We headed for a quick two day visit to Prince Edward Island (PEI). There are two options for getting to PEI from the mainland…you can take a ferry, or you can take the bridge. We were close to the bridge and so opted for that option. Both are free to get to the island, but to get off of the island you have to pay.
On the road again, we drove along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean south of Halifax, through small, authentic fishing villages like Terrence Bay, before making our way to the touristic Peggy’s Cove. We had hoped to free camp at the visitor’s centre, but were told it was not allowed, so we continued on to the nearby ocean front King Neptune Campground. We entered the registration office/home of the owner, where Derek greeted the man by saying, “And so you must be King Neptune!” (which got quite a laugh from Granny in the corner). We then were shocked to hear that our camping spot for the night was going to cost $40. Pricey by Canadian standards, super pricey compared to what we had been paying in South America….not all is perfect about being back in Canada or maybe Derek just had to pay special price!
We were pleased when Piper walked casually into her kennel for the short flight from Toronto to Halifax (a cookie really does go a long way with her), and after a night in a hotel near the airport outside of Halifax, we taxied into the city and to our home for the next week, a room in a shared Airbnb house in central Halifax.
Buenos Aires is often referred to as “the Paris of South America”. It is a multicultural city, full of parrillas (steak house), red wine, weekend ferias (craft/antique fairs), tango dancers and magnificent buildings.
We had booked a “roof-top cabin” in the historic centre of Montevideo for a week. We tried to pack light, but we were going to be without our truck for about 7.5 weeks, so the bags ended up being pretty heavy, despite our best efforts. We struggled with our bags and Piper through the streets of Montevideo, quickly overheating in the midday sun. We arrived at our building, hauled our bags up two interior flights of stairs and were led to an outdoor, circular, metal stairway that would lead us to the roof and our accommodations. We certainly did not anticipate the drama that was about to unfold.
All those hours spent weaving our way through narrow streets in pueblos in Mexico, along barely wide enough “roads” that hung off of cliffs in Peru, through four lane city highways packed six cars wide….they have really paid off. After partly airing down the tires and rear suspension to meet the height limitations of the container, Derek, without even breaking a sweat, expertly backed Seymour into a glove tight shipping container, with nary a scratch nor a dent. All this without the use of side mirrors (they were folded in so that Seymour would fit), nor rearview mirror, as all you see when you look in it is our camper. There was a man in the container, behind the truck, shouting instructions to Derek, in Spanish…but Derek could neither see nor hear the man. But with the help of another worker outside of the container, Seymour officially got stuffed.
We had an appointment to load the truck into a container in the port of Montevideo for the 8th of April, so we had more than 2 weeks to fill. We had no real plan, other than that we knew we would have a week to explore Montevideo after the truck went into the container, so we started driving east, passing through the city of Montevideo and found some water front camping.
We took a few days to drive south from Iguazú to the border town of Gualeguaychu, where we once again went through the process of getting Piper’s paper work in order before driving Seymour over a bridge and into his last South American country of the trip. We arrived in Uruguay, resupplied our fridge (at remarkably high prices!), and made our way to Colonia del Sacramento.
When we decided that we would ship the truck back to Canada from Uruguay, we were not sure if we would have time to make it all the way to Iguazú Falls, some 4,300 kilometres north of Ushuaia, and about 1,300 kilometres north of Buenos Aires. But we were sure going to try, and WOW, are we glad that we got to see these falls, the largest waterfall system in the world.