The border town of Chuy sits half in Uruguay, half in Brazil. The town is physically split in two, on one side of the main avenue the shops are all in Spanish and the money is still in pesos and on the other everything is in Portuguese and the banks dispense reais. It's a pretty nasty place, dodgy as f***, with suspicious men selling their wares on the side of the road. Fake gold watches and tracksuits proliferated. We arrived quite late in the day and headed ...

We didn't really know anything about Cabo before we left; it's not in any guide booksand we didn't do any research but we did know that we had to get to Castillo then find another bus, then get one of the 4 x 4s that shuttles back and forth from the town as there is no roads in over the sand dunes and beaches. After bargaining with the driver for a while and chatting to some of the people who had just come the other way, we got on an extremely overloaded jeep- ...

There wasn't any buses that ran directly from Punta del Este to Punta del Diablo so the driver said that he would drop us at the top of the road so we could walk the 5km down to the town. He spent a while telling us that we should hitch hike because it was a really long walk, but I had trouble understanding what he was saying, because I didn't know the Spanish words for hitchhike (he was saying something like "autostop, ir a dedo"). When we got to the...

Places that are described as 'exclusive resorts' do not usually appeal to me, but a few people had recommend us the beach city of Punta so we decided to pop in on our way up the coast. Now, I don't care what anyone else says about this place, we thought it was crap. It just seemed like a playground for rich South (and North) Americans who have the money to buy apartments in the numerous tower blocks lining the beaches. Casinos and restaurant take up about 80% ...

The journey from Colonia was only a few hours and when we arrived it took us about three and a half hours to find a hostel that had any availability. Montevideo was obviously popular! We literally walked from one end to the other and back again in the midday heat before we found a very cheap hotel with en-suite and TV, bonus. Went for dinner in the cool Cuidad Vieja old city and watched the sun go down over the plaza Independencia. The Palacio Salvo is an art-...