Crossing borders

As mentioned crossing the brazilian border indeed was not as easy as hoped. We did the best we could to find the right way of doing so by asking a lot of people a lot of questions and with the collected information we thought to be prepared to try it.

The problems about crossing this border at this place are that the uruguayan and the brazilian immigration offices where you get the exit (Uruguay) and the entry (Brazil) stamps are far away from each other with a town called Chuy between them.

From Punta del Diablo we tried to catch the same bus as our german friend, and with help of the hostel staff via phone we found out that we had to go to Chuy to an office to get our tickets and jump on the bus, while our german friend was supposed to wait at a random kilometer mark somewhere along the highway near Punta del Diablo (at 23:30).

As told we took the bus to Chuy and told the driver to stop at the uruguayan immigration before Chuy to get our passports stamped with the exit stamps. This worked great and we were confident when we approached Chuy, to find our office in a little town (that's what the locals have told us). But Chuy isn't small and the office was just another travel agency so we hurried through the streets with our backpacks just to find the office 10 mins before closing.

So we got our tickets and thought we could spend the 7 hrs until the bus picks us up at the local bus terminal but then we were lucky enough to ask at the office where the pick up will be. Here we were told to walk back about 1km to the uruguayan immigration and to wait there because the bus doesn't even come to Chuy.

So we spent 5hrs in the park in Chuy and walked back at around 22:00. While arriving at the immigration we were told that our bus wouldn't come before 01:00 and not at 23:55 as we were told in the travel agency.

Precisely at 01:00 the bus did arrive and we were happy to see our friend smiling at us through the window (he didn't wait at the kilometer mark, he went back to the next bigger junction, afraid of the trucks passing him with 100km/h in the dark in the middle if nowhere). At the brazilian border we saw the lady from the bus personel walking away with our passports while the bus drove off and didn't know if we will ever see them again, but we just drove to a gas station to fill up the tank...

After all it would've been smarter to buy the ticket in Montevideo already and leave the staff in the bus deal with all the formalities. We wanted to share this story to help our fellow travellers dealing with the same situation.