Candida, Kat, and I left on the ferry from BsAs to Uruguay early Friday morning -- the ferry, by the way, is nothing like I pictured. It's enormous, with stores and seats and cafeterias and bars. After three hours we crossed the border (easiest passport stamp I've received yet) and hopped on a bus to Montevideo. There we bought churros, got pooped on by a bird (actually not me, but both Kat and Candida), and spent so much time converting Uruguayan pesos in the supermarket that we almost missed our second bus to Punta del Este. Almost.
Montevideo.The ever-eloquent Lonely Planet refers to Punta del Este as the place "where South America's rich and famous come to play." We went about two weeks before the ON-season, and thus got to benefit from the miles and miles of beaches and terrific nightlife without being shoulder-to-shoulder with people on the sand. We got hooked up by an awesome guy named Pepe (his actual name is Jose Maria, and he's my friend Candida's college roommate's brother's friend Fonz's best friend from school... following?) who had met us like once before but found us a free place to stay (with his equally sweet friend Raul) then proceeded to show us around all weekend. Both boys are from Montevideo but have familial summer homes in Punta del Este. Pepe's five-bedroom was under construction so we stayed at Raul's place on the beach. No actually right outside window was the ocean. When we got there it was already dark, so we napped then went out at 3am to experience Punta's legendary nightlife at a club called Diablito, where we got to see the sunrise on the ocean. You can be a little bit jealous, it's cool, remember how I missed Christmas?
Raul and Pepe, our amahzing tour guides.
This beach had a hand sticking out of the ocean which seems cool until you find out that it was created by the sculptor to memorialize his son, who drowned.. It was a lovely beach, though.We spent an awesome day on the beach, lying out for four hours not realizing that Uruguay is right under the hole in the Ozone layer. After retreating our somewhat-burnt selves for an agua break, we (oh so stupidly) went out to another beach. All attempts at covering up were no good, and each of the five of us got red red red (this, by the way is the sunburn I've been alluding to for the past few weeks. Good heavens). Still, you know I love a good day at the beach, and we also got to see CasaPueblo (at the point of Punta [haha] the waves become bigger and the beach becomes rocklike and craggly and you feel like you're in Ireland a little bit. Casapueblo is this huge, weird structure (part of which is a hotel, apparently) where we enjoyed cold drinks for our warm faces. Later Pepe took us in his car over the camel bridge (totally jumpable, if you were wondering) and Raul bought us chevitos, which are like burgers except with steak meat and with every topping imaginable (I had mine with egg, bacon, ham, tomato, onion, lettuce, and three sauces). We made it back to Montevideo on Monday and took the ferry home at sunset.
Another gratuitous beach photo. Refer to tags of me in facebook "Christmas Party" albums to see the after-effects of this day at the beach.
Casapueblo and the disorienting coast at Punta's Punta.
Ferry nice.I omitted like 800 details just now, but two posts in one day is tiring. I just didn't want to forget to post the beach pix that pre-empted the epic burn. Also, I just came back from a week in Northwest Argentina (feat. the craziest landscapes/downpours I've ever seen) and wanted to clear the air before I made 4-5 posts about that XXperience.
HAPPY 2k10! January 4th and I'm still sweaty at 12:51 am.
No comments:
Post a Comment