Now we dealt with the first days of bad weather. After a nice 70 km ride through Uruguay, some uphill and downhill, we arrived at the place of Virginia and Magnus.

Both and their kids recently moved from Scandinavia to Carmelo, Uruguay. There they started a life “offgrid” and do a lot of work themselves, e.g. working on the house (container…) and garden. We decided to take a brake of cycling and help them a little while.

It sounded like a very good deal: We give work and take very good vegan food, internet in our tent, a space to camp an a warm shower. What we did not realize: Garden and outside work is much more exhausting than biking. But it also is a lot of fun.

We started rather relaxed. We picked oranges and tangerines from wild trees in the forest, and after lunch and a lot of coffee we shuffled some sand into ditches.

Afterwards, our motivation increased, probably over increased. We started to create new planting space. Therefore we took out bushes with a machete, all between acacias with long spikes (botanist’s footnote: all acacias have spikes). Then, we should remove the roots of the bushes - simply using spades. After two hours of hacking (“poking”), we only managed to remove 10 rootstocks. At the same time, we nearly suffered heat strokes. Hence, we made a short brake in the hammock, before we started to build a roof.

After the roof, we build many other things: A massive swing, digged some more ditches and trenches, removed grass and sod, mixed cement, ate icecream, drank beer and many more things. (Un-)fortunately, we will leave tomorrow. Back to cycling a while!