0530 – Wake up after 4 hours of sleep on a rather comfortable bus to discover that even though it is dark out, we’re at the border and since we went cheap and only paid for bus fare to the border, its time to get up and get out.
0532 – Handed our passports, stamped Exit from Brazil and Entrada to Uruguay.
0534 – Find a bathroom at the border post and begin our pre-dawn walk into town to find another bus to take us the rest of the way to Montevideo
0640 – Find bus station with 7am bus. They do not take credit cards.
0642 – Discover the ATM does not like my card.
0650 – Return to bus station after sprinting around the block in search of ATMs. While looking for the other ATM card (that likely won’t work either) beg the man to accept our Brazilian Reals as payment.
0652 – Run back to ATM to make attempt #2.
0654 – Hear Jill chasing after me. She is yelling that they will accept dollars. Yay. We save $47 by getting off our comfy international bus and dealing with this change…even better!
0657 – Purchase busfare.
0659 – Discover bread and coffee vendor will not accept dollars nor reals….damn.
0700 – Depart
0936 – Arrive at Rocha to switch to the 0940 bus.
0938 – Jill realizes that she left her water bottle on the bus that just pulled away.
0939 – Get on the new bus…sans H20 bottle.
0941 – Fall asleep.
1230 – Arrive Montevideo bus station, three hours later than we would have if we’d just paid for the international bus to take us the whole way. (but we saved $47….that’s $7.5/hour/person…and we’re unemployed….nice)
1315 – Depart station for a few hours on the town after purchasing bus fare to Colonia for 1630 and boat fare to Buenos Aires for 2030.
1330 – Sit down to our first meal in awhile.
1400 – Visited by the waiter who is finally ready to take our order.
1515 – Finish with our Gaucho (free) museum downtown. Discover it is past 3pm. Shit, we have stuff to buy.
1540 – Purchase Mate cups that we wanted to buy
1550 – Purchase bracelette for Jill…..made of a fork with a purple rock. Muy importante que es purple. Vendor did not believe we were from the USA, our Spanish that damn good…..or he wasn’t so smart, one of the two.
1555 – Hail a cab. Not enough time to walk/run/bus back to station.
1605 – Arrive at station. Jill goes to retrieve our luggage from storage while I run across the street to buy a cool looking boat made with a cow’s horn. I hope they take credit cards.
1607 – They don’t take credit cards.
1609 – Jill loads all of our luggage (+30kg) onto her body and waddles to the bus.
1611 – Wait as woman argues with money exchange man that she doesn’t like the rate. ATM line too long. She begins to change $1500. Still doesn’t like rate.
1614 – Now she likes rate. Hits on money changer to make up for being a pain in the butt before. Great.
1615 – My turn to change money.
1616 – Money changed, back at the store, item being purchased
1619 – Start running to bus station, damn traffic light.
1627 – Find Jill at bus, bags loaded. Time to breathe.
1630 – Bus departs.
1915 – Arrive Colonia.
1925 – Discover that 2030 boat actually leaves at 2130….damn.
2130 – Bye Bye Uruguay. It’s been real.
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