Dec 8

We anchored off the resort city of Punte Del Este, one that we didn't visit a few days ago.  Today the weather was clear, hot and somewhat windy.  We took a 2 1/2 hour "see the city" tour for something to do in the morning.  The tender ride to the port was about 20 minutes and we boarded our bus to see the sights.  Punte del Este, called Punte by the locals, was originally a fishing village which was "discovered" bay Americans in the 1950s or 60s and had exploded into a beach resort city with high rise condos all around.  There are many European & American owners of condos but about 60% of their tourist traffic comes from Argentina.  Argentina's economy is doing poorly and the new Socialist president wants to institute some currency controls which would prevent taking money out of the country.  That makes Uruguayans very nervous because tourism is Punte's prime source of income.   We drove through some upscale neighborhoods, saw the mansion that Onassis built for his daughter and stopped for a photo op at the point where the Atlantic & Rio de la Plata meet.  Punte, Montevideo & Buenos are all on the Rio de la Plata which is actually an estuary rather than a river.  We drove over the "undulating bridge" which is nearly a roller coaster ride if you go fast.  We went to the Ralli Museum, one of 5 in the world.  Ralli is a non-profit, private institution which does not accept donations or subsidies and doesn't engage in commercial activity, hence no cafe or museum shop.  Entrance is free.  The Punte museum houses numerous Dali sculptures as well as a plethora of paintings & sculptures by Latin American artists.  It was very well laid out and very interesting to see.  We next drove to Playa Brava, a beach with a huge sculpture of fingers sticking up out of the beach looking like a hand emerging from the sand.  This was the typical "free time" stop which usually means shopping.  It was the last stop of the tour and we opted to walk back to the port.  The beach is at one end of the main shopping street and, after photographing the "fingers" we walked the street and looked for a good restaurant, but the prices were so high that we didn't eat in town.  We took about an hour walking back to the port.  The wind had picked up and the tender ride was twice as long and quite rough.  Our team won the trivia correctly answering all of the questions.  The ship's cast was performing this night and we passed since we've seen the show twice already and it would be overcrowded with the Broadway group.  Pat played blackjack and turned $50.00 into $100.00.