The trouble with buses

"How long does it take to get to Punta del Diablo?" Josh asked the lady who we bought our bus tickets from.

"Una hora o algo," she replied. One hour or something.

We were moving on from La Paloma, a small beach town which had not stopped raining for the two days we were there. Punta del Diablo was forecast to have better weather, and it was going to be Lucas and Eliana's last weekend in Uruguay before heading back to London, so we decided to see what a new place had to offer.

Obviously, we were expecting to get there after about an hour, as directed by the lady at the bus terminal. Unfortunately, 'one hour or something' doesn't mean what we had expected. In fact, the journey took just under 3 hours in the end!

This was not the first, and by no means the last, in a series of bus company representatives having no clue of what was going on. Josh had asked one woman how long it took to get from one town to the next, having just bought the tickets from her, and she cheerfully told him, "I have no idea!"

We had a nice, if uneventful, weekend Punta del D, and decided to extend our trip there by a few more days after Lucas and Eliana left. We moved to a different, cheaper (but way better) hostel, and decided to take a walk round the huge National Park about 10 mins up the road on Monday. Ten mins by bus that is.

We set out at 10.30am, having asked the driver if this was the bus that went to La Fortaleza (the fort, a big landmark in the park). He nodded, we climbed aboard and waited for him to shout out the destination once we stopped, as is custom in Uruguay. Sadly, our driver was a grumpy old man, and although he stopped in many, many places, he didnt shout out where we were. We'd been looking out for a fort, and so far had not seen one, but aftrr about 25 mins Josh asked the driver when we'd get there, having been assured by our hostel owner that it was no further than a 10 minute drive.

The driver said something in very fast Spanish, and refused to speak any slower when asked. I specifically asked him if this was the stop for la fortaleza and he said yes, pointed at a shop on the side of the road, kicked us off the bus and sped off.

We were 16km north of where he said we were.

After waiting just under an hour, another bus driver took pity on us and let us ride with him for free, as far as the National Park entrance. The fort itself was a 5km walk from the entrance, and it was sweltering, but we decided to brave the burning heat and set off. When we finally got there, after a nearly 3.5 hour journey altogether, we were told that the fort is closed on Mondays, and that we had to turn around and walk back again. Fantastic.

That was our last day in Uruguay. Much as I'd loved it, I was very ready to move on! We bought our bus tickets to Porto Alegre in Southern
Brazil through our hostel, and the instructions were simple: get a local bus to the border town, wait at immigration for the bus from Montevideo to stop, get on that and go to Brazil.

The local bus took us right to the border, even though we'd asked to be dropped at the immigration building (when will we learn?!). We had to get a taxi back to immigration and passport control, where we were told to sit and wait outside because 'we are not a bus ticket agency'. Our hostel owner hadnt actually given us the tickets himself, telling us a woman would meet us at passport control with them. It all sounded very dodgy but eventually the woman showed, and gave us our tickets. She then happily informed us that the bus would be coming through at 'about 12' and left. It was 10pm, we'd been there since just after 9. The bus actually came at 1.15am, four hours after we had arrived!

All in all, it was a bloody nightmare. Border towns are notoriously dangerous anyway, and we weren't even allowed to sit inside the building with all our stuff. The temperature had dropped to about 15○C so it was quite chilly, and all we could do was wait.

Thankfully we are now at our friend Fernanda's house, a Brazilian girl we met on our year abroad in New Mexico. We're staying with her and her family for about a week, then heading north with her and her friends for Carnival next weekend, so excited!

Urugusy was lovely, but definitely got the feel we'd outstayed our welcome.