Quick stop in Uruguay

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Leaving Buenos Aires in the summer is a very difficult task. It seems straight after New Years everyone packs a duffel bag and heads in droves to the beach. Something we hadn´t planned for. We had spent the whole day before trying to buy ferry tickets to go from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It was mayhem.

The ferry Terminal at 8 in the morning was absolute chaos there were lines going in every direction. We joined one line closest to the door and after about 15mins of standing there the old woman next to us suddenly turns around and started accusing us of jumping the line. I think everyone saw the opportunity of moving up two spaces so joined in on the argument. After a lot of back and forth we took off totally pissed and made our ways to another much nicer line.
Finally we got our bags checked at 9am the same time the boat was scheduled to leave. However we weren´t ready to board just yet as we had to make our way to another line for immigration that seriously went from inside the building out and around 2 parking lots. CRAZY.
Anyways we got through immigration and actually managed to board the boat 6 people in front of the crazy old bat who threw us out of the line. I of course couldn´t let the opportunity pass so gave her a quick smile and wave as we got on. The boat finally left a little after 10.
Arriving in Colonia we went through the same chaos to get off. Our first stop here however was to quickly get bus tickets to Montevideo the capital of Uruguay. Thankfully that was easy enough so we got to relax for a few hours and walk around the town. Colonia Del Sacramento is an old Portuguese town listed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site and is home to some amazing colonial architecture. From Colonia we took the bus to Montevideo where we ended up staying two nights trying to figure out how to get back in to Brazil.

Our original plan had been to leave Montevideo and head up the coast into Brasil stopping off in Floripa and spending our last three days on the beach before heading back to Rio to catch our flight. Easier said than done. Everyone else seemed to have the same plan. Every bus company from Montevideo to any major Brazilian city was booked out for days. We of course were panicking as we were now looking at barely getting back to Rio for our flight home. In the end we decided to chance our luck and get a bus to the Brazil/Uruguay border town of Chui and hopefully see if could make our connection there into Brazil since it would be less busy.

We don´t really have much to say about Montevideo. It was a pretty typical large city. Very laid back. Easy to walk around. With typical Jen and John luck we again arrived on a national holiday and the entire city was shutdown. Since everything was shut our only real highlight was when we got kicked out of the hostel because they were booked up and I got to use my free Sheraton points to get us a free night at the Sheraton Montevideo. It was luxury for a night!

Anyways, the rest of that trip was pretty uneventful. We got the bus out to Chui where were ceremoniously dumped by the bus driver at immigration (they are supposed to wait for you and then continue the journey). This bus driver had other plans and left us about 3km outside of town. Fortunately the Uruguayan immigration officials were the nicest immigration officials we´d ever met! They not only called us a cab but bitched about the bus driver with us too!

Anyways, finally got to Chui and luck was on our side. There was a bus direct to Porto Alegre,Brasil and then we were able to get another bus the next morning to Floripa. So, we´re now back on the beach!!! One more day to go and we head back home...

Will send off one more of these with final photos soon! Hope everyone is well! Also, apologies for any grammatical errors in all of these we´ve got no spell check...

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Comments

[Marcela]

Uruguaya
I used to play on that beach as a baby!!

[Marcela]

Uruguaya
I meant, I used to play on that waterfront!!