Punta del Este
URUGUAY
I Don't Think We're in Brazil Anymore...
By LYNDI
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Have you ever encountered wind so strong that you have to wear sunglasses – not due to the sun, but to prevent sand and grime from entering your ocular crevices? Or has the wind ever been so strong that you can’t wear earrings (a favorite past-time of mine) because they whip around and nearly tug free of your earlobe? Or the best one – wind so strong that it defeats gravity and you physically trip yourself when your raised foot kicks your other ankle? These cyclone-like wind speeds met us upon our arrival in Punta del Este, Uruguay, but it didn’t stop us from exploring our newest location.
After 7 hours from Garopaba, Brazil to Porto Alegre, Brazil and then a further 10 hours on an overnight bus into Uruguay, Aaron and I arrived into Punta del Este around 6am and stumbled into the nearest hotel that was open. The second we signed our check-in papers, the lights went out all over the city – which was actually just fine because first on our itinerary was a nap. When we finally woke up and showered we went to the Tourist Information Office to get maps and information about the city and then took a walk around town.
Punta del Este is known as a premier resort town highly popular with Uruguayans from all over the country and an increasingly high number of Argentineans and Brazilians. And as we have all now learned, “resort town” translates into “nothing open until November 1st ” town. So our walk around town was looking at closed Fendi and Dolce & Gabbana stores, a few abandoned high-rise condos, and wind crashing the waves into the rocky shore below us. At the tip of Punta del Este there are several yacht clubs (that were actually open!), so we admired the enormous vessels docked at the club and drooled as the people eating lunch enjoyed fresh seafood and white tablecloth service at their high-end restaurants.
There was still no power in the city so we walked around looking for a hostel to move into the following day. Only 2 of the 5 recommended hostels were open in the low season so we didn’t have much to choose from, but eventually decided on a place called Hostel 1490 right on the coast. Finally a small section of power came on so we headed there to get something to eat. That night was spent enjoying some bad movies on TV and dining on crackers, cheese and Uruguayan Tannat wine.
The next day we moved into our new hostel and then headed out to get some exercise. Without fully thinking it through, we rented bikes at a local shop for about US$7 per day and headed out of the city. Our goal was to bike 13kms out of Punta del Este to a small suburb called La Barra that housed an interesting Museum of the Sea. 13 kilometers on a bike should have been relatively easy (even though my bike only had 3 gears) – except for the tortuous wind. As the sand from the nearby beach pelted our faces and the wind pushed our feet off the pedals, we biked at about 5km/hr straight into the galeforce winds.
To be honest – it wasn’t that much fun. Luckily, the route was flat and on occasion the wind was blocked by some trees and Aaron and I enjoyed the brief respite they provided. After about 2 hours we finally arrived in La Barra and immediately headed towards a sign for a restaurant – open every day! – only to find that it wasn’t open. So instead we headed towards our Museum of the Sea. We did come across a vegetarian food restaurant and inhaled a veggie lasagna before getting to our final destination.
As Aaron mentioned, as we pulled up, a schoolbus full of 12 year old Uruguayan kids cut us off and unloaded its cargo – to our horror. But after 2 hours of Extreme Wind Biking we weren’t about to turn around now. So we ponied up the US$5 and headed in. Luckily, I read every single exhibit and study every single photo so it didn’t take long until the kids were far ahead of me. Aaron wasn’t as lucky and was pretty much on par with the schoolkids and their 10 minute museum attention span.
It was a pretty interesting museum featuring all sorts of sea creatures including behemoth whales and those unicorn-dolphin-like creatures. But the best part? A big exhibit at the back all about pirates!!! It was pretty well put together and featured all the famous pirates of the day from Blackbeard to Sir Francis Drake and the legends surrounding them. We decided that we needed to head back with plenty of time in case the wind changed directions and it would be another 2 hours back. Luckily, the wind stayed course and pushed us all the way back to Punta del Este. We literally made it back in about 20 minutes and I probably pedaled 10 times.
There was one more thing I wanted to do in Punta del Este before we left the following day. There is a famous house outside of town called Casapueblo designed by a famous Uruguayan artist and built into the side of a cliff. Aaron had zero interest in it, so I took a bus for about US$1.50 to a drop off point, then hiked 1km to its location. Now the problem I hadn’t foreseen is that a house built into a cliff is essentially non-viewable unless you’re in the ocean facing the shore. So I climbed around a little bit to see if I could get a good view, and it sorta worked. So it didn’t take long before I was heading back to Punta del Este, picking up groceries, and enjoying some home-made nachos with Aaron at the hostel.
Side note: everyone at the hostel was horrified by nachos – they’d never heard of or seen anything like it. Really? A pile of chips and cheese and beans is so disgusting? Granted, it may have not been exactly aesthetically pleasing, but any acute tastebuds must realize that cheese, beans, onions, tomatoes on top of tortilla chips is God’s gift to our tongues? But I digress…
Once again, being in a beach resort town before the high season proved to be a little disappointing, so it was definitely time to leave these beach towns behind. Not only was our next stop a major city – it would also take us close to November 1st and high season.
