The day begins on one side of a painted median and ends on the Atlantic coast of La Paloma, having passed through a colonial Portuguese fortress, a fishing village of colored wooden houses, and one of the strangest inhabited places in South America — a cape accessible only by dune buggy, without electricity or running water, where sea lions crowd the rocks below a lighthouse built in 1881. It's a day that moves through Uruguayan history in roughly chronological order, from an 18th-century colonial border dispute to a 21st-century national park village that has chosen, deliberately, to remain off the grid.
Border Crossing
The day departs Chuí at eight in the morning. The town is one of South America's more unusual border situations: the international line between Brazil and Uruguay runs down the center of a single avenue, with duty-free shops on both sides and no fence in sight. Residents of both towns move freely across it throughout the day, and the distinction between Chuí (Brazilian Portuguese) and Chuy (Uruguayan Spanish) is largely linguistic. For anyone traveling onward into Uruguay, however, the paperwork is unavoidable. The Control Integrado de Frontera Chuy — the integrated bilateral crossing — handles both Brazilian exit and Uruguayan entry formalities at a single facility. The process is typically straightforward and takes around half an hour. Have vehicle documents ready alongside passports; the Uruguayan side also requires a Temporary Import Permit for foreign vehicles. Once cleared, Route 9 opens south toward Rocha department, and the landscape shifts almost immediately into something quieter and more open than the scrubby border zone left behind.