05/05/13 to 11/05/13 - Welcome to Chui. The border between Uruguay and Brazil is the high street, Avenida de Brasil. One side of the road you are in Uruguay, all the shops accept Pesos and everyone speaks Spanish, cross the road (avoiding the motorbikes) and you are in Brazil, the currency is Reals and everybody speaks Portuguese.We were in Brazil for just 10 minutes, the shortest time ever spent in any country, before we had to cross back to Uruguay. Due to a misunderstanding with our Uruguayan driver, we got our passport stamped at Uruguayan immigration 2km from town and then got back on the bus to be dropped in the centre of Chui. A nice Brazilian girl from the bus helped show us to the bus stop over the road in Brazil, but it was the wrong one. After asking around a bit we had to walk back to Uruguay (means crossing the road again) and go back to immigration again to wait for our bus onto Brazil.
We were waiting in the dark and could hear insects/frogs making a strange noise that sounded like bottles being clinked together. It was cold and we were glad there was a fireplace in the immigration. Some old chaps were watching Snow White and The Huntsman dubbed in Spanish version.
After about an hour the bus arrived and we jumped on, travelled about 2miles across the border again and stopped at Brazil immigration. 
The buses in South America so far have been luxury compared to Europe. The seats are huge, recline almost flat and there is loads of legroom...sometimes your feet can't reach the footrest. This time all the standard seats were full, so we had to pay a little more for Executive class. This bought us an even wider, leather seat, and a big hot meal, like plane food but so big we couldn't eat it all. We also got to watch a film. Unfortunately, we were sitting next to a crazy old lady who kept asking Flora every 30 minutes (the total time of the journey being 13 hours): “Sorry lady, are we nearly there yet” in Spanish… so Flora didn’t really sleep much.
We woke to the sound of Brazilian jazz funk and Bossa Nova on the stereo, and the landscape had changed from the brown, cow-filled plains to lush jungle capped hills and lakes as we made our way through the south of Brazil up to Florianopolis on the east coast.
Eventually we were there and took two buses to go to the other side of Ilha de Santa Catarina in Barra de Lagoa. Our Spanish was useless as even though Portuguese is similar to Spanish on paper, when spoken it sounds so different (Brazilian Portuguese sounds so different to Portugal too). We didn't understand anything, but people were.helpful, and the bus conductors showed us exactly where to change buses and when to get off.
Our guesthouse was right near the sea and we could hear the waves during the night. We also could borrow some free beach gear such as surf and body boards, bats, balls, beachmats, etc…. We were supposed to stay only a couple of days but we couldn’t resist the free caipirihnas every night, the huge breakfast buffet, the nice walks and a few nice and empty beaches within walking distance. We also met nice people while we were there, coming from UK, Canada, Sweden, Peru, Argentina and Holland… and it felt like a small family. Eventually it was time for goodbyes as we booked some tickets for our next destination, Sao Paulo.
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