what's that smell?

Now the thankfully not too exciting conclusion to my misadventures in Chui.

After failing to fill in the misaddressed web-form in the last episode, I realized that some of those weird codes that were required fields were also in the address my landlord had given me for the Internet company on the first floor of the building I live in back in Garopaba. I have no idea what they mean, and suspect that they have something to do with taxes or other official identifiers, but I copied in all the fields from the address and hit the submit button. This gave me a completed form with some bar code data on it. I printed it out and hoped for the best.

As far as I knew, all I had to do now was go to Banco do Brasil in the morning and give them this form along with some cash and they would give me something for the Policia Federal. Then assuming I could figure out where the bus station was on the Uruguayan side of the border I could get my ass on to Montevideo. So feeling a little celebratory I wandered out of the Internet cafe and smack into some sort of political/music rally. The was a sidewalk cafe next to the rally stage so I sat down there and enjoyed a truly delicious fried fish in shrimp sauce dinner along with a number of beers.

I felt much better with the printed form in my pocket and some good food & alcohol in my gut, so I enjoyed this precious hour or two in Chuy. Not enough to forgive the sorry excuse for a town, but enough to stop bitching for the evening. I didn't know what the speakers were saying, but some of them were such great orators I wanted to clap and cheer along with the crowd. The live music afterwords wasn't bad either, a mix of acoustic and electric Uruguayan rock.

In the morning I showed up at Banco do Brasil and managed to pay my fine and get the coveted receipts. Next step was another taxi to the Policia Federal station (this time I inquired about the cost first, it was 4 times less than last time, R$5). The cop at the desk there wasn't too happy that I didn't follow the directions (which I couldn't read of course) to photocopy the receipt first but after making me sweat a little he went in the back and made a copy for me and made sure I understood that I needed to keep a hold of this if I didn't want more problems. Yes sir. I got out of there as soon as I could, before he changed his mind or something, and had the taxi driver take me to the bus station on the Uruguayan side of town. The ticket was purchased with no problem and soon enough I was on my way! Never to return, I hope.