there. A weather system with several days of hot northerly winds that gets broken by a cold front coming from an active low moving out of the polar south. Classic Pampero conditions. Today didn’t disappoint. Only we simply couldn’t see it’s apparition or progress for the trees. The squall line rages in from leeward, the first indicator, the rush of noise through the tree tops, then the small calibre assault of pine needles and a bombard of cones. The temperature drops five degrees in moments. Tents are imploding, sunshades are wrapped around trunks, kit tumbleweeds across the ground. Then the rain arrives. Sheets of rain. Ten minutes later the violence has passed and we’re left to a wet afternoon. Only the promised “blessed relief” from the humidity is yet to arrive. We will catch and watch a further five Pamperos over the next three days before the temperature drops a remarkable twenty degrees centigrade and that unpurchasable commodity: a full night’s sleep descends.

What does fascinate me, is the equanimity with which the Uruguayan camping family tackle the aftermath. There’s no panic, no frustration, no tantrums. And yet all their bedding is exposed to the elements, polybags have long flown north, their inflated beds are threatening to follow, and now all their illicit kit is on display. Along with being fingerprinted at check-in, we were armed with the commandant’s commandments. Amongst which was; thou shalt not use fridges or fans. Yet, as I wander over to the ablutions, each encampment has these very goods exposed by the storm. I’m jealous, we could have used a punkah waller last night.

I wouldn’t ordinarily use that vacuous axiom if I hadn’t first spotted it on the back of a local car: “Keep Calm and Carry on”, to which could be appended: “it’s happened before, it’ll happen again”.

Our next storm watch had more of a voyeuristic element. Perched ringside like the Victorian grandees at a Crimean battle. A grandstand view. The Pamperos are lined up along the horizon, prow to stern, an armada advancing. Now, with the aid of a scale afforded by the thirty-storied condominiums of Punta del Este, we get an idea of how massive, how quickly these storm cells can move. I’m standing in silence, the sea in front, a dead leaden swell, yet two bus stances away, the beach guard’s flag poles are bow bent, and the sea has burst into a boisterous upheaval.

Wind. For once, I can see you but you can’t feel me.

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Fact: eighty per cent are grass fed and they vaccinate for Foot and Mouth disease.

New Zealand might have that oft-quoted animal to population statistic, but on a carcase weight ratio, the Uruguayan cow wins easily. Three million caves born, two point eight million killed. Fact is, there’s an awful lot of offal in Uruguay.

“Anybody for tripe and onions in white sauce?”

These cows can’t blow their own trumpets, restricted as they are to a burp of methane. Yet their migrationary history is worth telling. Like rabbits in Australia, possums in New Zealand, those ‘introduced improvements’ are mere euphemisms for aristocratic sports hunting. A herd of one hundred cows, and presumably some bulls were landed on the banks of the Rio Uruguay, by the then governor of Paraguay in 1611. They went feral, went wild, went forth and multiplied. Which leads to the speculation: who or what was the loser in this equation?

A century later, the small indigenous human population had been eradicated and the cow was being hunted by the gaucho for her skin. The valueless carcase left to rot. The Anglo-Argentine author; W H Hudson, writing about his youth in the 1860s, tells the tale of his elopement to Uruguay, and his necessary quest for employment. He is robbed of his pony and tackle and has to cross the open Pampa on foot. On encountering a bull, he feigns death, is hoofed and prodded, knowing that to show any semblance of being a living horseless human, would result in a fatal goring. Bos taurus would have perceived the man-horse as a single entity, in much the way as the indigenous locals understood the anhialitic conquistadores. Brutal beasts, that even today, haven’t long been introduced to historical domesticity.

With all this Wikihistory and collation of statistic, you might have assumed that we would be slaloming flop, fording slurry. Yet the truth is, these herds when you do eventually spot them, are mustered sun-sheltering in the deep shade of gum trees. Or the more incongruous sight of Herefords grazing through palm trees. These pastures are not the bucolics of English imagination, nor the monoculture of intensive rye grasses of popular reality, force fed on prills of Nitram34. At first glance and with a euro-agro prejudiced eye they appear as rank rough scrub. Look closer and there’s the slow die back of winter fodder grasses, the new summer herbage breaking through. Wet corners still grow threshes, teasels and thistles, still harbouring a diversity of herb, fauna and mosquitoes. This is a naturally evolved permanent pasture that is still peppered and speckled with wild flowers. This is natural grassland. Only one that’s under threat of the plough and the soya bean.

When we do come on a grazing herd closer to the road, they’re skittish, easily spooked, flinging their tails to the wind and taking to their heels. Quickly finding cover and camouflage. It’s easier to spot their caracatures adorning roadside hoardings, pop bottles and as corralled statues in art galleries and on highway roundabouts. Easier to find their slaughtered produce with a final statistic. Over three quarters of all Uruguayan beef doesn’t come in styrofoam tray, but out of a real butcher’s shop.

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Following the last exercise, the brain has started recalling other moments:

Standing in line in São Paulo airport to get our boarding passes for the flight to Buenos Aires. There were 5 folk in front of us. The process took one and a half hours. Just as well the layover was 8 hours. São Paulo is not a recommended transit hub.

No surprise, then, when the bags did not arrive in BA at the same time as us. But hey, that meant someone else had to carry them while we hopped on the bus into town with just hand baggage 🙂

Walking miles across Asuncion to the Apple store to get a connector to transfer photos from the memory card to the iPad. We had one, but it had disappeared – reckoned we’d left it in BA. It did turn up sometime later, in a safe place in my barbag. You really wouldn’t think that we could lose stuff among the tailored kit we carry. Anyone need an SD to iPad connector?

Discovering that the iPad always knows where it is – even without a mobile or wifi connection. Scary. Makes for lazy map reading.

Seeing toucans flying overhead in southeast Bolivia

Riding past Potosi airport on our way to Sucre. At 3936m, not quite as high as La Paz which is at 4061m. Did you know that the airport code for La Paz is LPB?

Watching the marching bands in Potosi, and not quite believing my eyes as the girl bands marched past, with white gloves, brass and drums, on the steep cobbled streets in stiletto-heeled boots.

Discovering the unexpectedly peaceful order of Sucre bus terminal.

Meeting no fewer than 8 other long-distance cyclists staying at the Hotel Avenida in Uyuni at the same time as us. All in pairs, from France, UK, Japan, Germany.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour when we discovered the state of the roads on the west side of the Salar de Uyuni – and taking a different route to Chile.

Spotting a rhea with 19 babies in tow.

Gaping at the huge sand dune that resides between the town of Iquique and the cliffs at the edge of the coastal range behind the town.

Remembering the relief at the clinic when the credit card took the hit of 2,000,000 Chilean pesos without any argument…

Buying beach clothes. A new experience!

Overcoming terrors from childhood, and actually swimming in the sea. And I love it! Not up to playing in the waves yet, but working on it.

Riding my bike on the beach. So wicked!

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Our journey in South America has been a bit different this time. Not that every journey hasn’t been different; just that this one has included rather more ‘off-bike’ adventures than previously. Over the last wee while, I have been aware that my day to day recollections have been very much of the latter part of the journey, and the earlier part seemed to have retreated, almost like memories from earlier years. So, while pedalling a few days ago, I set my brain to recall what we’d been up to since October. It has been a fascinating exercise. I know The Chronicler has written a good number of stories, but I needed to review from my perspective too, lest some of the fun/challenging/exceptional experiences faded away. So, here we go – back to the start of October….

Arriving at Edinburgh airport 8 hours before our 6am flight, to hang out, perchance to sleep. Along with a whole raft of other (younger) travellers with the same idea. Hang out – yes. Sleep – no. Fire alarm testing, and the police officer who came round at around 3am to check documents, telling us that he would be getting an hotel ahead of his early morning holiday flight. The cost of an early morning flight may be low, but by the time you have added the price of an airport hotel and/or taxi/shuttle, you could have upgraded to Business Class.

Arriving in BA to realise that your fellow passengers have been generous with their germs. Perhaps fortunate that we couldn’t get tickets for the train until a week after we arrived.

Building a new front wheel for Chris – which is still running true at the end of the trip.

Taking the long distance Tucuman train; arriving in the station to join a long line of travellers heading on to Platform 8 at Retiro Station. Platform 8 is not visible from any of the public areas of the station – you have to go though the gate, up Platform 7 for some distance before checking the bikes in with the guards then turning through a small archway to find the long train, carriages labelled with perpendicular boards: Primero, Pullman, Turista. So unlikely and unexpected, you would swear you had arrived at Platform 8 and 3/4. The price? £2, for 18 hours journey time.

Joining Alison on the Operation Smile mission in Asuncion, Parguay. Seeing the well-oiled machine that is this volunteer mission. Having the honour of watching a skilled surgeon change a little girl’s life forever in just 45 minutes.

Staying in some curious accommodations in lowland Bolivia – including a room that was also the store room for the attached bar.

Experimenting wih our new bivi bags to sleep in the open.

Climbing back to Potosi, without any of the altitude problems we experienced the last time.

Sleeping in the open on the Salar de Uyuni, with uninterrupted views of the sunset, sunrise and full moon.

Sleeping in a windowless cell because all the hotels were full of road workers, for the vast sum of £2.50 for the night.

Cycling past several kilometres of waiting trucks at the Bolivia-Chile border, in the shadow of snow-topped volcanoes and lakes of flamingoes.

Riding for 6 weeks at altitudes of around 4000m

Having to spend 2 nights in the delightful wee town of Putre, Chile, just over the border, because there were no ‘cambio’ facilities at the border and the one ATM in town did not want to know any of our cards – and the landlady really didn’t want our dollars.

Riding the spectacular road down to the coast, through the desert and into the valley oasis.

Enjoying the fitness that comes from having cycled for so long at high altitude.

The wonderful folk who looked after me after the accident – the corporal from the army truck who picket me up, the campsite owner who called a taxi for us, the taxi driver who was keen to use his English, the medical staff and both the casualty hospital and the clinic, as well as in the Sanatorio in Maldonado and the trauma clinic in Buenos Aires. And especially Chris.

The amazing view from my 5th floor hospital room.

How hard it was to sit on the bus to Santiago, going through the fantastic desert scenery that was to have been our next adventure.

Then, the bus ride up and over the Andes, counting the hairpin bends, marvelling at the tunnel at the top – and planning ‘next time’.

The relief of arriving back at the flat in Buenos Aires after the three-night journey from Iquique with two packed bikes and one able bod.

The joy of arriving at the peaceful lakeside house in Punta del Este, Uruguay, to join Richard and Alison.

The week spent in Montevideo, walking miles all over the city.

Finally collecting the abandoned bikes from Buenos Aires and returning to tranquil Uruguay to re-start our bicycle adventures.

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Familiarity breeds contempt.

The Navigator has elicited the answer that she had hoped, angled for. That her elbow, it’s associated tendons and muscles would need exercise. The recommendation is to “git on yer bike”, or at least it’s Sanish equivalent. As to whether the patient’s and the consultant’s concept of cycling are same is open to debate.

So with this ringing, if fraudulently acquired endorsement, we head back over the river to collect our neglected bikes. Four weeks ‘sin bici’, the only substitute a back-pedal beach bike whose sole aim is to leave me floundering in the middle of the next junction. It’s the longest either of us have gone in a decade, without a dose of cyclo-endorphins to cancel the encroaching road fears. With time the physical body repairs, with time the psychological damage encroaches. The spectres magnify, multiply and mutate, the devil-traffic grows horns and all the accumulated scenarios arrive in the middle of the night.

We have a choice of public transports for a shift between the two capitals. Three ferry lines, two airports or one bus route. We’ve frequented two of them, with increasing frequency. To the extent that ‘familiar travel has morphed towards ‘contemptible commute’. It’s a condition that needs to be avoided, for it can only lead to the death of adventure cycling.

This time we opt for the overnight bus, only because the alternatives are fully booked. With small hand luggage and no bike, there’s little angst. You don’t even have to surrender your passport to the conductor, who would then process you through the frontier, only returning it after the bus was several kilometres down the road. A most disconcerting experience, an ‘interesting’ quirk, from a previous occasion. This time everybody has to transit the frontier on foot, this season’s quirk being that we don’t seem to collect an exit stamp. There was a time when this might have distressed us, now the Navigator is happy not to lose frankable space in a passport that is running out of page but not date.

There’s something particular to a frontier in the middle of the night. The silhouetted cutouts of parked-up, gumtree-loaded timber trucks, the familiar smell of the empty cattle transports. The night shift sleepy officials more interested in the TV broadcasted basketball; the soft clouds of dark time bugs suiciding in the stark glare of floodlights and heavy humid night. The zombie’d passengers roused from that broken bus-sleep, our individuality surrendered to the system, shuffling through bureaucracy. Or the frustrated conductor trying to find that one inevitable missing customer; which was why the bus companies liked the old system, no opportunity for one of the corralled herd to go missing.

The return trip is by our favoured public transport method. A ferry. Only the idiosyncracies of boat travel seem to be under attack, being subsumed by the ethos of aeroplane. There’s that recurring idea that flying with a member of the Catholic clergy, particularly a nun, will ensure a safe arrival. So to be on the newest, and what they claim to be the world’s fastest ferry, named for the latest pontiff, who of course is Argentine, should make for an uneventful sailing. And yet all the visual indicators suggest flying rather than cruising. From the serried ranks of economy class seats with their fold down tables to the soporific view of a placid sea carried by a plasma screen TV, that will soon convert to a continuous loop of duty-free adverts. Cocooned or enprisoned? Airconditioned, hermetically sealed and force-fed a graveyard of bronchial pathogens. For there are no windows, no external stimulus, even the catamaran’s vibrations suggest air travel. Then for the final confirmation: Nobody pays any attention to the safety announcements.

Yet this is South American travel, there has to be an interesting quirk. Some small spark to lift ius out of the mundane and away from the commute.

The primary reason for enjoying ship travel, is the fact that we can remain in control of our bikes. We get to load them. They stay on their inflated tyres, complete with their luggage and, ergo, are easily shifted. A novel concept for many carriers. We’ve ridden the loading ramp, parked up, strapped down, when we’re presented with, what might be mistaken for sick bags. A prophetic anticipation of a stormy crossing? The heavy, ominous blue-black clouds were only helping to emphasise the idea. Only the puke pokes transpire to be a pair of white Tyvec bootees. Everybody is wearing them. A Maoist levelling for the proletariat? No it’s a nice new boat that is decked from prow to stern in duck egg blue carpet. Who ‘specs’ carpeting on a boat? But then any references to seafaring have long since been removed.

Lost are the pleasures of a ferry crossing. To prop yourself against the rail and gaze absently at the soporific, repetitive roll of waves that flow along the hull. To feel the gradual change in motion as a boat moves from river to ocean. To let the old shore recede and the new shore creep over the horizon. To have that slow introduction to a new place. To not be in a hurry. To travel non-airline.

Arriving back in Montevideo, all has not been emasculated. The car deck is open to the rear, and we, as the first to disembark get a grandstand view of the docking. And that longed for introduction. Only today it’s a monochrome of Soviet grey. From the naval corvettes to the skeletal cranes, from the laid up fishing fleet to the threatening sky. The ominous concrete edifice of the customs house only complements the feeling. Which is a shame as this port and this capital city is one of the simplest to navigate out of on a bike. Turn right at the lights, a few moments and you’re on a cycle lane cum Costanera all the way out to beyond the suburbs. Perfect re-introductions, rehabilitations for two anxious cyclists who’ve been deprived of endorphins and subjected to the subconscious ghosts of devil-traffic.

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This is an intimation that tomorrow is the start of the close season for Haggis Hunting.

Closed normally until the final day of November. Although I keep hearing recurring rumours that the ‘First Minister’ intends legislating to extend the ‘hunt’ by opening next year’s season on the 14th September. A one-off measure to help either distract or complement any other extenuating business that might be pertinent on that date. It would appear to be a piece of legislation that is already creating some interest overseas. Without fail, we have been questioned about it by several interested parties. The Anglo-Argentines. A Walloon cyclist from Belgium. A Catalonian traveler from Spain and a Bavarian trucking couple from Germany. Even a Portland family from Oregon ask. Maybe there’s a cessationist movement in the Pacific north west? The enquiry comes at the close of a conversation, always taking the same agenda; no definite article; “What’s Scotland going to do?” It’s rather heartening to realise that such a minor, curious beastie can raise so much international interest.

The major question, if the season were to be extended, is: Will the Scottish government introduce border controls on the export of frozen carcasses, and tariffs to prevent the importation of cheap foreign, ie, English imitations? If so, will these be traded in Anglo-Sterling or Scotii-Groats? The latter being, initially, of greater value, simply for it’s short lived curiosity value and that no other currency would entertain it’s toxic taint. The more minor questions of the Haggis’ status within any European marketing organisation and it’s views on foreign policy will be concluded at another time.

Thoughts on a date. Ruminations on a meat pudding that has it’s own national day, all because an eighteenth century poet penned a grace, an appreciation in it’s praise. Were it to happen today, it would take the form of a survey and the cynics in our midst would be questioning who the sponsors were; in all probability the ‘Offal Meat Traders Association’.’

Another culinary delight, another artisanal speciality, another concoction that masks decaying, rancid, uneatable produce. Painch, Tripe or Thairm. The scrapings from the bottom of a 19th century salt barrel or the drawer at the back of a 21st century fridge. Spaghetti-bog, Irish stew, Stone soup. Every nation has it’s equivalent. Yet only the Scots would describe their national dish as having a ‘fair, full and jolly face’, as well as: ‘buttocks like a distant hillock’.

So in the interests of national pride and the fact that I’m an ex-pat abroad, I’ll attempt to be more Caledonian that the Scot-at-Home. Only we’re not in Canada, Australia or ‘an ex-pink bit’. There’s little demand for ‘the great chieftain of the pudding race’ on a Latino butcher’s slab. We’ll just have to settle for the local equivalent. And there in lies my problem.

Uruguayans eat beef. Fifty- three kilograms for each man, woman and child. The Beefs are on the hoof year round. So there’s little call for a salt barrel. No scrapings. No cereal enhanced, slaughterhouse rendered, intestinal stuffed, sausage-like substance. So what happens to the leftovers? Well, there’s always those dogs.

Hunting a Haggis Beyond the Pale

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Pictures should be self explanatory, the story self evident from the depiction. Ordinarily I wouldn’t use this one. However a few facts might help to show what an amazing weather feature is coming towards us. Those are not cloud shrouded mountains ranged across the horizon. This is Uruguay, a country of hills but no Andean watersheds, despite the plethora of ‘cerros’ on a map. This is a storm front, twenty thousand feet of turbulent weather. A blue black wall of roiling trouble. Our road is trekking straight into it’s gob, or more accurately Hades is racing down the road towards us. By the time we start to rise over the next inevitable rolling hill, it’s reared up until it becomes our world, we’re being swallowed into it’s maw. The temperature drops five degrees in twenty seconds and I’ve been blown off the road. Despite the anticipation, the attack is sudden, it’s still a surprise. The gales visiting all the airts of a compass, often all at once. We won’t trust in the gum trees, their shedding branches in confirmation of their reputation as widow makers. The safest place would be a bus shelter, we’ve passed several today, but even Amazon can’t deliver that quickly.

The howling in the fence wire, the raging in the trees, the ear-rending wind clamour fills our reduced, confused space that fills up with swirling spray from the next lumber truck. Then it all stops. The excitement passes and we’re left regurgigated in the silence of a dull wet day and a humidity that could be spread with a spatula. Five minutes later along comes a bus shelter.

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What do you think this place is best for?

So requests the “biggest project in travel”, when what we had asked for was a recommendation, a place to stay in Montevideo, Uruguay, and not to offer our opinion of a minor Scottish suburb.

Ingliston, Edinburgh. Scotland. Home to Britain’s premier agricultural show, a Sunday market; once remembered for it’s roadside inflatable gorilla and an international airport, notable for ‘the terminal that doesn’t terminate there’. The last brought emphatically into focus as we take public transport into the Uruguayan capital. Every bus would appear to detour into the international airport, all for the cost of a few pesos. What a pity that Scotland’s ‘capital tram debacle’ resulted in the rails expiring a couple of miles short of what could have been a ‘gateway’ to inspire national pride.

We follow up on the recommendation, make a booking and then suffer days of further accommodation suggestions. All in places that we hadn’t asked about and all for dates that we are supposedly booked for. I must have a doppelgänger. Such are the repercussions of internet planning. Forward thinking can be, often is, counterproductive. Yet again we’ve succumbed to the notion that as it’s high season holiday Christmas time, everywhere will be booked up. A scenario not particular to The Americas. It’s probably a biblical memory or wishful thinking on the part of all worldwide accommodation providers. Thinking back over all our trips, I would be hard put to count on one hand the number of ‘no rooms at the inn’ that we’ve encountered. You’re more likely to encounter a silent door due to siesta, or find a tourist officer’s recommended campground closed as a result of redevelopment ten years previously.

Now that we’ve been plugged into the traveller aether, connected to a world where everybody’s a critic, the navigator has the exciting prospect of collecting her first badge. “you’re two reviews away from your ‘Reviewer Badge”. Do a few more and you’ll be up graded to ‘specialist: hotels’. She’s back in the Brownies, and Brown Owl reckons she should now try to complete her ‘Stunt Cyclist’ badge.

Returning to that original enquiry; what snippet of information had we inadvertently surrendered, that sponsored such an unlikely request? Montevideo, Ingliston and Paranoia, an unusual triumvirate.

So maybe the answer to that request is similar to the parochial question; “What’s the best thing to come out of Edinburgh?”, to which the provincial ‘weegie’ will reply: “The train to Glasgow”

” Akela, can I get my Joker’s badge now?”

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