Punta del Este

Hi, I'm taking a break from telling you about the trip to Ushuaia to tell you about our day trip last weekend. Not much else,exciting has been going on... which is good. After having spend a week in constant company with people in Ushuaia, when we returned I kind of went into hiding. Classes are also hitting high gear, so the students are having to study more... poor kids...

Saturday, we got up early and piled into a bus and headed east to Punta del Este. I've often heard it described as the Hamptons for Buenos Aires. Its a resort town where the rich (and famous?) come to play in South America. I've been told it has the most expensive real estate in South America.

Our first stop was just before we got to Punta del Este at CasaPueblo. This is the house of the Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró. He was "fighting against straight lines" in his design of the building. It is certainly interesting, and very pretty. It is at Punta Bellena which is a beautiful stop on Rio de la Plata. Part of the house is open to visitors where some of Vilaró's art is on display.

After we left CasaPueblo we headed into Punta del Este. We drove through the town. At the point of Punta del Este, the Rio de la Plata officially hits the Atlantic. We stopped at Los Dedos, the fingers in the sand, and stopped and took group pictures. (Rosalinda took them... so I don't have a copy.)

We then went to port to see if we could take a ferry over to an island near Punta del Este. Apparently the last few times the group couldn't go because it was too windy for the ferry. I was really confused about this until we saw the boat. Luckily it wasn't too windy, although it was still a pretty wavey ride.

When we got to the island, we had a picnic lunch and headed to the beach. I was originally just going to wade in the water. (It was barely warm enough to go swimming and the water was pretty cold.) Then I thought well I'm in shorts, I might as well go knee deep. Well I had on my swimsuit, so why not go at least waist deep. Well sure enough, I finally went all the way in. I had soooo much fun playing in the waves. I'm not sure the last time I played in real waves, maybe when I went to Fiji 6 1/2 years ago. 7 or 8 of the students and I had the best time.

After an hour and a half in the water we finally decided to get out and for some reason we decided to bury several members of the group. I guess we had enough of them. :)

One other important note, Saturday night/ Sunday morning, Uruguay won the first of the playoff games with Costa Rica for the World Cup. The other play off game is tomorrow (Wednesday) night. Most of the group and 7 of the youth group members are going. We are super excited!