Monday, November 26, 2007

Punta del Este

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As I mentioned previously, I took my family across to Uruguay for the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. We picked the beautiful beach resort area known as Punta del Este.

Punta del Este is THE place for porteƱos to get away to. During summer, many families in Buenos Aires just pack up and move there for three months. It is easy to see why. It is a very beautiful place.

Punta del Este

Many famous beach resorts in the US, Europe or Mexico end up looking like one giant stretch of tacky tourist shops all selling the same cheap "I went to XXXX and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" kind of crap. Their initial beauty overwhelmed by excess commercialism to the masses. Not Punta del Este.

Some of the best designed apartment buildings and vacation homes can be found here. Most are modern masterpieces right out of the pages of Dwell. Yet despited all of the high-end design and well heeled visitors, the place has a very relaxed, laid-back feel.

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We stayed at the Mantra Resort. A very nice resort on the north end of town. The room was one of the best I've stayed in. However, the service was very lacking. I think those in the know end up renting one of the sleek, modern bungalows on the beach. That is what we plan to do next time.

As for our trip. We didn't get to spend much time on the beach. The weather was cold and cloudy on Friday and Saturday. It turned nice on Sunday, but we had to leave by 8:00am so we could drive back to Montevideo to catch our Buquebus ferry.

We still had fun. It was nice to just get away and enjoy the natural beauty of the area. Oh, and we had some great food too. But that is another post.

If you ever come to Buenos Aires, make sure you carve out time for the trip north to Punta del Este.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uruguay is a beatiful country with great people (my wife is from there).

If you can, squeeze a weekend trip to Colonia, just crossing the river. You will not regret it. (You have beaches there too)

Longhorn Dave said...

Pablo:

Thanks for the advice. We do plan on taking the trip to Colonia next time we need to renew our tourist visa. We've heard great things about it.

Anonymous said...

hi, i ve been reading since a month or so. You have a nice blog.

punta del este is the monaco of south america.

you should go in january!!

saludos =)