We were offered an opportunity that we just couldn't pass up. A friend of friends owns a house on the outskirts of Punta del Este, Uruguay and our friends invited us to come and stay their with them for the Thanksgiving holiday. So I pulled my boys out of school for two days (our school follows an Argentine schedule, not an American one) and we added another South American location to our travels!
This small city is coastal paradise for international travelers - we met folks from Brazil and Chile as well as other Americans like ourselves. We heard French and German being spoken and, of course, we heard the distinctive Porteño accent everywhere. In this part of South America, you never really escape Buenos Aires - Porteños love to travel and we have found them everywhere we visit. It might be why we get a long with so many of them!
The hotels and apartments lining the city beaches are for the rich and for the famous. The airport had its share of private jets parked in their private lot - and all of this a good two weeks before "the season" officially starts. Many restaurants and stores were still closed even though the weather was gorgeous and the earlier travelers were busy taking advantage of the lack of crowds.
We came home with two Uruguayan flags for my boys, pockets full of sea shells, and a single bird skull my youngest found scavenging among the rocks at the beach. And lots of great memories and pictures of our adventures.
We started our first morning tidepooling near the house where we were staying, on the river side of Punta del Este - that takes a little explaining. Punta del Este is really on a point sticking out into the ocean - it is a turning point for the entire nation. Up until Punta del Este, the country of Uruguay borders the river mouth of the Rio de la Plata. At the point, that changes and country borders the Atlantic ocean. It is very hard to tell the difference - the color of the water is the same though the directions of the winds make the Atlantic side more wavy (it's where you will find the surfers); the beaches are sandy and interspersed with sections of dark gray rock on both sides. We asked about tides from a local ferry boat captain and he said it might be going down that afternoon, but maybe not. I got the impression that tides were not very important here. As dedicated tidepoolers from Northern California, the height of the tide makes all the difference between a great experience and a mediocre one.
We weren't sure what to expect - we know that much of South America has no rules or laws about water quality and that all kinds of crap floats downriver. We even wondered about sewage from the city of Punta del Este itself. And though we didn't find a wide variety of sea life, we were very happy to find any at all. The small guide book that we purchased for all animal life in the area told us that there was one type of anemone - we found three for sure. One of them we didn't discover until we arrived home and looked at a picture on the computer. They were very small but very anemone-like so we're placing them in that classification for the moment!
We also found a large number of crabs - most of them in the water but a few out. There were several different types of larval critters swimming around - too small for great photos but very much alive and swimming fast. We found a cool insect like creature. Mussels were everywhere - prolific would be an understatement. There were also many limpets. We were disappointed not to find a single chiton but we have learned not to judge a place by a single visit... they may yet be there waiting to be found! Basically, it is an area that has a lot of potential for future tidepooling - I would love to travel further north on the coast and visit some less popular beaches to see what we might find.
Just walking back and forth from the beach to the house was marvelous. The area is ripe for birding. We would see the black ibises hanging out on the power lines in the morning, hear the sparrows singing, the parrots chirping madly, and the hummingbirds buzz by our ears. Close by, there was a great lagoon with tons of wildlife viewing opportunities. I would have loved a viewing platform to see up and over the profuse reeds, which they also harvest to thatch many of the local homes. We had to be content with walking along the road and occasionally flushing birds from the edges or view them on the far side with binoculars. We could tell that they were not used to being watched.
Our favorite day trip was out to Isla de Gorriti, the site of an old Spanish fort. The island sits at the very edge of the very wide mouth of the Rio de la Plata and fort overlooks the water towards the city. The island is small but with very diverse habitats. On the far side, there are sandy beaches in a cove of very cold, blue water. Rocky outcroppings beg to be tidepooled though there were not many creatures to be found. Forests and scrub on the island are home to many different species of birds. In the distance, we saw hawks and scissor tails perched high up in trees. A beautiful little song sparrow serenaded us during our picnic lunch. And the oyster catchers on shore sound just like those in California, their constant warning cry letting all the other birds know that humans are in the area. We saw our first black faced gulls as well.
Punta del Este has a lot to offer on the mainland as well. The beaches are long and wide and very clean. Although the water is not warm, it is not as cold as Northern California, though it comes close. The surfers still wore their wetsuits but the daytrippers like ourselves braved the cold water with nothing more than a normal bathing suit. The warm sun soon warmed us back up!
In some places, the city is a hodgepodge, with old, small homes still standing in between the high rises. Out on the main point, it is still only residential with few restaurants or tourist havens, and a beautifully painted provencal blue church. It isn't even possible to visit the lighthouse - it is still a place to work and has a practical function, but isn't intended to attract tourists.
Instead, the city seems to want you to head down the port to take the boats out to the islands or to the beaches, where they have invested in lots of public art. Our favorite sculpture, and probably the most famous in the area, are the fingers coming up out of the sand!
I was very surprised not to find many seals nor sea lions on the beaches. We later learned that there have been some very unpleasant human and wildlife encounters and that the locals tend to chase off those animals that come up on the beach, though the fisherman offer them food to come into the areas by the docks. The city recently passed a law to make this illegal as a few tourists had to visit the emergency room after they inadvisedly got too close to their very sharp teeth. We still noticed the fisherman throwing scraps into the water... I am not sure that will ever change. And it will be a long time coming before city people understand that wildlife is wild. We have noticed this in Argentina as well - people have very little understanding of what a wild animal can do. They believe that if you offer it food, it will be tame. This is even encouraged at the zoos. It will take years of education to convince folks otherwise - the national park at Iguazu was making an attempt with a very proactive campaign and parents were still encouraging kids as young as 2 and 3 years old to offer snacks so that they could stroke the fur and take pictures with wild animals.
My youngest, the budding marine biologist, and I decided to splurge and take the trip out to Isla de Lobos to see the seals and sea lions up close since there were so few of them on the mainland. We were told that the island is the third largest reserve in the world but I can't find an online reference. However, from Wikipedia:
La Isla de Lobos es una Reserva Natural debido a que en ella se encuentra la mayor colonia de lobos marinos del hemisferio occidental. Conviven en la isla dos especies: el lobo fino o de dos pelos (Arctocephalus australis) y el león marino, lobo de un pelo o lobo de peluca (Otaria flavescens). En 2005 se contabilizaron 1.500 leones y 250.000 lobos marinos.
La Isla de Lobos is a nature reserve because it is the largest colony of sea lions in the western hemisphere. Two species live on the island: the fur seals (Arctocephalus australis) and the sea lion (Otaria flavescens). In 2005 there were 1500 lions and 250,000 seals.
We could only view the animals from the boat, moving all the while. The animals on the shore were numerous but difficult to view and binoculars don't help while your boat is rapidly moving up and down. The animals in the water where mesmerizing - there were absolutely thousands of seals that we could see far into the distance, all of them turning and twisting in the water, many displaying a single fin to help regulate their temperatures, some porpoising out of the water, all in constant motion. The biggest disappointment is that we had no guide to discuss the animals or the reserve. The pilot and his assistant were more concerned about giving us a 'great ride' by hitting the peaks and troughs of the waves until one of our numbers was seasick than in discussing the wildlife we had all paid to see. Uruguayans are still learning about eco-tourism and Punta del Este could use a naturalist out at the docks.
We would be remiss not to mention food. We ate many meals with our friends at home but a vacation isn't a vacation without some local food. Merienda is one of our favorite meals of the day - it can be breakfast, late breakfast, or English tea time, depending on your mood. It is usually a bread of some kind, often toast. For my family, we usually order tostados - toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. The standard drinks are cafe con leche and orange juice but a chocolotada caliente is never out of place. This isn't just in Uruguay - we have eaten this same meal in Buenos Aires as well. It is pretty standard fare for this corner or South America.
The most famous dish in Uruguay, which we had never ordered before, is a sandwich called a chivito - this one came without the bread and was piled on a bed of french fries... not half bad! If you're confused by the name, which literally means little goat, you might like the story of how it came into existence:
The word Chivito literally means "little goat" or "baby goat". It is claimed the name arose at a restaurant in Uruguay, when a patron who was from the northern part of Argentina (Cordoba) ordered baby goat meat ("chivito") like one that she had ordered in Argentina. She was looking for a special taste, something similar to what she had experienced in her region. But since the restaurant owner Mr. Cabrera did not have this specialty, he served his toasted bread with ham, sliced filet mignon and seasoned it with different ingredients.
If we ever have a chance to visit this part of the world again, we would definitely stay outside of the city - the thatched cottages and the gravel, country roads are much more our style than the tall city buildings. We are very grateful that our friends offered us this chance. Otherwise, we would missed a very beautiful part of South America.