Today, we took our time getting up and going as we didn’t get back until close to midnight last night. We had another great breakfast and this time walked 5 blocks to take the local bus to Terminal Tres Cruces mall. Here we purchased a ticket to Punta del Este which leaves in less than half an hour (10:30am) and gets us into Punta del Este by 12:15pm. We also purchased return tickets for 4:15pm.
The drive was smooth and not at all complicated. This was the best way to go, certainly better than paying for a tour of the beach which cost more than double what we paid. From Montevideo, by taking the bus it picks passengers up and drops them off along the route, but it ends at the bus terminal in Punta del Este. The terminal is directly across the street from the beach that we wanted to go to and also beside a well known sculpture we wanted to see.
Punta del Este is a vacationing town with a beautiful beach. The photo below was taken from the bus quite some distance from Punta del Este. The cityscape in the background of this photo is Modonado, the major city connected to Punta del Este. The beach in this photo goes all the way to the point in the city. On the other side of this point is La Brava beach in Punta del Este. Such a long beach!
La Brava beach has very nice sand and the water is a nice cool temperature on a 23+ degree Celsius day.
La Brava beach is also well known for The Hand [La Mano] in the sand, a sculpture designed by a Chilean artist, Mario Irarrazabal.
After spending a relaxing day at the beach we made our way back to the bus terminal. We had about half an hour before we had to be on the bus. It should be duly noted that the buses leave EXACTLY on time, not a minute sooner and very rarely a minute after.
On our way across the street, the cloud formations were rather beautiful, and with the country flag right there, I had to stop to take a picture.
Knowing we had twenty-five minutes to catch the bus, we stopped for a cold one. This is starting to become a routine ... drinking a 1 litre beer. LOL
