Beaches and Boats



RM at La Manor (the hand)

 We are now in Punta del Este for five nights staying at La Capilla.  PdE is said to be said to be second only to Rio as the place to be seen amongst the South American jet set.  We arrived by public bus as it is aound 140km east of Montevideo.  It is situated on a peninsular which marks the spot where the River Plate meets the Atlantic: so on the left hand side the river is calm and on the right, the Atlantic provides huge waves for surfing. 

Our hotel is lovely and within a 5 minute walk of the Atlanti side beach.  It also has a small swimming pool, Italian restaurant and garden.  All in all, life is very gentle, easy and relaxing.  It is very Spanish in lifestyle with late starts in the morning, people still on the beach at 7pm and meals after 10pm.  On our first night, the turn down ladies were just leaving our room at 11.15pm as we were going to bed (so at least we managed to get the pillow chocolate!)

The weather is lovely although we've just come back from the beach where there is a very stiff breeeze.  It was in total contrast to Tuesday when we shelled out a rather expensive, but well worth it £20, to hire two loungers and an umbrella for the day.  The weather was very hot and the man who hired the beds to us, kept telling RM to put on 'mucho crema, mucho crema'.  This rather dented RMs ego as he thought his tan was building nicely!

It's easy to catch a bus into the main area which we explored yesterday.  The marina is huge with many very expensive boats and a whole family of sea lions coming in for their daily feed.  We had a long walk around the peninsula and the photograh below was taken where the river and ocean meet.  Unfortunately when HJ got up she'd been sat on a rather sharp rock and ripped her shorts so school girl sewing lessons had to be refreshed this morning!

Daddy Sealion

Nice photo - shame about the shorts!