We are in love with Uruguay. It's not cheap, but every place we've been has been fantastic. Relaxing atmosphere, great people, good food, friendly dogs. Our most recent destinations were beach towns. It's winter here, so they're mostly closed and very few people here.
Cabo Polonio: permanent population less than 100. Lots of empty summer houses. No grid electricity or water, but there's some from wind/solar and rain collection. Only two tiny restaurants and a bar open in low season, and we never did find the bar.
The town surrounds a lighthouse on the tip of a peninsula in a national park, so no cars are allowed. Entrance to the park is a bumpy 30-minute ride in a monstrous 4x4. We rode on top and tried not to drop anything.
Not much to do in the town, which is why it's so perfect. We went to the top of the lighthouse, watched the sea lion/elephant seal colony, hiked 10km up the beach to a scenic lookout, watched the sunset, and hung out with the hostel dogs. The night sky is crystal clear: my favorite memory is making glowing footsteps with the bioluminescent algae at the water's edge, under the light of the milky way. Will have to get our star photos off the good camera.
Punta del Diablo: not much to do besides eat seafood and play with our hostel's five dogs. Again, perfect. Our first night we walked down to the beach, but all 5 hostel dogs plus two neighbor dogs joined us. Our entourage waited patiently in the artesian's market while we ordered fish empanadas, which we were then obligated to share with them. Lots of strange looks from visiting weekenders. Only one dog (no one's dog, we named him "Esperro") followed us 2km to dinner, but he waited outside for us.
Today was strange. We rented bikes to go to a nearby national park, but Esperro and one of the hostel dogs (Lola) joined us the whole way. We were worried about cars so we took a tiny access road instead of the main road, and had to keep squeezing through gates and passing the bikes over. The dogs kept chasing cows and horses, and Esperro got stung by a bee from some hives we passed, but he shook it off. We got to the park and dogs weren't allowed, so we decided we were tired and came back. So, the dogs followed us for a total of 30km. Lola's been napping ever since.
It's hard to leave, but we're off on an overnight bus up the coast to Brazil.
Also, pictures added to our previous Uruguay post. It was post #50!
-Peter
Also, there was a magic house.
ReplyDeleteAmazing! I love the sleepy towns in the beautiful locations. Be careful with the dogs though, or you'll end up wanting to take them home!
ReplyDeleteWe want to take them home all the time! :O)
Deleteare they pariah dog?
ReplyDeleteThe ones in this post are not, except for Esperro. There aren't as many stray dogs in Uruguay as we've seen in other countries and they ones we have met are generally well taken care of!
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