A Border Fiasco

Last Sunday we entered Uruguay from Argentina on our way to Adrián’s workshop where we are parked right now. We have crossed so many borders they don’t typically stress us very much, though for many overlanders they are one of the most feared moments on a drive through foreign countries.

We like to approach a border late in the morning after the stressed out early arrivals and local commuters have gone through and the officials have had time to have a coffee and settle into their desks. We are unstressed because we have the correct papers and they are unstressed because they have finished dealing with the Type A border crossers.  Good.

As we came off the bridge at the Uruguayan end traffic ground to a halt. There was a problem ahead. No one moved. We pulled off and watched a TV show as the officials sorted out whatever was wrong. We had started late in the day as we didn’t have far to drive so our relaxed approach led us to be still waiting to get to the checkpoint at four pm. Oh well we thought as we got back into line to see what was going on.

The line nudged through the bridge toll booth and we were just behind an Australian Land Cruiser with a Victoria State license plate. It was a slow pair of lines that inched to the first border booth.

Argentina has closed its frontier post on the west end of the bridge and nowadays both countries use the facilities at the Uruguayan  end of the bridge in Fray Bentos. We handed our vehicle temporary import permit to a dude standing roadside in an Argentine customs jacket and drove on to the green light at the first immigration booth. We got a 90 day stamp in our passports without even getting out of the car.

The customs is always harder for us because that’s where agriculture hangs out waiting to inspect dog papers, and we have some rather uncertain papers for Rusty from Brazil creating a smidgen of uncertainty. 

The vet in Uruguay assured us the permit is good for sixty days, until June 8th for us to cross any Mercosur border. Mercosur is a collection of countries forming a common market in South America,  and that allows easy passage of goods and people similar to the European Union. The US isn’t in the common market of course so we have to get the full treatment at the border with a passport stamp and a Temporary Import Permit for GANNET2. We show up with our passports and our car registration and we have Mercosur car insurance coverage but no one ever asks for that though they are supposed to…So the car part should be easy and the dog part, the final inspection point, should be too even though Uruguay has the strictest pet entry rules of any country.

So that was the scenario before we got to the border. Unbeknownst to me Layne was also privately worrying that our insurance expired in a couple of days and we hadn’t yet received our coverage letter for this next year of Mercosur car insurance coverage. It costs $900 a year for liability in every country except Colombia Venezuela and the Guyanas. As it turned out no one cared, and then the customs lady in the Uruguayan booth looked deeply embarrassed telling us the computers were down and they couldn’t process non Mercosur cars. Locals breezed through but the Australians and ourselves had to park to one side and wait for the computers to get back online. It was nearly five pm already and we were stuck.  We weren’t going to let Rusty out as we wanted to draw no attention to him and there we sat chatting with the Australians, veterans of overlanding in Africa and no strangers to bureaucratic delays.

Eventually the computers came back up and our embarrassed clerk hustled our papers and we were allowed to go. Just like that, no fridge inspection, no mention of Rusty or his papers we were free to drive into Uruguay. That worked for us and we stopped only when we were well out of sight to let Rusty out of the van for a bit. It was pitch dark by then and we were all ready to stop for the night.  

That wasn’t the end of a rather long day because I made a monumental error worthy of an inexperienced traveler: I lost sight of the decimal point.  I decided to update our highway toll account in Uruguay.  All toll booths are automated and you have to buy the local equivalent of a Sunpass and stick the transponder on your windshield. Duly noted.

I got my currency conversion muddled up and to make a long story short I put US $3,000 on our account instead of $30.  That discovery put a damper on our long awaited dinner in our van last Sunday night but to her credit Layne did not tear my head off for my stupidity. Not one word of recrimination passed her rather tense lips.

Every Uruguayan toll booth, though automated has an office on site staffed 24 hours a day so you can charge your account or ask for help. The next day  I showed them my phone screen to speed up their comprehension of my blunder and after they got a startled look on their faces they burst into laughter after I asked them to please save my marriage. You will notice the amount is preceded by a dollar sign. In Latin America that represents the local currency in this case pesos which convert at 40 to 1. So $120,000 equals $,3000 in US dollars.  I showed this to the toll booth staff:

Of course they agreed to annul the charge and let me put a more sensible thirty dollars, 1200 pesos, on my toll account. All was well after a fair bit of mockery that I richly deserved.

And some time later than expected last Monday we got on our way to the workshop after the worst border crossing we’d had in a very long time. And actually aside from having to wait a bit it wasn’t bad at all. 

The toll fiasco had looked appalling at first but even that got straightened out easily thanks to the very helpful staff. I couldn’t believe my luck. 

Almost all Uruguay’s electricity is generated by renewables and delivered by a national public utility. The country has the least blackouts of any nation in South America. 

I like driving these highways. 

Iowa in South America. 

55 mph. 

Our destination.