After a terrible night of sleep we decided to try to enjoy our day on the beach. We made our sammies and slathered on sunscreen and headed out to the beach. Less than an hour and a jellyfish attack later we were over it. I guess we’re spoiled from Brazilian beaches, especially since we live in Florianopolis, and we were just so tired from our trip. We had no umbrella and it cost UY$300 to rent one for the day so we just decided to go home and end our trip on the 35th day, which really satisfied my OCD. We were tired after a month of traveling and Uruguay was too expensive, so we decided to keep our U.S. dollars and head back home to Brazil.
Good thing that Punta del Diablo was just 40km from the border because once we crossed we felt so much more relaxed. We spent the rest of our Uruguaychos on snacks and said bye to Uruguay. The drive was quite nice because we went along the litoral and saw a lot of reserves with many capivaras (which you need to be careful of when driving) and other animals.
When we arrived in the city of Rio Grande we stumbled upon a very interesting choice of roads that the GPS told us to take. One was to go around the lagoons and drive through Porto Alegre and the other option was to take a boat from Rio Grande across the strait to the next city and continue driving up the litoral. Well after all our experiences in Chile with expensive transport we refused to listen to our GPS and tried to find the normal road. We stopped to get some gas and asked for directions. The woman told us that not only is the boat faster (only 40 minutes across) but it was only R$20 and the normal road has 5 tolls which would have exceeded well beyond that R$20. You also save on gas by taking the boat and you get to bypass the traffic of Porto Alegre.
After that talk we had exactly 5 minutes to catch the next boat and we miraculously made it! It was a lot of fun too, we relaxed and enjoyed the ride across the lagoon. Afterwards we kept on driving through preserved lands and small towns until we reached the wind farms. From there we knew we were almost home. Acres and acres of wind turbines stretched for miles and it was so beautiful to end our trip with. Sunset, wind farms, and our car filled with our life and beautiful memories from this amazing trip.
###Map:
###Numbers:
- UY$260 = Souvenirs
- UY$200 = Juice
- Left Punta del Diablo @ 12pm
- UY$140 = Snacks
- R$63.58 = Gas [R$3.16/L]
- R$115.44 = Gas [R$3.08/L]
- R$20 = Boat from Rio Grande
- Total = UY$600 / R$200