Planning a bike trip to Uruguay

Uruguay is small enough to cross by bike in a few days, and that scale is the first thing to understand about riding here: nothing is really far, and the choice that shapes a trip most is simply how you reach the start of it. The country has two land borders — Argentina to the west, Brazil to the northeast — and one international airport that matters, at Montevideo. Almost every way in comes off one of those three edges, and each has a character of its own.

If you're coming from overseas, the plane is the first leg. Montevideo's Carrasco airport takes direct flights from Madrid,1 and a single connection — through São Paulo, Buenos Aires, or Panama — reaches it from almost anywhere else. The fare is rarely what decides between options; what varies most — sometimes considerably — is the airline's bike fee.

Many riders come the other way: into Buenos Aires first, then across the Río de la Plata — the wide estuary Montevideo sits on — by ferry. The companies carry bikes, and you clear Uruguayan customs once, on the Argentine side, before you board2 — which makes it the calmest way to arrive with a loaded bike. Coming overland from Argentina has its own romance, and one quirk worth planning around: riders who've crossed report that the bridges over the Uruguay River aren't open to cyclists, so that leg has to be arranged by vehicle.

From Brazil the picture changes entirely. The border town is Chuy — Chuí on the Brazilian side, the same place spelled two ways — and the frontier is its main avenue: you ride across it. The immigration post sits out on the highway past the last houses.3 From there Route 9 has for years been the corridor by which touring cyclists first meet the country.4 The long-distance bus is the other overland option, and the one that needs a phone call: no company publishes its bicycle policy, and each settles it case by case, so you ask a few days ahead.

Reaching Uruguay is well-mapped. Arriving prepared takes a little more thought — the law you'll be riding under, and the season you're riding into.