From Punta del Este to Cabo Polonio

I thought about something constant in every post, because we are somewhat behind with all of our posts. So we will now start every post with a set of bullet points.

Where are we at the moment?

In Argentina in Buenos Aires.

Current state of mind:

Very tired and exhausted, since we just came from a 30-hour drive by bus from Chile – Valparaiso to Argentina – Buenos Aires.

Random thought of the day

Holy Guacamole, our passport has a strange collection of stamps (Mexico – Peru – Machu Picchu – Uruguay – Argentina – Brasil – Argentina – Paraguay – Argentina – Chile – Argentina)

Where have we left off?

In Uruguay we spent our first couple of days in Montevideo, where you could already get a glimpse of the market as well as the drummers in our last post. After that we went to Punta del Este, a well-known travel destination in summer.

Punta del Este or an overrated pretentious place

Not often were we so disappointed from a place as we were from Punta del Este. As it seems, in winter it is just a abandoned place which still has feeling of who is spending their vacation here in summer. Many skyscrapers, 5-star hotels and expensive boutiques, plus supermarket price that even let Montevideos prices look puny. At least the beach was pretty and worth seeing.

Also our Hotel (Hotel F&F) was pretty nice, with a nice breakfast and nice roomie 🙂

We even met some people from the town in Germany in which I work in, and it turned out they are friends of a friend of mine. Small world. They are currently travelling per motorcycle, so if you’d like, why not pay them a visit on their homepage (it’s in german, though): http://www.tierramoto.de

But after two nights we were very happy to move on and go to the coolest place we have found while travelling Uruguay.

Welcome to winter-ghost-town, welcome to Cabo Polonio

We travelled on with the bus to Cabo Polonio, where we had to transfer to an all-terrain vehicle, which took us to the actual city (since there are no streets, only sand dunes to Cabo Polonio, there is now way to reach it by a normal vehicle, which also means there are no cars in Cabo Polonio)

In summer about 3000 tourists visit Cabo Polonio per day. In winter… well, about 20.

Interesting is also that in Cabo Polonio, there is almost no electricity and Wifi, so that is something new as well.

When walking through the streets it is somewhat like walking through a ghost town. Most of the time you don’t meet anyone besides horses, chickens, dogs and cats.

Our Hostel “Viejo Lobo” was one of our best experiences, which we have made with Hostels so far. The people were unbelievably kind, we were in one of the only occupied hostels. In the evenings we cooked together for small change. It was just an awesome atmosphere with the best barkeeper in the world.

I also one day made some stickbread (selfmade bread dough around a stick) and we all sat around a bonfire and prepared the stickbread over the fire. The personell of the hostel cooked some more food and we ate all together like a real family dinner.

LOBOS!

In Cabo Polonio there are Lobo’s (Seals), which you can watch absolutely free of charge. In most of the south-american countries so far there was NOTHING for free. Which was why we were even more excited to see the lobos for free.

Even though it was really cold in Cabo Polonio, we were happier to be there in winter than in summer. The almost complete solitary feeling you have was something really fascinating and relaxing. The lighthouse which could be seen from almost everywhere completed the picture.

Unbelievably many streetdogs were to be found in here. But they weren’t as aggressive as for example the dogs we’ve seen in Peru, but really kind dogs which often spent the whole day with us.

I believe we have also seen the most gorgeous sunsets in Cabo Polonio. These also took a lot longer than in Germany, about an hour we had bloodred skies.

The most crazy thing about this place was the supermarket. This looked rather like a metal goods store from the last century. The old man there has probably been working there for the last 60 years and the walls were full of different kinds of food. These foods ranged from pasta to chees to beer, almost everything you need could be found here. And even though this was the only supermarket, it wasn’t even more expensive than elsewhere.

Cabo Polonio has won our hearts, and I would recommend everyone to visit this awesome hippie-village.

Next time you’ll find out some things about La Paloma, Colonial del Sacramento and our absolutely favorite hostel (for now), so stay tuned!

Hasta Luego!

2 Replies to “From Punta del Este to Cabo Polonio”

  1. Hallo ihr Zwei,
    Wir haben gedacht ihr seid schon in Südafrika.Dabei treibt ihr euch immer noch in Südamerika rum.Glückwunsch,in Peru alles mitgenommen was sehenswert ist.Ihr werdet Südamerika vermissen,wenn ihr nach Afrika aufbrecht.
    Wir waren zwischendurch kurz mal in Kolumbien und Costa Rica,aber nur Strandurlaub.Sind im August dann wieder in Tulum.
    Liebe Grüße von Irani und Frank euer deutsch – brasilianisches Taxi nach Bacalar/Mexico

    1. Hallo Frank,
      freut uns sehr von dir zu hören! Wir sind jetzt tatsächlich in Afrika angekommen und waren bereits auf Safari. Ich bin sehr gespannt, was die Reise noch bringt, Südamerika hat uns tatsächlich sehr vom Hocker gehauen. Tatsächlich hatten wir in unseren anderen Zielen in Südamerika immer etwas Heimweh nach Mexiko, es hat uns da einfach unglaublich gut gefallen. Wir haben auch schon Pläne eventuell wieder in nicht so ferner Zukunft wiederzukommen.
      Schön, dass ihr noch etwas Strandurlaub genießen konntet und dass es euch wieder nach Tulum verschlägt 🙂
      Viele liebe Grüße an euch beide aus Johannesburg
      Björn und Jessy

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