Escaping to northeast Uruguay for low-key life and pristine

Escaping to northeast Uruguay for low-key
life and pristine nature
Frances Bula
PUNTA DEL DIABLO, URUGUAY — Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016 12:51PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016 12:51PM EDT
Vacation in the raw
Uruguay’s eclectic beach towns are perfect for adventurous travellers who love pristine nature
and a low-key vibe
Playa de los Pescadores is one of the busier beaches in Punta del Diablo, fitted with surf-rental
shacks and plenty of families and couples enjoying the sun. (France Bula / The Globe and Mail)
The road into Punta del Diablo started out normal enough. My husband and I were making our
our way to the most northeastern of Uruguay’s beach towns, a place far off the vacation track for
most Canadians. Even for some Uruguayans, since it’s a solid four-hour drive from the capital,
Montevideo, and just a few kilometres from the Brazilian border.
At first, the road was paved. There were a few regular-looking houses on large lots, a couple of
mercados – grocery stores – and a large, treed campsite. Then some youth hostels, their large
porches clearly ready for all-night hangouts. More houses, closer together, some looking as if
they’d been built from scrap materials, others closer to Dwell magazine modernism.
Suddenly, we appeared to be driving through the vendor and food-stall section of a large,
disorganized music festival. The road had changed from asphalt to packed dirt and there was an
almost impenetrable crowd of people milling around in front of our car. Young gods in
dreadlocks carrying surfboards, families trailing kids, dozens of bronzed teenagers, locals
carrying plastic grocery bags. There were restaurants with wonky wooden decks and handlettered signs pressed up to the sidewalk-less road. Ramshackle stalls selling straw hats, beach
wraps, jewellery, blow-up water toys and gourds for mate, a traditional hot drink.
Then, as we inched forward through the mob – the Atlantic. The grey-green waves unfurling
down a long curved cove. Men winching small wooden fish boats out of the water and onto the
beach. A horse and cart pulling away from the fishmongers’ stalls.
So, definitely not the Hawaiian island of Maui, or Sayulita, Mexico, or Italy’s Ligurian coast, or
Venice Beach, Calif., or any other seaside community we’d ever been to. As we would continue
to discover, travelling up and down the coast, Uruguay’s small towns and their beaches were
nothing like anything we’d seen before.
My decision to visit Uruguay, a country of only 3.8 million wedged between giant neighbours
Argentina and Brazil can be traced to a film I’d seen at the Vancouver film festival several years
before. Por el camino, by Argentine director Charly Braun, is a road-trip movie that threw
together a flaky young Belgian woman and a more conventional, upper-class Argentine man in
search of various people and places in Uruguay. Predictably, the characters fell in love.
The more unexpected journey in the film was their geographic one, filled with scenes of rolling
green hills, farming towns populated by gauchos with sun-weathered walnut faces and beaches
facing a vast expanse of ocean. It put Uruguay onto my daydream list.
Punta del Diablo Beach in Rocha, Uruguay. (Joyce Evelyn / Getty Images)
And now, here we were, trying not to mow anyone down as we crawled along the oceanfront and
up the hill to our Airbnb cottage, a place that turned out to be far less hippie-casual and more
upscale-tourist than I had anticipated. In fact, it was one of three cottages that had been built on a
single lot – one of many similar clusters – to cater to the Argentine, Brazilian and European
travellers who have begun discovering this small piece of South America in the past few years.
A lot of vacationers still don’t venture any further than Punta del Este, the condo-packed resort
city a couple of hours from Montevideo.
But more adventurous ones have trickled northeast along the highway to places such as La
Paloma, La Pedrera, Cabo Polonio, Barra de Valizas, Aguas Dulces, and our first destination,
Punta del Diablo.
It’s a part of the world best suited to those who love big nature and a small-town feel, one that
combines some of the customs of Europe (Uruguay was heavily influenced by Spanish, Italian
and Basque settlers) with the casualness of the New World. Uruguay is considered by many
travellers to be the Switzerland of South America, a country with free education, liberal attitudes
– abortion and the production and sale of marijuana are legal – and an apparently large and
contented middle class.
That would be enough to make Uruguay seem familiar to Canadians, but it has the added
element of vast, unpopulated spaces punctuated by small towns and only the occasional city. I
sometimes felt as if I was in the greener, hillier parts of Alberta, except with palm trees, pampas
grass and exotic birds.
For sure, the northeastern region of the country is not for people who want or need standard
tourist services at all times. Except for La Paloma, a port that is the biggest and least attractive of
these shore towns, none has any conventional hotels or more than one cash machine, pharmacy,
paved road or gas station, if that.
One impromptu settlement, Cabo Polonio, doesn’t even have electricity or, really, any roads at
all. This offbeat enclave of shacks and small houses clustered around a lighthouse in a national
park makes do with solar panels and whatever supplies can be trucked in with off-road vehicles
or horses.
The beaches are the biggest lure. Every town has at least two, if not three, distinct beaches –
pristine, gorgeous scalloped coves bordered by dunes and grasses, the sand pounded to velvet by
the waves.
At Punta del Diablo, there was the busy, crowded one we saw the first day, Playa de los
Pescaderos.
Fishing boats rest on the shores of the Punta del Diablo beach, a popular tourist spot on the
Uruguay coast. (Kseniya Ragozina / iStockphoto)
The surf-rental shacks are there and the snack shacks, and the families taking their toddlers in to
jump the waves. Young men play never-ending beach-soccer games, and leathery couples bake
themselves to mahogany.
We hung around there to people watch, and so my husband could hone his surfer skills on the
not-too-big, not-too-small waves that crashed evenly on this “easy” beach, the one for the
beginners. We’d go for an espresso afterward at the rickety Costa Mar across the road and watch
the boats coming in, the crowds gathering to watch crates of fish being unloaded.
Playa Grande, to the northeast, was much emptier. With just a smattering of people, it was a
place where you could walk the beach in peace, contemplating, as we did on our afternoon there,
the single windsurfer, the Peggy’s Cove-like boulders of the point ahead and the unusual sky in
this part of the world, where the brilliant afternoon sun turns it almost white.
Playa de la Viuda was southwest of the town centre, hidden behind large dunes and almost
completely empty, apparently there just for the enjoyment of the residents of the few discreetly
swish small hotels facing it.
But there’s more than just the beaches to these towns. Every one of them has a main street that
turns into a pedestrian stroll and street party in the evening. In Punta del Diablo, when we’d had
enough of the beach, it was where we went every day to get lunch or shop for supplies: fresh fish
from the boat, floppy woven-grass hats to protect us from the intense sun, the basics from the
cluster of small grocery stores.
At night, the main street turned into a small party, as people filled the outdoor tables and others
rambled by, everything permeated by the sound of music emanating from many of the
restaurants.
Waves roll in along the scenic La Pedrera beach resort in Eastern Uruguay. (Olaf Speier / Getty
Images)
One night, as we ate our meal of crab, followed by roasted chicken with herbs and rice at the
newly opened Déjà Vu, run by a French guy from Lille and a group of his French and Swiss
friends, the live soundtrack was provided by a four-piece jazz group. Next door, we could hear a
folk singer. That’s typical in these resort towns, as travelling musicians set up in one restaurant
or another along the street.
After the beaches and the nightlife, the expeditions were the next biggest draw.
This is an area with a lot of nature, some of which the national government is working to
preserve. Birds, turtles, sea lions, penguins, unusual types of trees, lagoons and constantly
shifting dunes are just some of the things to see. Getting access to them sometimes requires
effort and patience – tours fluctuate depending on whether guides are in the mood or whether a
business is still in operation.
Sunrise on La Pedrera, one of Uruguays most popular resorts. (Olaf Speier / Getty Images)
Just north of Punta was La Coronilla, the distinctly non-resort-like local-government town, all
modest bungalows and gardens. One of its beaches is home to a large sea turtle population. A
Uruguayan sea turtle-preservation group, Karumbe, has a small outpost on a lot opposite the
beach, providing some information about the country’s sea turtle population, along with a small
collection of turtle-themed knickknacks.
The information booth itself is not exactly turtle friendly, with desperate-looking captive turtles
banging around in small plastic tubs set on the grass. But the volunteers – Manuela Calvo, the
day I was there – do provide directions to the best places to see turtles in the wild. That’s either a
few kilometres down the beach from the display or nearby at the large Santa Teresa National
Park just to the southeast, which is worth a visit in itself, complete with a 17th-century fortress
and huge camping spaces.
Near Barra de Valizas, halfway between Punta and the much more upscale and manicured La
Pedrera an hour’s drive away, you can take a boat ride up the river to see the Bosque de Ombues
– a forest of strange, ghostly trees unique to this part of the continent. The boat tours start at the
bridge on the highway just south of Barra, although it’s best to check with a local host or the
tourist-information office to confirm the times. The town also has spectacular horseback-riding
tours along the beach or into the dunes.
Barra de Valizas itself has the biggest dunes on the coast, a seductive attraction for anyone who
visits. Even we couldn’t resist, wading through the small gulch that separates the main beach
from the dunes, and then chugging our way up these small sand mountains until we got to the
rocky plateaus at the top. (Young, fit visitors sometimes keep going along the top and cross over
into Cabo Polonio National Park, a 2 1/2-hour hike.)
Barra de Valizas has the biggest dunes on the coast, a seductive attraction for anyone who visits.
(fotoember / Getty Images)
And then there’s Cabo Polonio, a phenomenon unto itself. There used to be the occasional
truck/dune-buggy contraption that would take people on the 30-minute trip across the dunes and
along the beach to the point. Now, there’s an elaborate entryway, a parking lot that can hold
several hundred cars, a small museum, a café and a fleet of truck-buggies that cost about $10 a
person, round trip.
We joined one of the 30-person convoys on a Sunday afternoon. My husband was concerned that
the trip was going to be boring, no doubt because of my habit of stopping to read every
educational sign about flora and fauna in our own national parks. But the ride turned out to be
anything but. As the truck plowed through the dunes, it swayed back and forth at times like a
boat about to capsize in a heavy storm. People screamed occasionally. When we arrived, we
were met by a scene reminiscent of Nevada’s annual Burning Man festival, with houses, hostels,
vendor stalls and eating/drinking hangouts that all appeared to have been built by whatever
someone could haul in on a donkey.
As it turned out, there was lots to explore, even in this tiny settlement. The more touristy part of
Cabo Polonio is the northern shore, where everyone gets dropped off. The day trippers pack the
beach and the restaurants of every variety. There were places that looked like campsites and
there was La Perla del Cabo, where we had one of our best meals in Uruguay, complete with a
selection of unusual breads to start, a quinoa-crab appetizer and creamy risotto with seafood.
But the scene on the south side was much calmer. The houses there, Greek-village white, looked
sturdier, as though someone with a passing knowledge of building codes might have been
involved. It was clearly the beach favoured by locals. The only bar, partway up the hill, was a
low-key, open-air hangout filled with couches and loungers where you could easily spend an
afternoon contemplating the ocean.
And then there was the point itself. All day, every time we meandered closer to the cabo of Cabo
Polonio, I could hear excited screams, as though there was a high-stakes soccer game going on
somewhere nearby. Finally, I realized it wasn’t people yelling or a soccer game. It was the sea
lions, dozens of them barking madly away on the rocky islands just off the point, a part of
Uruguay’s still unspoiled nature that continues to thrive.
Punta del Diablo beach in northeast Uruguay. (Kseniya Ragozina / Getty Images)
----------------If you go
There are no direct flights to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, so pick your airline
according to whichever stopover seems the least painful. If you’re flying from Central or Eastern
Canada, the most common transfer points from Toronto are Sao Paulo, Panama or Santiago.
From the West, several U.S. airlines have flights that connect through Dallas and Houston.
Buses from Montevideo to the coastal towns are frequent, modern and comfortable. There are
also numerous car rental agencies in Montevideo and prices are reasonable.
WHEN TO GO
The high season, when things are the most expensive and crowded, falls between Christmas and
the end of January, even though Carnival extends to the end of February. We found midFebruary to have enough people to provide bustle but not so many as to be overwhelming. The
locals told us that the water is warm enough for swimming even in April or May. Many places
close for the winter, though locals told us that more are starting to stay open at least on
weekends.
WHERE TO STAY
All towns have a wide range of vacation rentals, usually available through Airbnb. The nicer
hotels in Uruguay, as in Italy, come with a breakfast, often a hearty one, including scrambled
eggs, ham, cheese, toast, croissants, fruit, cakes and coffee.
La Pedrera
Brisas de La Pedrera. This is the boutique hotel that kicked off interest in the northeastern
stretch of Uruguay’s coast in 2009. Operated by very friendly Laura Jauregui, who divides her
time between La Pedrera and her home in the United States, the two-storey building set among
upscale homes close to the beach feels like a modern convent – all tranquility and restful whites.
From $130 (U.S.) a night in low season.
Barra de Valizas
Posada Valizas is one of the few non-camping, non-youth hostel, non-bungalow choices in this
all-dirt-road town that is the least developed of all the popular beach towns. The inn has the feel
of a French farmhouse, with its low ceilings, small bedrooms around the living room, and bright
white kitchen. The owner, Cecelia Ribo, made special arrangements for us to have dinner at a
restaurant run out of a friend’s house, which was a special experience. From $80 a night, low
season.
Punta del Diablo
Posada la Viuda del Diablo. Part of a chain of small, luxury hotels, this inn doesn’t allow
children and is clearly meant for people who want to stare at the ocean from the loungers on their
decks and take long, romantic walks along the beach. From $125 a night, low season.
Posada Lune de Miel. One of a new style of developments in town, it features a set of cottages
around a pool. Set in the eastern, more suburban-feeling part of town, it’s a short distance from
Playa Grande. From $65 a night, low season.
A lifeguard on the beach at Barra (Frances Bula / The Globe and Mail)
PLACES TO EAT
Bon Appetit-style fine dining flourishes in Punta del Este and Jose Ignacio to the southwest, but
the best you can expect at most restaurants in the northeastern towns are the kind of meals that a
very enthusiastic friend with a good cookbook might make. Lots of pasta and rice dishes and
many seafood specialties, along with the usual steaks.
Punta del Diablo
Il Tano. This restaurant, set in a small house in a residential section of the town, has excellent
pastas (ravioli stuffed with seaweed in a cream sauce was my choice) and a comfortable deck for
whiling away the afternoon or evening.
Lo de Olga. This really is run by a woman named Olga. A pleasant lunch spot on the main street
with a big wooden deck and lots of local favourites: seaweed fritters, fried calamari, rice with
seafood, chicken or pork.
Déjà Vu. Opposite the police station, this specializes in a French/Belgian take on cuisine. Crepes
for dessert, French touches on the seafood and meat dishes. There’s a house-party atmosphere at
this place run by four young men, who advertise their beer as “colder than the heart of your ex.”
Barra de Valizas
Proa. The restaurant on the beach. Local fish dishes, based on the catch of the day, and very
tasty seafood risotto.
Masamadre. A restaurant run by Robert Orquet out of a house on a side street. Very intimate. It
was a flat 700 pesos ($35 Canadian) a person for dinner, which included pâté, shark with capers
or roast pork with blueberries, and lemon pie, plus wine.
La Pedrera
La Jau. A Basque restaurant that is off the busy, pedestrian-only main street, in a small house,
with items like crab fritters, and roast pork with smashed potatoes topped with cheese.
La Candombera. A pizza place on the side street Avenida de los Indios that consists of an oven
and a collection of rickety tables in an open-air café. Great pizza and very warm, fun
atmosophere. Cash only.