Uruguay is the Switzerland of South America. Or it is the Silicon Valley of South America. Punta del Este, a couple of hours east of Montevideo, is the Monaco of South America. Or it is the St. Tropez of South America. Or maybe it is just the Miami of Uruguay. For sure, the small beach town to its north, José Ignacio, is the Hamptons of Uruguay. Everybody says so.
Apparently, we are not the only ones who have a hard time describing Uruguay. It is much easier to compare it, label it, and assign it into a category defined by something else.
We’ve never been to the Hamptons, but we’re aware it’s all expensive homes and rich people doing rich people things. José Ignacio seems to have some very expensive homes. It also seems to have many places where people can dispose of money quickly in exchange for art and clothing and food and drink. So maybe it is like the Hamptons. But in October, the homes are unoccupied and the stores are all closed. Things should ramp up through November, so we’re told, but there is no evidence of an early ramp when we visit. Which is just as well, because like every place else we’ve visited in Uruguay, we have most of the place to ourselves.
The beaches around Punta del Este, José Ignacio, and areas further northeast, are dune beaches. There are some buildings on the beach side of the road that strings along the ocean front, but not many. Occasionally there is a seasonally shuttered restaurant and a few choice locations have extremely large homes built seemingly directly into the sand, but for the most part, it is just uninterrupted broad, sandy beachfront. The main road is paved, but little else is, especially beyond José Ignacio.
José Ignacio itself sits at the end of a small point, punctuated by a picturesque lighthouse. It’s a cute little town, but I sense the appeal lays in the location and exclusivity. It’s the last small beach town past Punta del Este to the east, in the opposite direction of the city’s airport, making it the extreme outlying point on the arc of the beach communities. It didn’t get built up until the last two decades, and even then, referring to it as built-up is overstatement. But there was, and still is, a decent amount of space to drop in mansions and overpriced tiny homes just outside of town. These seemed to be some of the most ostentatiously exclusive, with a few for sale, if you are in the market: El Secreto. Elon Musk once owned a home here (not necessarily or likely in the linked neighborhood), when owning homes was a thing he did. If you were dropped into the middle of José Ignacio, you’d think, ‘this is a nice town.’ But the reason it is considered a great town is that it isn’t any of the other nice towns that are closer and cheaper and therefore more accessible. Perhaps the Hamptons moniker is apt.
Even in the offseason, hotel and AirBnb rates in the town are atrocious. We stayed just down the road in Santa Monica, a fun little beach community. Santa Monica cannot be considered a town by any reasonable standard. Apart from a couple of bodegas (also in shipping containers), it is without any meaningful commerce. A collection of mismatched homes, many using shipping containers or other non-standard building materials, the community is connected by dirt roads and the shared knowledge that a storm surge would result in everyone floating off together. A children’s Bible song has stuck with my through life, a lesson tied to a parable which is seared into my psyche for reasons unknown: a foolish man builds his house upon the sand, a wise man builds his house upon the rocks.
We spent as little time as possible in our Santa Monica AirBnb because it was fairly dirty and worn out, a shipping container concept that looked to have flooded at some point. A lesson was learned on how to better interpret highly specific photo angles in AirBnb listings, though recent reviews had been very positive. It was, admittedly, quite inexpensive relative to the area, and when the poor travel amidst the rich, beggars cannot be choosers. I won’t post the link to where we stayed because it really was that bad, but here’s a link to a very nice place that would be an option for you, depending on your kid situation.
There was no reason to spend time in the container home anyway, not when you have a rental car, empty roads, empty towns, and empty beaches.
Since it is still spring here, the weather is not what the locals and standard tourists consider to be beach friendly. I, however, grew up in Oregon, so this is perfect beach weather: 60 degrees, overcast, a slight breeze. There’s nothing wrong being on a beach in jeans and a light coat. More beach for us!
A short drive northeast of Jose Ignacio you’ll find Laguna Garzón, one of many large inland lagoons along the ocean. Spanning the connection point between the lagoon and the ocean is this piece of art:
The bridge is a replacement for (checks Wikipedia) a two vehicle ferry that operated at this site until 2015. At a cost of $10MM this seems a bit excessive, despite the amazing design, though you’ll feel better that a billionaire real estate developer footed 80% of the bill, presumably to connect more beachfront to Jose Ignacio (checks Wikipedia, correct!).
Continue driving northeast and you eventually get to the real estate investment that required the bridge, Las Garzas. It’s gated, so we didn’t enter, but if you are looking for a nice plot of build-able land in a master planned beach community that feels very remote but isn’t, Las Garzas might be for you.
There are other equestrian beach properties available if you like that sort of thing. Actually, every property not in a town could be an equestrian property. There are horses and cows everywhere. Driving around the countryside reveals rugged, pastoral views in virtually every direction. There are not many large hills and definitely no mountains, so the driving is easy (assuming you stay on main roads, everything else is dirt. But to be fair the roads we drove were all well-graded and packed, and so far the best of the various dirt roads we’ve driven on this trip.) and you can see for miles.
If you drive for those miles you might arrive in any number of small towns. We visited Garzón, a community popularized by Chef Francis Mallmann, publicized by Anthony Bourdain, and commercialized by the art crowd that followed all of that. Though, like all things in Uruguay, it is quiet. The famous restaurant is not yet open for the season, the art galleries are still closed (a seasonal and Covid combination, as a number of them support artists in residence), and the town itself is not large enough to have any other activities of significance. But it is clean, freshly painted (an indication of how close we are to the tourist season), and quaint.
For reasons unknown, it also presented a true test of being an adult:
This was on the town square. Which was devoid of any other humans. If you ring a bell in an empty town does it make a sound? I still do not know and I regret not finding out.
Someone, as it turns out, would have heard the bell. The town, seemingly empty, was where Anders informed us, in no uncertain terms, that he ‘needed to use the bathroom right now really badly.’ Somewhere, a sad trombone played. Thankfully the community center was holding a group lesson on electrical repair, and Gesina was able to secure the use of a restroom.
If you visit Uruguay, you will see ads for Bodega Garzón. Uruguay has a very large wine industry that has done little to promote itself. Bodega Garzón might single-handedly turn that tide. They advertise at the airport, on billboards, in stores, with targeted ads online, and presumably on television. Their wines are prominently displayed in every store that sells alcohol. We tried a bottle of their (cheapest) wine and did not find it distinguished from even cheaper local options (you can get a very good bottle of tannat for about $6, though you can spend much, much more if you prefer). But they clearly move the product, and near the town of Garzón is the winery itself, the centerpiece for much of the advertising.
We didn’t go. A winery visit in Uruguay, for many of the wineries, including Bodega Garzón, is a more exclusive event than going to a winery in the United States. Reservations are required to access the grounds and must be accompanied by pre-booked experiences (tours, chef’s classes, specialty tasting, horseback riding, etc). In a country that prides itself on being mostly egalitarian, the gated entries of the wineries are a bit of a shock. Reading reviews online suggests we’re not the only ones who felt that, as it is clear that 1) the Bodega is catering nearly exclusively to foreign tourists and 2) random Uruguayans enjoy writing negative reviews criticizing the fact that they are not open to the public. We did not boycott them because of the exclusivity, we just didn’t feel like paying for a private experience for a seven-year-old.
There was a bit of exclusivity we were happy to pay for at Parador La Huella, a beachfront bar and restaurant in José Ignacio. Listed as a top-50 restaurant in Latin America and occupying an extremely privileged location adjacent to the primary beach access point in José Ignacio, La Huella is both an upscale restaurant and beach bar. It is extremely pretentious, a thin veneer of ‘relax’ covering a structure of ‘look and act the part.’ It’s actually what I imagine a beachfront restaurant in the Hamptons would feel like. On a Friday, at noon (the earliest possible booking), in the off-season, on an overcast day, it is possible for people who do not look the part to get seats. And we’re glad we did.
The food and drink are excellent, the view is amazing. Though the beach seats stayed empty during our visit, the rest of the very large restaurant was full and boisterous, a mix of younger/hipper/designer t-shirts cheating their way into the weekend with noontime drinks and older/stately/boat-shoes cheating their way into the weekend with noontime drinks. If we were staying near the restaurant we might have squatted on those seats for the entire afternoon, enjoying the ambiance and the vibe. This, however, is a restaurant where you need to pay for your dwell time, especially when your four-top is only three people, and one isn’t drinking.
The restaurant scene in José Ignacio is decidedly upscale, without any corresponding low-cost options (someone would probably do well to open a fish taco kiosk there). Thus, we were forced, FORCED, to also enjoy a nice dinner out at Juana Cocina. The restaurant opens at 8PM and we were in the first seating; when we left at 10PM the place was packed with new diners coming in. Dimly lit and cozy, it is one of the few restaurants that maintains year-round operations in the area, for which it seems to be richly rewarded. The servers seemed to know everyone and everyone knew each other. We had plied Anders with cheese pizza and vegetables in advance of the dinner, knowing that there would be nothing on the menu to his taste. There wasn’t, but there was a healthy bread basket, dessert menu, and new How to Train Your Dragon book on the tablet, so he was satisfied. Gesina and I sat on the same side of the table and shared a number of dishes, making it a pleasant, adult-feeling date night.
I think we’re ready for the Hamptons, but only if they have early bird seating. In the off-season.