Uruguay

MONTEVIDEO

We took the Buquebus - the ferry from Buenos Aires to get to Montevideo. This is a nice ferry boat with a cafeteria and store. It was about a 3 hour ride.

Montevideo is one of the cleanest cities in the world.  This is downtown Montevideo and of course there is a plastic bag on the ground, but this is unusual (not like Buenos Aires where we saw lots of trash ).  In Montevideo, people with horse-drawn carts go around and collect the recyclable items. Must be why the city is so clean. 

 

 

 

 

 

We stayed in the Ibis hotel on the ocean. I can be somewhat of a hotel diva - I like my hotels NICE, like 5 stars nice. But I was pleasantly surprised at how nice this hotel was. It was kind of like an IKEA hotel and it was clean - probably because it was only 3 years old. I wish we took a picture of the inside, but I can only show you the view from our room.   The walk along the beach was beautiful and fun. We only stayed a few days and then rented a car and drove to Punte del Este which I think was only about 2 hours away. After about a week in Punte del Este, we returned to Montevideo and stayed in the NH Columbia hotel. It was nice too!

 

 

We ate typical South American grilled meats. It is amazing what they eat - everything from the cow. In many restaurants you'll see brains, liver, blood sausage, and intestines grilled right next to the edible stuff. And listed on the menu is "assorted entrails" . My cat doesn't eat the entrails and niether do I. Edwin, however was a little more experimental.

We did visit the theater. It is a beautiful theater but we saw a ballet that was more like modern dance. And being more traditional ballet fans, we had to leave a little early!

PUNTE DEL ESTE

Punte del Este is a beautiful place. We visited in April and it was the slow season. Many Argentineans have summer homes here and visit during Dec/Jan/Feb. But I would recommend going during the slow season. The city is located on a small peninsula and you could walk the whole thing in a day.

Since we had our rental car, we stayed about 10 minutes away in La Barra. It is a small beach town across this fun bridge.

Our hotel was Las Olas which we would highly recommend. All the rooms are suites and breakfast is included. It is the typical South American breakfast of ham, cheese, pastries, fresh oj, fruit, and coffee or tea. Here is the pool and the view from the hotel. We were near the beach but we never walked it as we were always driving to Punte del Este. We did take a short drive north to a small town called Jose Ignacio, about 1/2 hour drive. This is a beautiful small beach town. And the light house is in this town. Sorry but we didn't get pictures of the homes and streets. It is worth a drive from Punte del Este.