Notes
What we have gathered about Punta del Este: who gave the names, what stood here before, why things are where they are.
Punta del Este, the islands · 6 min read
One is two kilometres out and you spend the day on it. The other is eight, has been a national park since 2024, and nobody lands: the boat circles it and comes back.
Punta del Este, José Ignacio · 6 min read
A village of 148 residents with an 1877 lighthouse, thirty years older than the first land survey. When they lit it, you got here on horseback or by sea.
Punta del Este, Beverly Hills · 7 min read
Dalí, Botero and Magritte five kilometres from the peninsula, in a neighbourhood of houses with gardens. Entry costs nothing, it never did, and in January the museum only opens at five in the afternoon.
Punta del Este, the road · 8 min read
A little over 130 km east of Montevideo along the Interbalnearia, two hours by bus from Tres Cruces. The ferry does not come here: Buquebus lands you in Montevideo or Colonia and a bus does the rest; the flight from Buenos Aires takes 55 minutes and lands twenty minutes from the peninsula.
Punta del Este, the calendar · 7 min read
January is the full town and 22-degree water; March and the first half of December are the beach without the queue; winter is low sun, wind, whales and a peninsula that belongs again to the people who live on it. Temperatures, sea, sunset hour and what is open, month by month.
Punta del Este, the areas · 7 min read
The question is not which hotel but which side: five areas along thirty kilometres, and the choice decides whether you walk or drive. What each one has, how long it takes on foot to La Mano, what it costs in January and what is still alive in July.
Punta del Este, the port · 6 min read
The ship anchors offshore and the tender lands in the port, in the middle of the peninsula. Everything you can see on foot fits in the call; what sits thirteen kilometres away does not.
Punta del Este, the lighthouse · 8 min read
The first structure on the peninsula: 1860, volcanic ash brought from Italy. It belongs to the Navy, the keeper lives inside, and going up is not a matter of turning up.
Punta del Este, La Barra · 9 min read
The wave is the structure, not a flourish: the deck hangs from tensioned cables. Three ordinary bridges failed here before this one, and it has stood for sixty years.
Punta del Este, the two shores · 8 min read
Two beaches, two bodies of water and two Parada 1. Which shore you are on decides where you swim, where the sunset is and whether an address means anything.
Punta del Este, the peninsula · 9 min read
The whole peninsula fits into one afternoon on foot. The rest is half an hour away, and the list of what you actually have to pay for is shorter than the resort's reputation promises.
Punta del Este, Punta Ballena · 5 min read
A habitable sculpture raised without plans over 36 years, 13 km from the peninsula, where every evening the sun is seen off in the voice of the man who built it.
Punta del Este, the port · 5 min read
They are in the port, free and all year round. Not seals, nearly all males, and the one that comes over to you belongs to the species doing worst.
Punta del Este, the Brava · 3 min read
A Chilean sculptor, six days of the summer of 1982 and the question its maker left open: drowning, or coming up for air?
The walks
Tell you the street while you are walking it. That is what a narrated walk does: someone from the place tells you the city in your ear, at your pace.
Photos: Juan Pablo Orradre · Jimmy Baikovicius · Balou46 · Mx. Granger · Felipe Parietti · Lou Fernando · Marcelo Campi · Rosina Peixoto · Romerito Pontes · Adriana Peralta · CC BY-SA
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