Once across Uruguay

With a heavy heart, we left Brazil and made our way through the crowded duty-free shopping streets in no man's land between Brazil and Uruguay, in 30-degree heat, on our way to the official 'Migración', the entry office in Uruguay. We found this office in a small dusty street after leaving the shopping passages with the churros sellers and the many cars behind us. The woman behind the glass window examined our passports and found that we entered Uruguay on March 10th, then went to Brazil on March 28th, but our departure from Uruguay still needed to be confirmed. After a few phone calls, she told us that we had to get an exit stamp for Brazil before she could let us back into Uruguay. So we had to go back through the shopping streets, which resembled Dutch outlet villages, and visit the Migração in Brazil to exit. Friendly border police helped us through the traffic chaos. Back with the Uruguayan officer, the computer system then crashed. Many colleagues asked what was going on, laughed, and disappeared after a brief look at the monitor. So we spent another hour on the dusty square. Since we couldn't do anything else but wait, we spent the time showering Vincent to cool down in the shade of the afternoon sun. Here, large groups of Gauchos on their horses trotted past us. They all wore their Gaucho hats tilted to one side. They gave us a taste of the vast country with its many cattle that lay ahead of us. Eventually, the time came and we were allowed to continue legally, which ended in the next village due to the late hour.

In the following days, we continued further into the endless vast country. Since there were no campsites along this route, we slept on a dirt road in front of an Estancía once, on a village square next to a playground once, and spent three days and nights at a beautiful lake with a leafy and coniferous forest and many barbecue areas. The most impressive part of Uruguay was our last sleeping spot right on the border with Argentina. Here, near Salto, supposedly the largest freshwater reservoir in the world and countless hot springs are located. Thanks to a secret tip, we found a hidden campsite that could only be reached by a small 12 km gravel road from the normal highway, which was not signposted. The place was in the middle of nature. There were two large pools on the premises. One with 36 degrees and the other with 39 degrees of warm water from the natural hot springs. As far as the eye could see, there were only fields and forests. We spent 3 days here. One evening, we discovered a tarantula on the grass in the dark, not far from our car, and the next morning, a fat toad sat on the way to the pool. Besides us, there was only an Argentine family with their 3-year-old daughter at the same time. We got along very well with them and received many travel tips and Argentine music for the journey.