We’re sat in a small waiting room on a side street of Chuy waiting for our 8:40am bus to Trenta y Tres. It’s basic, there’s a couple of hand painted pictures on the wall facing me of old buses run by the firm and a newspaper article probably 50 years old entitled “El Omnibus de la Playa”.

We are joined by four elderly locals, each with small travel bags and choosing promptly to sit on the basic bench seats that line the waiting area. If they were in England I’d swear they were day trippers to the coast, taking the advertised “Bus to the Beach”.
Then there’s the lady behind the counter who served us our tickets late in the day before and opened the office five minutes before the advertised 7:30am, despite the presence of a her very young baby in an old fashioned pram by the door, now that’s flexible working!

After our 20 min walk from the hostel with our rucksacks we collected warm ham and cheese filled cossaints from Zoes bakery around the corner on the Avendia Uruguay or should that be Brazil? Well actually it’s both! The street is the boundary between the two countries and a wander down the tree lined central avenue and effectively your straddling two countries. No passport stamps required, weird.

This is the first time on our travels I’ve felt a real sense of adventure, of the unknown. We are off on to the back roads of Uruguay to a places not many visit. The land of the Uruguayan Gaucho.

*If there’s anyone out there reading this who is thinking of doing the trip from Chuy to Tacuarembo on the back roads of Uruguay get in touch… We have some interesting tips!