Parking at Punta del Este

On Friday, March 14th we landed at Punta del Este, Uruguay. Immediately, we fell in love with it.

This place must be cool if Donald Trump and Conrad Hilton are making investments here. There is a brand new Conrad hotel on one side of the peninsula and on the other side there is a rather large vacant lot on which the Donald's face smiles out at you from huge, brightly coloured billboards. Even without those celebrities' involvement in the place, Punta del Este is like an improved version of South Beach, Florida. It's cleaner too. What a change here on our first stop in Uruguay after leaving Rio Grande in southern Brazil.

Uruguay is not what I expected. I say that because it just seems to be an unlikely survivor. This country of three million inhabitants has somehow survived sandwiched between the two biggest countries on the continent. There are 42 million Argentinians and there are 200+ million Brazilians. In Uruguay's history both Argentina and Brazil have claimed the territory. Furthermore, Brazil and Argentina are endowed with many important natural resources and Uruguay has very little in that regard. Yet Uruguay survives and appears to be thriving. I heard someone say that it was like the south of France but not as expensive. I'll let some of the photos speak to that.

This part out near Salinas Point is where Great Britain Square
 is and it reminds me very much of Victoria, B.C.

This shot is taken from Punta Ballina and it shows the modern
condo towers downtwon behind the Regatta

more condos

the best beach which is empty here in the beginning of the off-season

Conrad must be hosting a car show

fishermen at Punta Ballina

We had an excellent tour of the area from a local guide named Cristina. One of the first stops was Great Britain Square.  There is a park on that square overlooking the mouth of the estuary that looks out over the site of the WW2 naval battle that is most often referred to as, "The Battle of the River Plate". It was here in December, 1939 that the German battleship Graf Spee was cornered by three smaller British warships after it had sunk 9 British merchant vessels in the southern Atlantic. The British ships were the Ajax, Achilles and Exeter, which took some damage themselves form the larger, faster and more heavily-armed opponent but were able to counter with a few serious blows to their rival. The damage was severe enough that the Graf Spee had to retire to Montevideo to try and seek a place to effect some repairs. I will tell you the rest of the story later but suffice it to say that this initial scrap was a British victory at a time when Hitler wasn't making any mistakes in Europe.

an anchor pointing to where the Battle of the River Plate took place
and a plaque marking the 60th anniversary of the battle

We were in Punta del Este at the right time. During the winter months which start now, there are only 10,000 permanent residents of the area. In the summer though, the population swells to several hundred thousand. With this being the end of summer many of the rich seasonal inhabitants have secured their homes and returned to their winter residences. Here are some examples of how these properties looked.

summer mansion secured for the winter

another

and another

But the winter isn't so bad here. I could live here all year long. It was very nice the day we were there, mostly sunny, calm and a temperature of about 20 degrees C. We were told they never get snow and the temperature rarely drops down below 10 degrees C. Sounds like heaven to me and if we lived here all year long we'd think about one of these condos:

maybe this one is too much like something in Vegas

They have invested in some public art here and there are a few notable pieces:

stylized mermaids at Great Britain Square

The Fingers, situated on Playa Brava

A practical piece of art in the bridge near La Barra for
which the inspiration was the curves of a woman. If you go
real fast over this it feels like a roller coaster ride.

Finally, we also visited a nearby farm and the home of the recently deceased artist and local icon, Carlos Paez Vilaro. Here is what those things looked like:

a neat covered bridge in rural Uruguay

cool 2-wheeled cart

an older rural house, now used as an office on the farm we visited

Mrs. Gym with Vilaro's house in the background

Vilaro's house, now a hotel. It took It took the artist 36 years
to build this structure on the side of the cliff at Punta Ballena.

We left Punta del Este under cloudy skies and when we got aboard the ship the Captain came on the horn to let us know that we were in for a bit of a blow. I thought since we were already in the estuary and only had a short distance to travel to Montevideo that it would be a piece of cake. I was wrong. Mrs. Gym had to dip into the sea-sickness pill jar.