Well, the 30th has come and gone, we are here in Montevideo but the cars are not! This was not entirely unexpected and we had made tentative plans in case this situation occurred. The containers were unloaded and reloaded onto other ships twice in the course of the journey from Adelaide and it appears that there was a hold up at a port in Brazil and the containers missed their ‘connecting’ ship. They are now expected here on Tuesday 6th November, so we have a week or so to explore Montevideo and the surrounding area.
On Tuesday we met with the shipping agent Eduardo Kessler who talked us through the process and paperwork required to pick up our vehicles. He then accompanied us to the Immigration Office where we picked up documentation formally acknowledging our entry to Uruguay. It’s not clear why our passports weren’t sufficient for this, but it appears that administrative red tape is a significant part of getting things done in this part of the world.
We have arranged Insurance for the vehicles – third party personal and property for cover as we travel through countries which are members of Mercosur. These are Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina & Brazil and our insurance will also cover us in Chile. The insurance is critical to getting the cars released from the port. This process took us about half the day but as we have found thus far, Uruguayans are a very patient and helpful people.
Notes from somewhere else... 
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