February 1, 2013
The past weeks we made up for lost time visiting other places along the coast. Now that we have our car, we can go anywhere. We drove to Punta del Diablo, almost at the top of Uruguay. It is really just a small village in a bunch of sand dunes. VERY laid back.
Chuy is the border town. Not much to see. Its big attraction is being a duty-free zone.
Fuerte San Miguel is a cool old fort.
We keep hearing about a town called Colonia. It is to the west of Montevideo. When we have a little more time, we will go there.”
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During the months of January and February, we drove up the coast. There are a number of bohemian beach towns. Most have one paved road, the main road, then the rest are dirt. The beaches get less crowded the further you go from Montevideo. Each town has a few decent restaurants.
I will start from the farthest point. The last town before crossing out of Uruguay is Chuy. There is not much to see there. It has many visitors since the streets are lined with duty-free shops. The odd thing about Chuy is that half of town is in Uruguay and the other half is in Brazil. And let me tell you, you can cross that border without even realizing it. We did! No one stopped us or even slowed us down. Luckily we had our passports with us. We accidentally crossed the border a second time. We turned on a side road and literally, within 20 feet, realized we might have crossed the border… we noticed a tiny but official looking shack. The border agent made a big show of being nice enough to let us back out of Brazil. Twice in Brazil without a passport stamp. Made for a stressful day. I wonder how many people get caught in this mess.
The next town we visited while heading back towards Piriapolis, was the town of Punta del Diablo. It is VERY bohemian. If you are over twenty, you might feel old. There are hundreds of cabanas for rent.. The entire town is set on sand dunes. If you want to feel like you are away from civilization, this is the place. We found an incredible home for rent here. Way beyond our budget at $12,000 USD per month. We wondered what happened in March when everyone left.
An amazing house we saw in Punta del Diablo for a mere $12,000 a month…out of our budget!
One of the roads just south of Chuy doubles as a runway. It was eerie to see the bold markings on the road for landing an airplane. You could not help but look up and drive a little faster.
Unnerving
In this same area was an old fort, Fuerte San Miguel. We actually had hoped to visit Fortaleza de Santa Teresa, but they would not let our vehicle in with dogs in it. The Fuerte San Miguel was a great trade off.
Chris crossing the moat with the dogs.
You enter by crossing a moat. The bricks are covered in orange moss and many are crumbling. On the ramparts are a few canons with canonballs at the ready.
Looked like they were aiming at us.
- Inside the walls of the fort.
We loved the old bathroom…yes, I said bathroom. Basically there were a few holes designed into in the brick on the outside of one wall. You sat down with your “ass” hanging out over open space. Sounds a bit chilly in cold weather and privacy was obviously not a big concern since your rear would be quite visible from below. Bet they knew where it was best not to walk when taking a stroll around the fort.
Those are not windows – that is the bathroom.
There was also a very nice museum with old uniforms. One uniform was all white. If you think red stands out, white was brilliant…not too stealth.
The uniform museum
The fourth place to visit Uruguay is Colonia del Sacremento. That will be my next post. I have some nice pictures.