Day 23 - 28 Dec.2011 - Chuí

Today is our last day in Brazil and we had some final chores to do. First we needed the required equipment for the car to enter Argentina. Secondly, we wanted to realign the wheels of our car to avoid excessive tyre wear. A misalignment could have easily happened in the past days with all the potholes the car took. We stopped at a garage DS-Pneus in Pelotas where were really warmly welcomed by the owner and his wife. As it was just about lunch time and the garage closed for an hour, we were allowed to leave the car with all our luggage in the garage ant went for the stroll through the town. The owner taught us some Gaucho slang words like tri-legal, meaning triple OK, or really good, but funny enough you only show it with one thumb up ;-)
We did not manage to buy the required tow bar in Pelotas but the shop owner said that in Rio Grande there is a shop selling those. Therefore our next stop was Rio Grande. After our stop there we continued to Chui where we drove through a Nature Reserve where a lot of beaver-like looking animals live in the waters near by the road. Although the speed limit was reduced to 60 km/h, we saw a lot of animals run over by cars lying on the road verge. It was really sad to see.
We arrived in Chui in the late afternoon and it turned out that this little border town is heaving with tourists in transit crossing the border into Uruguay or vice versa. Chui is a bizarre town as it is kind of set in no-mans-land. We have left Brazil already but have not entered Uruguay yet. The official border goes right through the middle of the town along the main avenue. The border check is some 2km away from the city. Because of that, a lot of duty free shops can be found in the centre. In general we had some mixed feelings about the town. It appeared to be quite scruffy and somehow dodgy with a lot of people trying to sell us all sort of things or offering us their service (whatever that might be). It definitely does not reflect how Uruguay is at all and in fact could give you a wrong impression before you even enter Uruguay.
With a bit of luck we managed to find a hotel (not really cheap tough) and the last thing to organise will be the Carta Verde.
But this will be done tomorrow when we start our 3rd stage of our trip.

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