South American Bus Stories II

Since we could not find a bus going directly from Foz to Montevideo, we had to travel via Porto Alegre. When buying the tickets we saw a note that you can only take 30kg per person and no luggage should be larger than 3 meter. Ok, works for us. However for our fellow travelers this limit was a real challenge. Seems that Paraguay is what Southern Germany is for Swiss people, a cheap shopping destination. Everybody who is old enough to walk has to carry a huge bag full of things.

All the passengers were very keen to get as soon as possible in the bus; maybe they feared that at the end there would be no storage place left. Whilst everybody was in a hurry to enter, we waited with our relative little backpacks and were the last ones entering. On the last ride everybody was pretty quiet, here they were excited from all the shopping and were loudly discussing. After an hour drive we got stuck in traffic and all the other guys got even more excited and started to stare out of the window. They excitement was kind of strange, since traffic jam seems to be normal.

Turns out that the Brazilian custom blocked the road to search all the vehicles coming from Foz. It was not a little blockade, it is a huge place to which they can detour the traffic. Michi and I thought this is going to be a short thing, but we were wrong. First the bus got checked with a dog. Then a heavily armed guy came and searched all hand luggage, seats and pockets of the passengers. At the same time another team was empting the bus trunk and went through all the bags. Once in a while the guy in the bus or the team outside found things and the owner had to get out to pay a fee or so.

Since we were tourists the guy did not search our hand luggage or checked our seats. Two hours later we were through and apparently lucky, as we were able to stay in the bus during the search. We saw other passengers, which had to get out of the bus and wait with their stuff somewhere next to the road.

After this spectacle the rest of the ride was quiet. At the final station we let the guys rush out and grab their things. A few of them however, stayed in the bus and informed us about the final station. We assumed they were just nice, as all the other guys we met so far. Well wrong again, turns out that they needed us to leave so they could get hold of their stuff, which they hided under and in our seats before the departure… Luckily it was nothing the dog was interested in, but since then, we check our seats.