Uruguay

🇺🇾 Uruguay

Montevideo

Montevideo is one of South America's most liveable and most underestimated capitals — a city of 1.4 million on the Río de la Plata estuary that consistently ranks as Latin America's highest quality of life city, with Uruguay itself routinely topping regional indices for education, press freedom and personal liberties. The city's long waterfront rambla (one of South America's longest at 22 km) is the social spine of Montevideo life; joggers, cyclists, mate-drinkers and families share it from dawn to midnight. The historic Ciudad Vieja retains some of South America's finest art-deco and neoclassical architecture and the world's most perfect proportioned market — the Mercado del Puerto with its cast-iron Victorian structure is Uruguay's national lunch institution. Uruguay produces exceptional beef and wine (the Tannat grape is the national variety) and the asado tradition reaches its apotheosis in the Mercado del Puerto's open parrilla grills. The Carnival tradition in Montevideo — the world's longest at 40 days — produces murga (satirical musical theatre) and candombe drumming that descend from the African slaves brought to the Río de la Plata by the Spanish.

🇺🇾 Uruguay

Punta Del Este

Punta del Este is South America's most glamorous beach resort — a narrow peninsula at the confluence of the Rio de la Plata and the Atlantic Ocean in southern Uruguay, 140 km east of Montevideo, that transforms every January and February into the playground of Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean elites, celebrities, models and footballers who arrive by helicopter and mega-yacht to a beach resort with 700 restaurants, 5-star hotels and some of the finest beaches in South America. The city was founded in 1907 and developed as a resort after Argentine film and fashion industry adopted it in the 1950s-60s — the glamour has never left. The peninsula itself has two completely different personalities: the Playa Mansa side (facing the Rio de la Plata, calm flat water, the marina and yacht club, sunrise) and the Playa Brava side (facing the open Atlantic with waves, surf, wind, and the famous Casapueblo — the sculptural hotel-museum of Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró built over 50 years into a white cliff above the ocean). The most famous artwork in Uruguay is buried in the Brava beach sand: La Mano (The Hand), a 5-finger sculpture by Chilean artist Mario Irarrázabal where the fingers of a giant hand emerge from the sand as if drowning — it has been the symbol of Punta del Este since 1982. Beyond the peninsula, the Punta del Este municipality extends east to the barrios of La Barra (the surf scene and bohemian restaurants across the wave bridge, the bridge that bounces as surf passes underneath), José Ignacio (the ultra-luxury hamlet of celebrity holiday homes 100 km east, Uruguay's answer to the Hamptons) and the Laguna del Sauce which receives Aeroparque connections from Buenos Aires.