Southern Uruguay

After a few relaxing days in Santa Teresa we continued our journey South knowing that we had to be in Montevideo in a couple of weeks as we had organised shipping for the Beast back to Europe.

Driving down the coastal road was a joy with a good road surface and almost no traffic. We stopped at a town called La Paloma.

The town is really the first proper Uruguayan town that we had come across with a supermarket and thankfully the first ATM that we could get to work.  There’s also a big lighthouse in town which we couldn’t resist climbing with some lovely views along the coast.

Just outside town situated on a long deserted beach is a huge campsite which has capacity for well over 1000 people. We stayed here a few nights and had the place to ourselves with a lovely shaded site on grass.

The weather in Uruguay was treating us really well with almost unbroken sunshine, unseasonably warm temperatures all coupled with beautiful long sandy deserted beaches.

Our next stop after La Paloma was to move south to the famous resort of Punta del Este. This is an upscale resort which is frequented by the rich and famous of both Uruguay and Argentina.  However its only busy for a couple of months a year and the rest of year is off season. Walking around town it felt like we’d missed the zombie apocalypse as the streets were completely empty. We decided to move on straight away as it was too built up for our liking.

Punta del Este is the South most point of the ocean coast but we continued to move towards Montevideo along the coast of the estuary of the Rio de la Plata. We stopped for the night in Piriapolis a coastal resort whose glory days are long behind it.

The centrepiece of the town is the Hotel Argentino which was a post-war gin palace frequented by the monied from Buenos Aires.  After a night in an empty campground – well empty apart from swarms of very hungry mosquitos we moved on the very beautiful old fortified town of Colonia.