Punta del Este is a beach resort in Uruguay, located about 80 miles east of Montevideo and 200 miles east of Buenos Aires. It is considered to be the most sophisticated resort in South America, and the rival of any in the world.
When people use the term “Punta del Este” they are referring either to a town of that name, or to a much larger area that includes the town and also significant amounts of coastline on each side.
The Town
The town includes about 15 miles of coastline, almost equally divided between the Rio de la Plata, a river some 200 miles across that meets the Atlantic Ocean at Punta del Este, and the ocean itself. In the middle of this coastline is a one and one-half mile long, approximately one-quarter mile wide peninsula, called “the Punta,” one side of which faces the river and the other the ocean. The coast on the river side of the peninsula is a sweeping arc of about five miles of beach, which creates a huge “bay” called Bahia de Maldonado. There’s a small, forested island, Isla Gorriti, about two miles offshore in this bay, visible from anywhere along the shore. The placid water in the bay gives this long, broad beach its name, “La Mansa,” which means “calm.”
The shore of the peninsula itself is jagged and rocky, with pockets of small beaches. On the river side, after passing the small port of Punta del Este, the peninsula comes to a point that marks the precise meeting of river and ocean. This is a dramatic spot: on the river side, the entire sweep of the calm bay, and Isla Gorriti just offshore; on the ocean side, crashing surf and a view of ocean, beach and sky that extends for miles up the coast. Another island sits on the horizon about five miles offshore on the Atlantic side of the peninsula, called Isla de los Lobos, with a lighthouse and the second largest colony of sea lions in the world. The Atlantic beach begins at the point the peninsula rejoins the mainland and is even broader than the beach on the river side. This beach also takes its name from the nature of the water -- “La Brava,” meaning “wild.” The coast runs in a fairly straight line for almost six miles until the town of Punta del Este ends where a river, the Rio Maldonado, empties into the ocean.
The “Greater” Punta del Este Area
Approaching from Montevideo, the “greater” Punta del Este area begins about five miles before the town, right at the airport. There are several named zones in this stretch, including Chiuahua, Solanas, Portezuelo, and Punta Ballena. Punta Ballena is another peninsula, not as long or as wide as the one in the town, but with a significant hump running down the spine so that most of it sits high above the water. The coastline prior to Punta Ballena forms another sweeping bay bounded by a several mile long, broad beach; this bay is about as large, and equally impressive, as Bahia Maldonado. From Punta Ballena one has a dramatic view of Bahia Maldonado and “the Punta” (the peninsula) in one direction and the sweeping coastline back toward Montevideo in the other.
The remainder of the “greater” Punta del Este area is almost 20 miles of coastline on the other side of town, beginning where the Rio Maldonado meets the ocean and running north toward Brazil. There are several named zones in this stretch as well. The first three miles are called “La Barra,” with a sub-zone toward the end of La Barra called “Montoya.” After La Barra come, in a space of about two miles, two areas called “Manantiales” and “Punta Piedra.” After that there is a long stretch, approximately 12 miles, with very little development, until one finally reaches an old fishing village, Jose Ignacio, set on a very small peninsula. The beaches along the stretch from the Rio Maldonado to Jose Ignacio are for the most part very broad, like the ones mentioned earlier, and some become extremely broad (one hundred yards or more), but there are also a few places, especially in the first part of La Barra, where rocky outcroppings separate long stretches of beach.
At Jose Ignacio, the peninsula creates another bay stretching back in the direction of the town of Punta del Este. Because the water in this bay is calmer than elsewhere along the Atlantic coast, the beach there is called “La Mansa,” like the calm beach along the river in Punta del Este. On the other side of the peninsula at Jose Ignacio is yet another curved, sweeping, extremely broad beach stretching for several miles. The bay formed by this sweep of coast has wild, crashing surf and the beach here is called “La Brava,” like the beach along the Atlantic in Punta del Este.
About 40 years or so ago, development had not yet reached beyond the Rio Maldonado, and when people talked about “Punta del Este” they usually meant the town of Punta del Este itself and, sometimes, Punta Ballena and Portezuelo. Gradually, the areas of La Barra, Montoya, Manantiales and Punta Piedra, as well as Jose Ignacio, have become somewhat developed, and today most people who live in the area or who visit regularly include these area s as well when they say “Punta del Este.” The entire area, from Punta Ballena and the other areas prior to the town of Punta del Este, all the way to Jose Ignacio, is fully integrated, in the sense that people regularly travel its entire length to visit friends, party, dine, shop, or go to a favorite beach. For this reason, it is virtually impossible to take advantage of all that Punta del Este offers without a car.
A Visual Sense of Place
The dominant colors in the area are the light blue of the sky, the deep blue of the river and ocean, the very light tan (in some places almost off-white) of the beach sand, and the deep green of the forests, predominantly pine, that usually begin no more than a few hundred feet inland from the beaches. These forests were all planted, starting in the late nineteenth century, in an effort to control the shifting sand dunes that once covered the entire area to several miles inland. These sand dunes were so vast that in the early nineteenth century camels were imported to the area to carry goods from place to place, as no other animals could navigate safely through the sand. Today, only the peninsula itself lacks the forests; elsewhere, houses and clubs and golf courses and other indications of habitation have been carved out of the woods. (The forests today are less dense than only two years ago, as a once-in-a-century storm in August 2005 knocked down over 7000 mature trees.)
One major coastal road runs the entire length of the greater Punta del Este area, and the road also circumnavigates the peninsula in the town of Punta del Este. This road is seldom more than a few yards from the beaches (although in La Barra it stays two short blocks from the water); much of the time one has a clear view of the beaches and water from the road, while at others a stretch of sand dunes between the beach and the road blocks the view but does not remove the sense of being right by the water. The development in the entire area seldom extends more than a few blocks inland from this road. Part of the town of Punta del Este is an exception, where development has reached as much as a mile inland and the town has grown to converge with the pueblo of Maldonado, the capital of the “departamento,” or (roughly translated) state, in which the entire Punta del Este area is located.
The sensation when in Punta del Este is similar to being on an island, with water dominating almost every view and often almost surrounding you.
Punta del Este Until the Early 20th Century
For the first couple of centuries after the Spanish and Portuguese reached the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, the area now known as Punta del Este was the scene of sporadic skirmishes between the two. In 1806 and 1807, the English landed there on their way to attack and briefly occupy Montevideo and Buenos Aires. In the 1830s, Charles Darwin spent three weeks ashore in the area during his voyage aboard The Beagle, collecting and cataloguing the fauna. Throughout this period, the main economic significance of the area was derived from the sea lion colonies of Isla de los Lobos, which were regularly slaughtered so that the elite of Europe could wear their fur. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century various rescue and salvage companies operated from the area, supported by marine insurance companies, to attempt to prevent shipwrecks along the dangerous coast, and to salvage crews and cargoes when those efforts were unsuccessful – which was often. Some of those gentlemen began the planting of sea pines to control the shifting sand dunes and thus make colonization of the area possible.
By the turn of the 20th century there had been a small permanent settlement known as Ituzaingo on the peninsula for several decades. (The name commemorated an important battle of 1827 between Argentina and Brazil that led a year later to the creation of Uruguay as a buffer state between them.) A few intrepid pioneers from Montevideo and Buenos Aires were also beginning to visit the area during the summer. In 1906, the leaders of Maldonado and Ituzaingo convinced delegations from Buenos Aires and Montevideo to visit in order to consider the area as a major summer resort for well-off inhabitants of the two capitals. Later the same year, the famous steamship the “Golondrina” (meaning “swallow,” as in the bird) made its first trip from Buenos Aires to Punta del Este by way of Montevideo, bringing the first wave of vacationers to inaugurate the tradition of spending three months in the area. In 1907, the name of the settlement on the peninsula was changed from Ituzaingo to “Punta del Este,” meaning “eastern point.” This referred not to the fact that the peninsula was the easternmost point of the Rio de la Plata, although it is, but rather to its being the eastern point of the Bahia de Maldonado. The growth of Punta del Este as a summer resort had begun.
From the Turn of the Century to 1940
For the first several decades of the twentieth century Punta del Este grew steadily although relatively slowly, but its essential nature as a sleepy village did not change. The road from Montevideo was improved, the railroad eventually reached the peninsula, and the normal trip became one by boat (the selfsame Golondrina) from Buenos Aires to Montevideo and by railroad or road from there to Punta del Este. A handful of small hotels were constructed on the peninsula, some of which, including the most impressive, the Biarritz, still stand today. (None of these original hotels are among the leaders today; the Biarritz was long ago converted into a condominium.) The fundamental profile of the peninsula remained one of sand dunes covered in scrub, a few dirt roads, and individual, often impressive chalets built by the families who had made the resort their regular summer home. Many of the original chalets and hotels were made of brick painted white, with red tile roofs, and even today, after high rises have come to dominate the first part of the peninsula, some of the chalets still exist and white houses with red tile roofs still dominate the tip of the peninsula, where high rises have not reached.
In September 1939 Punta del Este briefly hit the world news when three British battleships and the famous and feared German battleship Admiral Graf Spree fought “the battle of Punta del Este” around five o’clock in the afternoon right off the peninsula and within plain view of people on shore. The Admiral Graf Spree, damaged in the battle, sought refuge in the port of Montevideo, where it remained three days until, unable to secure repairs and provisions due to diplomatic pressure on the Uruguayans, its captain ordered the ship scuttled just outside the port; its crew survived, with many of them eventually marrying and settling down in Uruguay and Argentina; the captain committed suicide in a hotel in Montevideo.
The “Golden Age” of Punta del Este
With the coming of World War II, many of the upper middle class of Buenos Aires and Montevideo who had regularly vacationed in Europe were no longer able to do so and turned their eyes toward Punta del Este as an alternative. The result was that the war years, so devastating for much of the northern hemisphere, ushered in the best decades of Punta del Este’s history (so far).
Starting in the 1940s, development began to extend out along the mainland in both directions from the peninsula, with small areas among the newly matured forests being turned into enclaves of chalets. The best known of these along the Atlantic shoreline was San Rafael. In 1948, the most impressive hotel and casino in the area for many decades, Hotel San Rafael, opened for business. It still stands in faded elegance, the hotel but not the casino still welcoming clients. Around the same time a tea house called L’Auberge opened next to the Tudor-style brick water tower that served the new development. L’Auberge was slowly expanded over the following three decades, eventually incorporating the water tower, and is today one of the leading boutique hotels in the area (and still a destination for afternoon tea and dulce de leche waffles).
On the river shoreline, the most important of the new residential developments was Cantegril, which also became home to the area’s first country club, of the same name. Cantegril Country Club was an impressive complex of restaurants, dance hall, bowling alley, cinema, meeting and convention hall, Olympic-sized swimming pool, multiple tennis courts, and 18-hole golf course (the last actually located on the Atlantic side, just inland from San Rafael, and with its own separate clubhouse). Today, although a few of the amenities have faded away, the country club is still a landmark and a center of established society.
Many people consider the golden age of Punta del Este to have lasted from the late 1940s through the 1960s. The summer population reached more than 30,000 (compared with the year-round population in the mid-1940s of less than 2,000, or in the early 1960s of about 5,000). Cantegril became the focus of a constant social life, with costume balls and formal dances. Golf tournaments and sailing regattas were regular affairs. World championship bridge tournaments and polo matches were held. International political conferences were held there: President Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress” was launched at a meeting in Punta del Este; Che Guevara, representing Cuba, rubbed elbows with US diplomats at a conference there in 1961; President Lyndon Johnson attended a meeting of the Organization of American States there in 1967. Meanwhile, the huge new homes in the constantly expanding “barrios jardines” (the “green neighborhoods” like Cantegril and San Rafael) became scenes of lavish private parties, sometimes lasting more than 24 hours.
Certain locales and certain personalities became lodestars for the summering elites year after year. Even today, the mere mention of “El Mejillon,” a simple bar and restaurant located at the beginning of the peninsula for decades, which became everyone’s all-day-and-most-of-the-night meeting place, brings forth a rush of anecdotes from anyone who was there during those years. Famous orchestras traveled to Punta to entertain, including those led by Xavier Cugat, Cab Calloway and Harry James. Maurice Chevalier entertained. Punta del Este became world-famous among those “in the know.” The New Yorker Magazine ran features on what was happening “this season” in Punta del Este. When Bridget Bardot put St. Tropez on the social map, the same crowd that flocked there dubbed Punta del Este “the St. Tropez of South America.” For a decade in the 1950s, Punta del Este periodically became the center of the film industry, as it hosted a recurring film festival that saw the likes of Yul Brynner, Joan Fontaine, Anita Ekberg, Ricardo Montalban, Carlo Ponti, Tippi Hedrin, Walter Pidgeon, Jeanne Moreau, Ives Montand, and many others enjoying the beaches, fishing, sailing, and other delights of the area, as well as attending lavish parties thrown in their honor.
During this period, and especially in the 1960s, growth was picking up. Punta del Este’s fame had spread, and more and more people wanted a place of their own there. The first large condominium buildings -- the Vanguardia, the Santos Dumont, the Peninsula -- appeared on or near the peninsula. But these buildings, while larger than anything previously constructed in Punta del Este, were still elegant and reached heights of only about ten stories. The “rambla” (a road along the water) had been built circumnavigating the peninsula, and the port had been expanded, and between them these developments had eaten up much of the old “La Mansa” beach on the river side of the peninsula. But still, as shown by photographs from this era, the fundamental profile of Punta del Este had not been so very altered.
The Coming of “the Towers”
Then, in the late 1960s, Punta del Este faced the moment of truth common to many “chic” resorts over the years: would it remain an enclave of mostly single-family chalets and a few small hotels, with the recently constructed condominiums as their uneasy neighbors, or would it grow ever faster and in the process necessarily change its essential nature? As almost always happens, a combination of desire by some property owners and developers to maximize immediate returns, and the local and national governments’ desire to maximize the contribution of Punta del Este to employment and tax receipts, put the area on the path of accelerated growth. After many decades of gradual and, with few exceptions, fairly uniform growth – new neighborhoods of single-family homes, a relatively small new hotel or apartment building here and there – Punta del Este now entered the era of “the towers,” high-rise condominiums.
The following 40 or so years, up to today, saw a dramatic change in the area. There were several different “building booms” of high-rise condominiums along both La Mansa and La Brava beaches, and on the peninsula itself, with some of the buildings as beautiful as any in the world and others, well, not so. The latest of these booms began in 2005 and is still ongoing, with asking prices for some of the newest condominiums reaching well into the millions of dollars.
One consequence of the building booms has been that the profile of the peninsula and the coast for a couple of miles on both sides of the peninsula has been dramatically transformed, to the point that today a view toward the peninsula from several miles up the coast on either side presents a skyline similar to Miami Beach. Another consequence has been that the town of Punta del Este has ceded its place as the “in” spot for the “in” crowd first to La Barra several miles up the Atlantic coast, and then to Jose Ignacio even farther up the coast. There are no high-rises in La Barra, and in Jose Ignacio not only are there no high-rises but the laid-back style once associated with Punta del Este itself has been maintained with such determination that the village’s motto – “Here, only the wind rushes” – is perfectly apt.
The Punta del Este Area Today
Punta del Este today offers many different styles to the visitor, a virtual smorgasbord to fit almost every taste. The year-round population is still tiny, no more than about 9,000, but the population during the “season” of late December through February runs to 400,000. Whereas 50 or 60 years ago it was still common for families to spend the entire summer in Punta del Este, now the norm is a shorter visit, perhaps up to a month but even more commonly 15 days. Once the visitors were almost exclusively from Buenos Aires and Montevideo, with a few Europeans; now, the majority are still Argentinean but the Brazilians and even Chileans have made large inroads and there are more Europeans and North Americans each year, especially in Jose Ignacio.
Now, the areas of Chiuahua, Portezuelo, and Punta Ballena that lie just before the town itself as one approaches from Montevideo are, for the most part, bucolic oases of beautiful homes either right on the water or no more than one or two short blocks inland. Chiuahua, one of the broadest, most beautiful beaches in the area, is internationally known as a highly successful “clothing optional” stretch, actively promoted by local authorities. Punta Ballena is the home of Casapueblo, the Gaudi-esque combination artist’s workshop/hotel/restaurant set high above the water with some of the best sunset views in the area and the world, built in the 1960s by a well-known local artist who still lives in the area. The beach scene in Portezuelo is very quiet compared to others in the area, and for that reason preferred by some of the families who have been coming to Punta del Este the longest. Just inland, at the very crest of a high hill close to the shore and providing 360-degre views of the entire area, the river and the sea, is Hotel-Art Las Cumbres, sometimes justly featured in lists of the most romantic hotels in the world.
The town of Punta del Este and peninsula have become the commercial center of the area and the focus of the effort to make Punta del Este and its surroundings a “year-round destination” (still only moderately successful, as the area remains basically a summer resort). The first 5-star hotel in the area, The Conrad, strategically located overlooking Isla Gorriti just at the start of the peninsula, has just celebrated its tenth anniversary and is still packing them into its casino and bringing international stars to its concert hall. The town and peninsula are still the gastronomic center of the area, certainly in quantity and to some extent in quality as well, with long-established places like La Bourgogne and Bungalow Suizo still going strong. The area immediately around the peninsula also offers a small handful of interesting boutique hotels, from the previously mentioned L’Auberge to another veteran, La Capilla, to newcomers like La Serena and AWA. The peninsula, and particularly the few blocks right around the port, are one of the centers of nightlife for the entire greater Punta del Este area.
Moving up the Atlantic coast, La Barra, Montoya and Manantiales are, together, a curious mixture of family homes harboring teenagers who roam the streets during the season, other homes and small apartment buildings and small hotels where young adults seeking round-the-clock action congregate, a string of art galleries and clothing boutiques and bars and sushi clubs, and numerous other flora and fauna – in short, a classic beach town, all strung out within sight of the ocean. The second 5-star hotel in the area, originally built by and named for the Cipriati family of Venice but now known as “Mantra,” is located several blocks inland in this area. Right in the middle of La Barra one also finds another landmark, the Mediterranean-styled boutique hotel La Posta del Cangrejo, which has hosted royalty and presidents over its several decades of existence. The next identifiable stretch, Punta Piedra, has become (with Jose Ignacio) a place where the truly wealthy have given free rein to both local and international architects to produce some of the most stunning stone, glass and steel beach houses in the world.
Finally, there’s Jose Ignacio. Until less than a decade ago just a sleepy fishing village of a few dirt roads perched on a tiny peninsula looking back toward Punta del Este some 25 miles away, Jose Ignacio is now – the same, with a twist. That twist is that it now has a couple of art galleries, a couple of laid-back restaurants, a couple of clothing boutiques, one boutique hotel (La Posada del Faro, with stunning sunset views) and a handful of tiny guest houses – and a list of visitors that would make the A-list of most business, artistic and social gatherings around the world. Some of this A-list have not just visited but have constructed dream homes on the coast around Jose Ignacio and in the peaceful, spectacular countryside inland (where the tastes run more to large “chacras,” or ranches). The local “hang-out,” La Huella, was recently named by several chefs in Gourmet Magazine (Spanish version) as the best beach restaurant in the world. Jose Ignacio today is everything Punta del Este was several decades ago, before the high-rises, and those who discover it today are just as enthusiastic about it as were those who discovered Punta del Este then. Supposedly, the inhabitants of Jose Ignacio have managed to wrest control of building codes and zoning from the local politicians and have outlawed those high-rises as well as clubs, super-markets, and even apartment buildings of more than two stories. Today, it’s a sleepy fishing village with class. If they manage to keep those restrictions, maybe it will stay that way.
