Day 22 - 27 Dec.2011 - Pelotas

If you ever have the chance, stop for a couple of days on the beach just south of Torres. Do not have many expectations though; there is nothing for sightseeing there. This sleepy village does not even have a name. What they have is this beautiful sandy beach, a bay-watch guy drinking mate in his tower, traditional wee horse carts going on the beach and a nice fish restaurant run by Regis. We would have loved to stay there one more day as this is such a relaxing place but we would also like to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Buenos Aires, so we had to leave this morning.
First thing we had to go to Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, in order to pick up documents from the airport, which Gileno promised to send to us. These are the declarations authorised by the Embassies of the countries we are going to travel trough. We really need these declarations and we hoped that Gileno managed to send tem on time. This turned out to be a last-minute affair and we were a bit nervous. We finally got the good news – the stuff we needed was there, but we had to wait for an hour as the plane from Brasilia just landed. To our relief, when we opened the envelope, all the required documents were there. Now we only have to buy two breakdown triangles, a towing bar, organise the Carta Verde (the 3rd party insurance required in the countries of Mercosul) and we will be ready to leave Brazil.
We drove on to our destination Pelotas, where we found a pousada in Laranjal right at the beach of the sweet water lake.