After a cold and very windy night with gusts reaching 60km/hr and temperature dropping to 0 degrees, we woke up and delayed getting out of the warm sleeping bag. We had to shelter in the picnic areas to light the gas stove and make breakfast. As soon as Andrew finished his breakfast his stomach cramps were back abd we think it may have been something in the new cereal we had bought that caused it. We started packing up and my nose started running and I could feel getting a cold with sore joints and muscle aches. Packing everything up took longer than normal as we were both slightly under the weather and we left only at 3:00pm. We only had 120km to ride back on Ruta 43 the way we came and then north on Ruta 5. We had booked a place through booking.com that said it had an independent room and garage. I received confirmation that it was booked and messaged with our estimated arrival time but got no reply before we left.

The ride was cold and we had all our liners and warm clothes packed away, but we wore everything we had including the wet weather gear which kept the wind out and we were not too cold. When we arrived at the address in Tacuarembó just on sunset, we could not see anyone and we messaged that we had arrived – across the street a woman came and asked what we were loooking for and I showed her and she pointed at a hostel down the road but I showed her what we booked – she asked for the phone number and she had it in her phone and rang and a woman and her daughter came out and the daughter spoke some English saying that they are not currently renting out that room and we have to go find another place 😡 and she would help us if there was no room at the hostel down the street- I said that I had confirmation from booking.com but she was adamant that they were not offering the advertised accommodation😡😡. I walked down the street to the hostel Bea and a lovely guy said that he had a room for us and he would take us to a place around the corner for secure parking of the bikes for an extra fee and we can pay him by credit card – the room was very basic but it was fine for one night. The host, whose name was Jesus, was originally from Cuba and he showed us where we could get dinner and we walked there and had nice pizza before getting back to the room. By now my nose was running like a tap and I was sitting up all night and could not sleep and worked on the big blog from Montevideo – half way through uploading pictures they would no longer upload and I eventually worked out that I had exceeded the allowed GB space and had to upgrade my subscription and pay for more – then I could finished the blog and took some Panadol at 4:30am and got 3 hours sleep.