Our first visit to Uruguay, and our second to last port stop before arriving in Buenos Aires, was Punte del Este.

Punte del Este appeared over the bow as we were both on the treadmill. Overcast skies with a marine layer which promised to burn off. Puerto Madryn was warm and Puerto Madryn was a beach town, but Punte del Este was more of a modern beach town in the style of a mini Miami Beach. This was also a port where we arrived relatively late – at 10am.

There are even cars from Miami here.

The way Punta del Este is set up is such that there is nowhere close to the walkable city for a full pier large enough to take even a small cruise ship and it does not look as if this will change. But once you navigate a 25 minute tender ride it is a great port for a walking tour. Both Lonely Planet and the ship had maps that included a decent map towards walking the peninsula. In theory you could walk the whole thing in about 90 minutes; we took three hours. It looked shorter on paper. Towards the end we learned we walked close to five miles – something which came back to haunt me the next day as a five mile walk impacts marathon training if that’s what you’re doing (I am not).

This tour took in sights such as:

La Mano de Punta del Este, the local answer to Washington’s “The Awakening” which is sadly now out in Maryland.

A funky modern art sculpture in a median. In the photo above it looks larger than it really is. Honestly, not necessarily worth the walk.

Our Lady of the Mercedes Benz church, or at least that’s what I call it. This is a nice looking church, a century old so I suppose it is old as far as Punte del Este is concerned, but otherwise not immensely notable, although it is across from the lighthouse in a very tony single family home residential neighborhood.

The first true tourist site we saw after leaving the port was this lighthouse, in the center of the peninsula rather than on the edge.

But the first interesting site we saw leaving the port were these smashed up cars. At first we thought there had been a rather significant accident right there and the city had merely pushed the vehicles aside, but in Uruguay and later Buenos Aires we realized that the local practice is to tow and deposit smashed cars next to the police station. There were probably a dozen or so here and we saw even more in Buenos Aires.

Punta del Este has a great shopping street with upscale brands as well as more common brands. Montevideo, the next day, turned out to be similar as well. Prices for every day, non-name-brand goods are reasonable, but prices for items sold on the global market for most of us were less expensive at home. I think, for instance, we saw Hoka shoes here on sale for about $250 USD whereas at home we would pay half that.

As it is a supposedly laid back beach town with some money we also saw a number of classic cars and jeeps.

This was merely parked on the street.

Another one, for example. This isn’t Santiago, or even Buenos Aires, where something such as this would get stolen pretty quickly.

We saw this beautiful early 1970s Ford pickup truck walking the promenade along the Atlantic from the point up to the hand.

But the upscale vehicle of choice seemed to be the Range Rover Velar. This example, and several others, had made the journey either via road (nine hours) or road and ferry (six hours) from Buenos Aires and were likely here for the summer.

We bought some wine here in Punta del Este. It didn’t turn out to be cheap, but we focused on upscale wines we could not get at home. It was more of a purchasing experience than a tasting experience though. And now it is sitting downstairs in the rack waiting out “Dry” February.

By this point in our travels, with Buenos Aires approaching, we neither wanted another plate of seafood nor did we want the culinary investment of a steak (spoiler alert – I ate three steaks over the following three days). Pizza seemed to be the meal of choice.

This time I was the one who enjoyed the very large local beer.

We visited our waiters Muis and Tri for the final time this evening and wished them well on their journeys home to Southeast Asia – a journey that involves four flights.