http://www.odysseyatlas.com/trip/8j2
Greetings from a cyber joint in Chuy, Uruguay. After two days and a total of 30 hours riding buses, I am back to my bike ride.
Monday morning in Foz do Iguacu was rainy. In fact, I nearly drowned riding the two miles from my hotel to the "rodoviaria", or bus station. I had what I had thought was a waterproof windbreaker, but it turned out to be not so waterproof. My saddle bags, luckily, are waterproof. When I got to the rodoviaria, I went into a stall in the bathroom and changed out of my soaking clothes, and then walked the bike out to the platform and dismantled it, removing the front and rear wheels as well as the saddle bags and pedals. I loaded it on the bus, and then had to wait while they rigorously inspected my passport to verify that I had both a Brazilian visa and a valid entry stamp. I asked why, and was told that if I was illegal and immigration caught me in Porto Alegre, they would ask me how I got there. If I told them what bus line I took, the bus line would be fined. Interesting.
At 11;50 AM, I then set off on a 22 hour ride from Foz do Iguacu to Porto Alegre, the capital of the State of Rio Grande do Sul that took me first east to the city of Cascavel, Parana, and then south into towns like Realeza and Pato Branco, then into the State of Santa Catarina, where the biggest town I stopped in was Chapeco, and then into Rio Grande do Sul and, at 10AM Tuesday morning, after spending an hour in a traffic jam outside of Porto Alegre caused by a rather gruesome motorcycle accident, arriving at Porto Alegre´s huge rodoviaria. It was raining when I left Foz, and it was still raining when I arrived in Porto Alegre. In Porto Alegre, I spent eight Reais at baggage storage for them to watch my bike, and then went to the ¨intra-state¨ ticket window and bought a 1PM ticket for Santa Victoria do Palmar, a little town about 15 miles north of the Uruguayan border, and 325 miles south of Porto Alegre. Rodoviarias in big cities in Brazil are like train stations in the US used to be. Colosally busy, they have everything a traveler could want, includeding good restuarants, internet places, the aforementioned baggage storage, and tourist offices. Once I had my ticket, I availed myself of one of the restuarants, then went to my bus company´s "VIP Lounge", where they had newspapers, an internet signal and even a couple of free computers. About half an hour before 1, I retrieved my bike, and at the appointed time loaded it onto my new bus; this time no one even asked to look at my passport, I suppose if I were illegal, it was too late to stop me now.
Another eight hour ride followed, down to the city of Pelotas, and then further down to Santa Vitoria do Palmar, a little town that used to depend on ranching, but now finds itself at the center of a huge wind power generation area. The place is certainly prospering, compared to 4 years ago when I was last here. I rode through the rain to a hotel, then headed out and got an absolutely excellent pizza (good pizza in South America is almost unheard of.) and then returned to my room and passed out, having been awake for most of the previous two days.
This morning, it had stopped raining, but a gale force wind was now blowing out of the southwest. I rode out of town and headed into this wind, and slowly made my way south towards the Uruguayan border. A couple miles before the border, it began to rain in earnest again, luckily for me, I was within a mile of the Brazilian immigration station where I had to stop anyhow to get my passport stamped. That done, I stood there talking to a couple of Policia Federal types for half an hour until the rain stopped, and then rode about a mile south where I had to duck into a Shell station for another 15 minutes to avoid more rain. With all that, it took me over two hours for today´s little ride.
Arriving in Chui (with an I), RS, I found a hotel and then, it having stopped raining, walked half a mile west on Avenida Uruguai, the main drag, to a laundry place (where I insisted that I did NOT want my clothes ironed, only washed) to wash my filthy and soaking wet dirty clothes.
Avenida Uruguay is one way, westbound. Having dropped my clothes, I crossed the street, walked over the center divide, and found myself on Avenida Brasil, which is one way, eastbound. Except I was no longer in Brazil. The center divide is the border between Brazil, on the north and Uruguay on the south. As soon as I stepped onto Avenida Brasil, I was in Uruguay, now in the city of Chuy, (with a Y). I walked back the half a mile, and found an exchange house where I turned $250 into 5,963 Uruguayan Pesos at 23.85 Pesos to the Dollar. Then I walked to a gas station, which had no cars at the pumps; gasoline in Uruguay is almost $7 a gallon, it is under $4.50 in Chui, Brazil, and bought a CoNaProLe ice cream bar, which I had been waiting for the whole trip. CoNaProLe makes the best ice cream bars I have ever had, and I wish they would export them. From there I visited the Uruguayan tourism office and got a map, and directions to the internet joint I am currently using.
The two Chuys are a most interesting place. Like Rivera/Santana do Livramento a couple hundred miles west of here, they are basically one city located in two countries. Chuy, Uruguay is full of duty free stores selling cheap booze, cigarrettes and perfume, and Chui, RS is full of pharmacies and auto parts stores, as well as gas stations which are doing a rollicking business with Uruguayan drivers. When I arrived at my hotel, the girl behind the desk and I spoke Portuguese, the hotel being on the Brazilian side, but when I came back down half an hour later with my laundry, there was a different girl who responded to my question in Portuguese about where the laundromat was in Spanish. So we continued in Spanish. The person running the cyber joint, which is in Uruguay, is communicating in Portuguese. It is all most interesting.
If it will ever stop raining, I am going to take the bike out and ride a couple miles south of town to the Uruguayan immigration post to get my passport stamped, and then may take a ride a few miles east to Barra do Chui, which is famous for being the "most southerly" spot in all of Brazil. Hopefully it will stop raining...
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