Punta del Este

We dropped anchor outside of Punta del Este right on time at 8:00. We let the organized tours go ahead while we had breakfast outside in the Terrace Café. We were on board a tender around 9:00 headed for the marina, which was jam packed with boats. Our first order of business once ashore was to check out the Los Dedos de Punta del Este sculpture. This turned out to be a bit of a longer walk than I’d anticipated, but that was fine as the shoreline provided a wonderful backdrop. In all the pictures I’d seen of the fingers they looked white, but when we arrived they were brown. This lessened the impact a bit as they sort of blended in with the sand. It was still cool, but not quite as striking as I’d been expecting.

We took the obligatory photos, swapping cameras with another family to get full group shots. We wanted to spend some time on the calmer bay side beach, so we cut across the peninsula. It’s narrow, so it was only a five-minute walk. We found a spot that was renting umbrellas and chairs and grabbed some beach space. The beach was crowded, but not to an uncomfortable degree, and we didn’t hear any English being spoken at all. Looked like all locals having a Sunday beach day or people from nearby on their Punta del Este vacation. It was very much like being at a beach at home in the summer.

We grabbed lunch at a food hall across the street from the beach. After lunch we walked back to the marina on the beach with our feet in the water, which felt great. We were back on board around 4:00, well ahead of the 6:00 scheduled departure time.

This closes out the South America portion of our trip. We really loved all of it, probably even more than we were hoping to. Now we get ready for a bunch of sea days as we cross the Atlantic.Læs mere