0244 Gramado to Rio Grande

8^TH April 2015 

From the mountains to the sea

After breakfast and packing up, and a quick visit into the rabbit infested hotel lobby to get my blog up to date and do the banking from home (yes, some things never change !), I hit the road out of Gramado.  The first couple of hours down towards Porto Alegre were winding and slow, through little country villages – Many of which were seemingly of German origin, as well as a number of German style breweries advertising their brews. 

Once we were past Puerto Alegre we were out of the hills, and were able to pick up a bit of speed – Which was fortunate because otherwise I wasn’t going to make the 450 kms to Rio Grande and the next camp site.  The speed cameras and pedagio (toll booths in Portuguese) did their best to keep my average speeds down low, but at least in between these things we were making some progress. 

We crossed a number of sizable waterways, and then, as we neared Pelotas, we started to get road works where they held us up for up to 10 or 15 minutes at a time.  Someone was determined to make sure I would be driving in the dark tonight – Something I seriously try to avoid over here.   Driving south, there were now increasing numbers of grain silos by the road – This was obviously getting into a major crop growing area on the flat plains surrounding the road. 

As the sun was setting, I still had some 25 kms to go to the targeted campsite, and I was getting pretty weary.  Then suddenly, I saw a camping sign pointing left, and a big motorhome parked in an area by the road !  I was still some way short of my targeted camp site but quickly decided this was perfect – Someone was obviously looking out for me !  So I dove into the camp site, once again the only one in there (the big motorhome is a local one that is kept parked there because the owners don’t have storage space at their house), and after a quick meal I was heading for bed.  Even had a weak wifi in the camp site which enabled me to get a couple of emails.  I was back down near the sea, was back into shorts again, and relieved to have found a place to stop before it got totally dark.

Pics here :-  https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0244GramadoToRioGrande?authkey=Gv1sRgCNau2pPSyvLZwgE#