February 22 - Punta del Este, Uruguay

Today we’ve made our last stop in Uruguay, the seaside city of Punta del Este. The city is on a peninsula with one side bounded by the Rio de la Plata and the other by the Atlantic. It has become a resort town for Latin American jet-setters and has been compared to towns on the Riviera.  It has also been the site of a number of world summits and has hosted Formula 1 races and an international yachting competition.

My tour first took us on a bus ride around the resort town.  It looked a lot like any beach town anywhere with lots of condo buildings, restaurants and bars tucked in between and a few hotels here and there.  One feature that was different and that it’s famous for is called La Mano.  It’s a sculpture depicting five  human fingers coming out of the sand on one of the beaches.

I confess to copying this from somewhere else because from the bus I couldn't get a photo like this.

We left the town and headed to a headland on the peninsula where a Uruguayan artist named Vilaró built a building called Casapueblo. It’s built on the cliffside and was built in the style of buildings on the island of Santorini.  It's built of cement and stucco and is painted a brilliant white with some blue accents as you see on the Greek island.  Vilaró built it to be his home and did it with no building plan, so it just kind of evolved over more than 30 years.  It has 13 floors built on the cliffside all with terraces that allow  views of the sunset over the water.  Now the building is a museum, a hotel, an art gallery and a cafeteria.  We only stopped for a few minutes to take photos of the exterior.

We then drove to a neighborhood named Beverly Hills which was obviously a very affluent part of town.  Each block only contained one house. In the middle of this we got to the Ralli Museum. This is one of five museums of the same name around the world founded by a man named Harry Recanati who devoted his life to  supporting and promoting artists. The museum here in Punta del Este was the first and I have no idea why it was.  The museum has a collection of mainly modern art and sculpture.  I have to confess that most of the paintings weren’t really my cup of tea.  I’m more of a Monet and Renoir kind of girl, but it was worth seeing.  There were two sculpture patios which were interesting. One of them had some original bronze sculptures by Salvador Dali and several had his melted clock as seen in the Persistence of Memory painting, which I do like.  The sculptures were enclosed in plexiglass cases which caused lots of reflections but maybe you can make out one of them.

Sculpture of a melted clock by Dali

This and the next two were in the sculpture patios 

We left the museum and headed to a place out of town that I think was probably an estancia, a ranch, at one time.  It has now been converted to a rather nice restaurant and I think perhaps a small hotel.  We sat in a dining area that had a roof but was open on a couple of sides.  We were served a humongous meal! It started with a kind of cheese fondue made of mozzarella cheese with a jellied squash on top.  (I know I should have taken pictures, but I forgot.)  Next we helped ourselves to a salad bar.  Then came the pièce de resistance, a platter with grilled ribs, chicken, and a couple of different kinds of sausages along with roasted sweet and white potatoes.  It was all good but way too much food.  But we weren’t finished yet.  They brought us each a Uruguayan dulce de leche inside a sort of crêpe with a scoop of ice cream.  It was too sweet honestly so I don’t think any of us ate it all.  Of course everything was washed down with wine.  By the time we were finished I think we all  needed a siesta.

The restaurant's patio.  It was a lovely place

The plaque has the name of the restaurant, Narbona

That was our last stop so we drove back to the tender dock for our return to the ship.  It was formal night and I got cleaned up to go to dinner with the Public Health Officer.  He was actually a very interesting table host. He is Polish and very easy to talk to so I think all of us at the table had a good time.  By the way, I ate only a salad which consisted of a piece of watermelon with a couple of beets (yummy combination actually) and a mini-lobster tail with none of the other things that came with it.  Then it was off to the show and late night dancing of course.  We have two sea days now so I can recuperate. Whew, thank goodness!