Today we parked just outside of Punta del Este, Uruguay, and had to use tenderboats to get to shore. About a 20-minute ride on the boat, but it's all good.
We were picked up at the marina after watching a brief stint of a sea lion eating discarded fish remains from fishermen after cleaning their catch. This is a snap of the marina with our ship in the background. Sure are a lot of yachts around here too - mostly from Argentinians.
Punta del Este is a beach town, much like our beach towns. There are lots of beautiful homes here, condominiums, etc., but the total population of the town is only 7,000. They estimate they have 1 million people through here in the summer.
At the beach, they have a hand reaching out of the sand. This was created by an Italian artist.
On the way out of town at a very nice lookout spot, was this house/castle built into the side of the hill. The owner was the father of one of the rugby players who survived the plane crash in the Andes. You might remember that movie/book - known by different names, but one was "Alive!". The father was a famous Uruguayan artist. He died a couple of years ago, and now his house is a museum.
We were taken to a local winery for a short tour, wine tasting of their wines, and lunch. It was a terrific tasting with wonderful wines. And the lunch was fantastic - don't need dinner, that's for sure. We liked the one wine so much, we finished the bottle there during lunch. The interesting thing about this winery is it's all organic - no preservatives, and everything is moved using gravity - no pumps. It's a small winery. They produce a small quantity relative to other wineries. Anyway a great day.
This is a shot of one of their vineyards.
We were picked up at the marina after watching a brief stint of a sea lion eating discarded fish remains from fishermen after cleaning their catch. This is a snap of the marina with our ship in the background. Sure are a lot of yachts around here too - mostly from Argentinians.
Punta del Este is a beach town, much like our beach towns. There are lots of beautiful homes here, condominiums, etc., but the total population of the town is only 7,000. They estimate they have 1 million people through here in the summer.
At the beach, they have a hand reaching out of the sand. This was created by an Italian artist.
On the way out of town at a very nice lookout spot, was this house/castle built into the side of the hill. The owner was the father of one of the rugby players who survived the plane crash in the Andes. You might remember that movie/book - known by different names, but one was "Alive!". The father was a famous Uruguayan artist. He died a couple of years ago, and now his house is a museum.
We were taken to a local winery for a short tour, wine tasting of their wines, and lunch. It was a terrific tasting with wonderful wines. And the lunch was fantastic - don't need dinner, that's for sure. We liked the one wine so much, we finished the bottle there during lunch. The interesting thing about this winery is it's all organic - no preservatives, and everything is moved using gravity - no pumps. It's a small winery. They produce a small quantity relative to other wineries. Anyway a great day.
This is a shot of one of their vineyards.
So I managed to get this blog done before we left Punta del Este. As I mentioned in the last blog, we will be at sea until Tuesday morning, so won't have any cell service. Until then...
Looks awesome! Hope your day at sea is wave free!
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