Mostardas → Chuí

Mostardas → Chuí

Date: Thursday, February 25, 2027 · Distance: ~250 mi · Driving time: ~5h 15m (excluding stops) · Open in Google Maps

Road surfaces
Asphalt · 245 mi · 98%
Water · 3 mi · 1%
Paving stones · 2 mi · 1%

The southernmost leg of the Brazilian journey runs the full length of the litoral gaúcho — the thin strip of land caught between the Lagoa dos Patos and the Atlantic — through flat, windswept country that gets lonelier and more elemental with every kilometre. A ferry crossing, a lunch stop in the oldest city in the state, a pause in the wetlands of the Taim, and then the final run to the end of Brazil.

The Crossing

The day begins at 8:00 am from Mostardas, heading south on the BR-101 through the coastal plain that first drew Azorean settlers in the 18th century. The BR-101 runs the full length of the Brazilian coast from Touros, in Rio Grande do Norte, to São José do Norte — on this trip we've largely stayed off it, catching only a few kilometres through Alagoas and then the Rio-Santos stretch down to Rio de Janeiro. This final leg brings it to a close at the ferry terminal. The road runs along the narrow isthmus between the Lagoa dos Patos and the ocean, the same corridor that connects the small towns that grew around Portuguese military outposts, fishing communities, and quilombos. The landscape is flat and expansive — rice fields, lagoons, and low restinga vegetation extending in every direction under a wide sky.

The first stop is the ferry terminal at São José do Norte, on the northern bank of the channel where the Lagoa dos Patos discharges into the Atlantic. Two companies operate the vehicle crossing — F. Andreis and Becker Transportes — running scheduled departures through the day. The thirty-minute crossing over the Canal do Rio Grande is one of the more unusual transit moments on the route: the ferry carries cars, trucks, and passengers across a channel that is technically part of the lagoon system, though the water here has taken on the character of the sea. On weekdays, departures run roughly on the hour from each side; the itinerary has the boarding at mid-morning. On the far bank, Rio Grande comes into view through the industrial haze of its port infrastructure.

Lunch in Rio Grande

Rio Grande holds an unusual place in the geography of the south: it is the oldest city in Rio Grande do Sul, founded on 19 February 1737 by Brigadier José da Silva Paes on the narrow sandy point at the mouth of the Lagoa dos Patos, where Portuguese forces needed a military foothold against Spanish pressure from the Río de la Plata. The fort he built — Jesus, Maria e José — anchored the first permanent Portuguese settlement in what would become the state, and the barra it guarded remains one of the most strategically significant passages on the Brazilian coast. Today the port handles some of the largest cargo volumes in Brazil, and the waterfront has the industrial density to match.

The historic centre, however, is worth the lunch stop. The Praça Sete de Setembro marks the site of the original fort; around it stand neoclassical and colonial buildings that have accumulated since the city's 19th-century commercial expansion, when European merchant houses — German, English, Portuguese — established themselves along the waterfront. The Alfândega building, an imposing neoclassical customs house built at the order of the Visconde do Rio Branco and now housing the Museu Histórico da Cidade, is among the most distinguished buildings in the state. The Sobrado dos Azulejos on Rua Marechal Floriano — a 19th-century two-storey neoclassical townhouse entirely clad in Portuguese azulejos — is the only building of its kind remaining in southern Brazil.

Taim

South of Rio Grande, the BR-471 enters the territory of the Estação Ecológica do Taim, a federal reserve occupying a narrow coastal strip between the Atlantic and the Lagoa Mirim. Established in 1986 and later designated a Ramsar site of international wetland significance, the Taim protects an ecosystem that is simultaneously fragile and spectacular: banhados, dune fields, freshwater lagoons, and open grassland sheltering more than 250 bird species and around thirty mammals, including capybaras, caimans, otters, and maned wolves. The black-necked swan — cisne-de-pescoço-preto — is the emblem of the reserve and one of its most photographed residents.

The itinerary includes a brief stop at the Estacionamento Capilha within the Taim, which marks the trailhead of the Trilha da Capilha — a historical-cultural trail that passes through a fishing community, a section of the Estrada Real, and the small Capela de Nossa Senhora da Conceição. The chapel gives the parking area and trail their names, and the community around it has been here long enough to predate the reserve. The BR-471 bisects the Taim longitudinally, and the drive itself — even without leaving the road — passes through country of unmistakable wildness: flat, wet, and alive with birds.

Arrival: Chuí

Fuel at the Posto Ipiranga on the approach to town before settling in for the night. Chuí is a place that exists primarily because of its position: the southernmost sede municipal in Brazil, on the bank of the Arroio Chuí where the border with Uruguay has been contested, negotiated, and finally demarcated since the 18th century. The Portuguese military post that Cristóvão Pereira de Abreu established here was destroyed and rebuilt multiple times in the colonial struggles between Portugal and Spain over the Campos Neutrais — the disputed territory running from the Taim to the Chuí that was only formally incorporated into the Brazilian Empire by the treaty of 1851.

What remains is a border town of about six thousand people divided from its Uruguayan twin, Chuy, by a single avenue — Avenida Uruguai on the Brazilian side, Avenida Brasil on the Uruguayan side — whose twelve-metre width constitutes the entire international frontier. Residents cross freely throughout the day. The commercial life of both towns is entirely intertwined: Brazilian supermarkets supply Uruguayans with cheaper staples; Uruguayan free shops supply Brazilians with imported goods. Portuguese, Spanish, and portuñol are all in daily circulation. There is also a notable Palestinian-Brazilian community, present since the mid-20th century, with its own mosque and its own strand of the town's peculiar cultural fabric.