Just got the exit stamp from Uruguay, going to the Brazil­ian side… who knows where!

We even­tu­ally ended up in La Paloma, a small city with gor­geous beaches. Our last stop in Uruguay.

We had decided against tak­ing an inter­na­tional bus to go to Brazil, and there­fore we would have to cross the bor­der by our­selves. This would mean tak­ing a local bus to the bor­der town of Chuy (Uruguay), get our exit stamps at the migracíon, walk to the city of Chuí (Brazil), get our entry stamp and hop on the 12:30 bus to Porto Ale­gre, the clos­est city. Of course, we did not know exactly where was the Brazil­ian immi­gra­tion office (we had heard it was 3 km from the actual bor­der). And the 12:30 bus to Porto Ale­gre was our only chance to make it out of the bor­der town… and bor­der towns aren´t gen­er­ally safe nor nice.

To add to the chal­lenge, we were tired. We slept in an hos­tel in La Paloma, no the best one. A tiny room packed 5 bunk beds, the mat­tresses so thin we basi­cally slept on the wood. We had no air-con (but an open win­dow which let the mos­qui­toes in) and when 10 peo­ple sleep in the same room, it got hot, hot, hot. Noisy too.

Oh, and I tripped on the (uneven) pave­ment in Mon­te­v­ideo and have a palm-size bruise and scratch on my right tight. I wasn´t drunk by the way, just wear­ing sandals.

We took the 8:30 bus from La Paloma 1) sleepy 2) anx­ious to make it to Brazil 3) itchy (mos­qui­toes) 4) slightly bleed­ing (my leg). Three hours to go to the bor­der.

The bus dri­ver dropped us off in front of the uruguayan migracíon wish­ing us ¨buena suerte¨. We showed up at the booth and the offi­cer asked us for our entry card to Uruguay. I didn´t remem­ber fill­ing out any­thing, and we started to freak out. Turned out our entry card had been gen­er­ated auto­mat­i­cally when we had bought our boat ticket to cross from Buenos Aires, and was there­fore attached to the boat ticket. We digged into our bags and luck­ily, we had not thrown it away yet. Phew! We had no idea it was an immi­gra­tion entry card.

We took a taxi to the brazil­ian immi­gra­tion office, which we were told was 3 km away. But it turned out it was closed and had moved to another loca­tion… 20 km fur­ther. How­ever, a brazil­ian offi­cial told us that if we bought a bus ticket to Porto Ale­gre, the bus would stop at the migracíon for us to get our entry stamp.

We took a taxi back down­town, to the bus sta­tion. We did not have enough Pesos to buy the bus ticket to Feng ran to the bank to get some Reais. Lucky us, Brazil is one hour behind Uruguay, oth­er­wise we would have missed the bus…

We bought and tick­ets and were told we actu­ally had to first take a local bus to the immi­gra­tion office, then hop on the actual Porto Ale­gre bus, which would wait for us. Sure…

We sat on a packed local bus for 20 min­utes. We were pick­ing up pas­sen­gers, drop­ping off some, tak­ing detours and the immi­gra­tion office was nowhere to be found. After a while, I got up to ask the dri­ver: ¨I will tell you when we get there¨. Okay.

In front of the Brazil­ian migracíon… far far fur­ther than we thought!

Even­tu­ally, the bus emp­tied and we were 5 grin­gos left. The dri­ver told us to stay in the bus, and we drove some more… to a bus depot.

¨Every­body gets off! For the immi­gra­tion office, walk two blocks that way, turn left, then right, and then you will see another street. Well, it´s not that one, but the next on the right.¨ What the fuck? ¨Oh¨, the dri­ver added, ¨hurry up because you have to take the Porto Ale­gre bus at 1:00 pm… from the other sta­tion¨.

Are you fuck­ing kid­ding me? Curs­ing and sweat­ing, we picked up our back­packs and started to walk along a dirt road, in the mid­dle of nowhere, under the 40C heat.

We even­tu­ally found our way and the immi­gra­tion, in a tiny house which looked like every other bloody house. The offi­cer stared at our pass­port for what seemed half an hour but we get our entry stamp. It was 12:50, and we rushed back to the bus ter­mi­nal, a good 20 min­utes walk from there. On the road, again…

Related posts:

1. Bor­der Cross­ing — Panamá To Costa Rica
2. Brazil­ian Car­naval In Paraty (1)
3. Brazil­ian Car­naval In Paraty (2)
4. Eas­ing Into Brazil­ian Culture
5. Perú To Bolivia