Where Western Montana Meets St. Tropez

Ola,

The title accurately describes the country.  The countryside is absolutely gorgeous and rural with goucho's riding horses, buggies, cattle, sheep and estancia's everywhere.   Uruguayans also grows olives and grapes so occasionally you will see a beautiful hillside with vineyards or olive trees. 

Punta del Este, on the other hand, is the St. Tropez of South America.  It is flush with casinos, shopping, restaurants, and in high season, a couple hundred thousand sunbathers and vacationers.  We have yet to be here for this time of year and I hear we are in for a royal treat.   Just don't try to get anywhere in a hurry, though, because the roads are jam packed. I think we will walk everywhere we go.  That will be alot easier.

As you can see from the picture, they DO celebrate Halloween, much to my delight.   I thought we might have to give up our traditional Halloween party when we moved here but looks like we will be able to resume---once we have enough friends to have a party! 

The other picture is the famous Hand in the Sand.   There is alot of unique art around the beach but this is by far the most visited and photographed.   Punta is very busy right now readying themselves for the onslaught of people.   The construction around here is everywhere--fixing the roads, sidewalks, painting the buildings and high rises.   It is absolutely the cleanest city I have ever been in.   People love to sweep around here!  It is also a very safe city.   I can take the dogs out for a walk day or night and never worry about someone attacking me.   People are so friendly here.   They are very helpful and many more speak English than I would have imagined.  We have been slowly practicing on our Spanish but hand gestures and talking very slowly seems to be working well at present.

The food is here is good.  Pizza is delicious, the piralla--all kinds of barbequed meat, is great, the fresh fish is so healthy and tasty and then there is the Chevito!  This is a couple of meals in between a hamburger bun!  It actually has a thin steak, ham, fried egg, cheese, tomato, lettuce, mayo, and I almost forgot, bacon, on this sandwich.  You really have to know how to order an old fashioned hamburger or you will get the Chevito or some version of it everytime.  I think we now have it under control along with a few extra pounds!

Today we went to a carpenter to have him make a sign for our casa.  In Uruguay, you name your home.   We were trying to find the place and a nice young man walked up and ask if he could help.   I don't think he took us to the place we were looking for but that worked out just fine.  We are going to make our sign out of old boat wood and the name will be, "Suits Us".  It has some significance as we had an old home on a lake years ago that had that over the door.  And we feel the same about this home so.... Suits Us is it!

This weekend we are going to the visit the museum and arboretum.   Will follow up with that info on next blog!   Have a wonderful weekend.   Mark and Janet