Perched on a bar stool and sipping a $7 Negroni, I surveyed the casino of the Conrad Hotel in Punta del Este with keen but detached interest. The slot machines blinked and burbled like exotic birds, and at the blackjack and poker tables, neatly dressed men and women glanced at their cards with stony faces. A poster near the V.I.P. rooms advertised an Enrique Iglesias concert.
I could hear the money running merrily down the drain — counterclockwise, of course: this was the Southern Hemisphere.
To say that casinos make the Frugal Traveler antsy is a vast understatement. My weekend budget of just $500 was enough for a mere five rounds of V.I.P. baccarat. In Punta del Este, on the Atlantic in the southeast corner of Uruguay, however, the casino serves another purpose: sitting at the base of the town's milelong peninsula, it's the perfect rendezvous point. The choice is as much symbolic as practical, for Punta del Este is a place devoted to celebrating money.
Punta is known as the Hamptons of South America— a haven for elites from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and beyond. It's where they come to chill with the supermodels Naomi Campbell and Gisele Bündchen at Buddha Bar, and to stock up on luxury labels like Gucci and Valentino.
Punta has other charms. Its beaches form a blond, boulder-flecked halo around the city, and in the golden light of early November, the buildings — the glinting Miami -esque towers, the immaculate old stucco hotels, the modernist glass summer homes — appear almost computer-generated in their breathtaking flawlessness. Farther inland, the rolling hills are carpeted with neat stands of pine and green-golden pastures that are home to cattle as tasty as Argentina's (tastier, Uruguayans claim).
And despite its jet-set reputation, Punta has surprisingly nice people, like the women who, as I passed them on the sidewalks, would look at me and smile for no discernible reason, and Dani, an easygoing currency trader whom I met through a former co-worker, and whose shiny bald head and thick eyebrows I finally spied on the crowded casino floor.
Dani took a perch, ordered a whiskey and expressed surprise when I told him where I was staying: La Posta del Cangrejo, a whitewashed hotel on the ocean in La Barra, a hip, tiny suburb about 10 minutes' drive from downtown Punta. La Posta has a posh reputation — former President George Bush once checked in — and is not the kind of lodging the Frugal Traveler can normally afford. But I'd found an off-season special, $80 a night for what I joked was Mr. Bush's presidential suite: a spacious garden room that smelled like an old man.
To experience Punta the truly frugal way — the way that Dani and his children-of-the-elite friends have for decades — he took me down to the peninsula's port, where the megayachts dock, to a restaurant with plastic tables that specializes in chivitos.
To call a chivito a cheese steak may be accurate, but it misses the point. Chivitos may be grilled slices of juicy beef tenderloin on a roll, but really they're delivery devices for toppings: mozzarella, bacon, egg, lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, hot peppers, sweet peppers, olives, pickles and several different blends of mayonnaise.
Fresh ingredients are key, but just as important are the architectural talents of its chef. And at the Chivitería Marcos, we found an exceptional chef-engineer, who assembled our chivitos with effortless skill. Not a drop of juice dripped down my arm as I gorged myself with a delight enhanced by frugality — with French fries and a large Budweiser, we spent 330 pesos, which was about $13.60 at the exchange rate then, 24.2 pesos to the dollar. It was far from fancy, but saving money that night meant I could splurge the next.
It was close to midnight — early by Uruguayan standards — and Dani and I drove around the peninsula in search of life. The big clubs had not yet opened for the season, so there would be no $20 cocktails at Tequila, no invitations to the after-party at Martin Amis's house. We happened on Punta 33, a new bar-restaurant in a grand yellow building with a palm-fronted garden and jovial bouncers, on an otherwise lifeless and almost industrial block in the heart of the peninsula.
In contrast to the bright exterior, the inside was demure and low key, with a modest dance floor and a dozen wooden tables where several parties were finishing dinner. It seemed like a cozy place, but by the time we ordered a second round of $6 whiskeys, some 200 young Brazilians in short skirts and expensive jeans had transformed Punta 33 into a buzzing nightclub.
As a band played oddly familiar South American rock songs, the dance floor — indeed, every square inch in the club — was packed. By 3 a.m., Punta 33 was a mass of heaving, gyrating bodies, so many and so dense that we couldn't find a waiter to pay the bill.
APPARENTLY, I'd seen nothing yet. Dani informed me that I was in Punta at exactly the wrong time. The party scene doesn't kick into high gear until Christmas, he said, when the boldface names, Brazilian models and international scenesters arrive for a week or three of get-togethers, lavish dinners and midnight cruises.
But despite all that glamour, Dani added, Punta was also a place for families to relax and far-flung friends to reunite — more Wellfleet than Southampton.
In fine Punta tradition, I slept in Saturday, rousing myself just in time to reach La Barra's most popular bakery, Medialunas Calentitas ,before it closed for lunch. I ordered a quartet of their famous sticky-sweet croissants and a cortado (espresso with a little milk) for 95 pesos, and as I munched them outside at the surfer-chic picnic tables, latecomers cautiously approached the bakery, only to be turned away. For a moment, I felt like an insider.
Afterward, I strolled back along Route 10 — La Barra's main drag and essentially the only road in town — pausing at several cool boutiques. It was a refreshing departure from the Louis Vuitton and Valentino shops off Avenida Gorlero in downtown Punta.
At the Antique Shop, I found stacks of Atlántida, a fashion magazine from the 1940s, along with a rare G.E. radio set from 1931. And at Por Los Siglos, a jewelry store, I found a beautiful handmade silver bracelet embedded with tree bark. I bought it for my wife, Jean, and discovered a Punta secret — pay cash, get a discount. The bracelet was listed at 1,100 pesos, but the proprietress happily accepted 1,050 pesos rather than break out the credit-card machine.
That afternoon, I did very little, but what else are you supposed to do in a beach town? I read my Émile Zola novel, then used it as a pillow while watching surfers battling the unrelenting waves on the break just outside La Posta. I wandered to a church, where men in double-breasted suits and their immaculately coiffed wives were pouring forth from a wedding. When I got hungry, instead of going to the upscale restaurants in town, I ate a tasty four-cheese pizza (110 pesos) on the picnic tables at nearby Pico Alto, where a crowd of surfing teenagers had gathered.
Finally, I drove to the Museo del Mar (85 pesos entry), a warehouse-sized museum chock-full of marine ephemera: 30-foot whale skeletons, fetal dolphins in formaldehyde, giant turtle shells and a stuffed manta ray whose placard identified it as the species that killed the “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin. This was exactly the kind of place I love — quirky, chaotic, obsessively detailed and, without question, unique. I could have spent all day examining the collection and improving my Spanish (ah, cangrejo means crab!).
But the sun was beginning to set. So I drove to the peninsula's tip for a good look. There were a dozen cars already there, and we watched the sun cast rainbows onto clouds as it sank into the sea. As soon as darkness fell, a parking attendant shooed everyone away. I drove back along the coast, dark waves crashing on my right, a bright pastel moon hovering on the horizon.
FOR dinner late that evening (no one eats before 10), I went to Lo de Charlie , one of Punta's more expensive restaurants — I'd barely spent half my budget so far. An intimate bistro with pale violet walls and an open kitchen, Lo de Charlie hummed warmly with a dozen diners.
I sat down to eat — a lot: a pile of chipirones, or baby squid, sautéed with onions; an orgy of side dishes like pommes lyonnaises; and — to avenge Steve Irwin — pan-seared stingray with an aromatic saffron sauce. All that, plus a bottle of fruity Uruguayan viognier and cheese-flavored ice cream, came to 1,030 pesos, and since I was paying cash, I got 10 percent off. I slept well that night. But I awoke Sunday morning feeling oddly empty. I had nothing to do that day but watch surfers and pretend to read Zola's “Germinal.” But check-out time was nearing, so I packed my belongings, fired up the rented Chevy, and drove off to get one last glimpse of Punta del Este.
To the northeast, I found a beachfront complex of modernist brick apartments topped with gargantuan red pipes; to the west, a vertically oblong vacation home of unpainted wood, with enormous windows and an outbuilding in gleaming crimson. And in the countryside, a farmhouse with a rotting 60-foot yacht in its front yard.
I took pictures until barking dogs chased me away, then drove out of Punta with more than $200 still in my pocket. Wait a minute, I thought, were the baccarat tables still open?
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/travel/07frugal.html
I could hear the money running merrily down the drain — counterclockwise, of course: this was the Southern Hemisphere.
To say that casinos make the Frugal Traveler antsy is a vast understatement. My weekend budget of just $500 was enough for a mere five rounds of V.I.P. baccarat. In Punta del Este, on the Atlantic in the southeast corner of Uruguay, however, the casino serves another purpose: sitting at the base of the town's milelong peninsula, it's the perfect rendezvous point. The choice is as much symbolic as practical, for Punta del Este is a place devoted to celebrating money.
Punta is known as the Hamptons of South America— a haven for elites from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and beyond. It's where they come to chill with the supermodels Naomi Campbell and Gisele Bündchen at Buddha Bar, and to stock up on luxury labels like Gucci and Valentino.
Punta has other charms. Its beaches form a blond, boulder-flecked halo around the city, and in the golden light of early November, the buildings — the glinting Miami -esque towers, the immaculate old stucco hotels, the modernist glass summer homes — appear almost computer-generated in their breathtaking flawlessness. Farther inland, the rolling hills are carpeted with neat stands of pine and green-golden pastures that are home to cattle as tasty as Argentina's (tastier, Uruguayans claim).
And despite its jet-set reputation, Punta has surprisingly nice people, like the women who, as I passed them on the sidewalks, would look at me and smile for no discernible reason, and Dani, an easygoing currency trader whom I met through a former co-worker, and whose shiny bald head and thick eyebrows I finally spied on the crowded casino floor.
Dani took a perch, ordered a whiskey and expressed surprise when I told him where I was staying: La Posta del Cangrejo, a whitewashed hotel on the ocean in La Barra, a hip, tiny suburb about 10 minutes' drive from downtown Punta. La Posta has a posh reputation — former President George Bush once checked in — and is not the kind of lodging the Frugal Traveler can normally afford. But I'd found an off-season special, $80 a night for what I joked was Mr. Bush's presidential suite: a spacious garden room that smelled like an old man.
To experience Punta the truly frugal way — the way that Dani and his children-of-the-elite friends have for decades — he took me down to the peninsula's port, where the megayachts dock, to a restaurant with plastic tables that specializes in chivitos.
To call a chivito a cheese steak may be accurate, but it misses the point. Chivitos may be grilled slices of juicy beef tenderloin on a roll, but really they're delivery devices for toppings: mozzarella, bacon, egg, lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, hot peppers, sweet peppers, olives, pickles and several different blends of mayonnaise.
Fresh ingredients are key, but just as important are the architectural talents of its chef. And at the Chivitería Marcos, we found an exceptional chef-engineer, who assembled our chivitos with effortless skill. Not a drop of juice dripped down my arm as I gorged myself with a delight enhanced by frugality — with French fries and a large Budweiser, we spent 330 pesos, which was about $13.60 at the exchange rate then, 24.2 pesos to the dollar. It was far from fancy, but saving money that night meant I could splurge the next.
It was close to midnight — early by Uruguayan standards — and Dani and I drove around the peninsula in search of life. The big clubs had not yet opened for the season, so there would be no $20 cocktails at Tequila, no invitations to the after-party at Martin Amis's house. We happened on Punta 33, a new bar-restaurant in a grand yellow building with a palm-fronted garden and jovial bouncers, on an otherwise lifeless and almost industrial block in the heart of the peninsula.
In contrast to the bright exterior, the inside was demure and low key, with a modest dance floor and a dozen wooden tables where several parties were finishing dinner. It seemed like a cozy place, but by the time we ordered a second round of $6 whiskeys, some 200 young Brazilians in short skirts and expensive jeans had transformed Punta 33 into a buzzing nightclub.
As a band played oddly familiar South American rock songs, the dance floor — indeed, every square inch in the club — was packed. By 3 a.m., Punta 33 was a mass of heaving, gyrating bodies, so many and so dense that we couldn't find a waiter to pay the bill.
APPARENTLY, I'd seen nothing yet. Dani informed me that I was in Punta at exactly the wrong time. The party scene doesn't kick into high gear until Christmas, he said, when the boldface names, Brazilian models and international scenesters arrive for a week or three of get-togethers, lavish dinners and midnight cruises.
But despite all that glamour, Dani added, Punta was also a place for families to relax and far-flung friends to reunite — more Wellfleet than Southampton.
In fine Punta tradition, I slept in Saturday, rousing myself just in time to reach La Barra's most popular bakery, Medialunas Calentitas ,before it closed for lunch. I ordered a quartet of their famous sticky-sweet croissants and a cortado (espresso with a little milk) for 95 pesos, and as I munched them outside at the surfer-chic picnic tables, latecomers cautiously approached the bakery, only to be turned away. For a moment, I felt like an insider.
Afterward, I strolled back along Route 10 — La Barra's main drag and essentially the only road in town — pausing at several cool boutiques. It was a refreshing departure from the Louis Vuitton and Valentino shops off Avenida Gorlero in downtown Punta.
At the Antique Shop, I found stacks of Atlántida, a fashion magazine from the 1940s, along with a rare G.E. radio set from 1931. And at Por Los Siglos, a jewelry store, I found a beautiful handmade silver bracelet embedded with tree bark. I bought it for my wife, Jean, and discovered a Punta secret — pay cash, get a discount. The bracelet was listed at 1,100 pesos, but the proprietress happily accepted 1,050 pesos rather than break out the credit-card machine.
That afternoon, I did very little, but what else are you supposed to do in a beach town? I read my Émile Zola novel, then used it as a pillow while watching surfers battling the unrelenting waves on the break just outside La Posta. I wandered to a church, where men in double-breasted suits and their immaculately coiffed wives were pouring forth from a wedding. When I got hungry, instead of going to the upscale restaurants in town, I ate a tasty four-cheese pizza (110 pesos) on the picnic tables at nearby Pico Alto, where a crowd of surfing teenagers had gathered.
Finally, I drove to the Museo del Mar (85 pesos entry), a warehouse-sized museum chock-full of marine ephemera: 30-foot whale skeletons, fetal dolphins in formaldehyde, giant turtle shells and a stuffed manta ray whose placard identified it as the species that killed the “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin. This was exactly the kind of place I love — quirky, chaotic, obsessively detailed and, without question, unique. I could have spent all day examining the collection and improving my Spanish (ah, cangrejo means crab!).
But the sun was beginning to set. So I drove to the peninsula's tip for a good look. There were a dozen cars already there, and we watched the sun cast rainbows onto clouds as it sank into the sea. As soon as darkness fell, a parking attendant shooed everyone away. I drove back along the coast, dark waves crashing on my right, a bright pastel moon hovering on the horizon.
FOR dinner late that evening (no one eats before 10), I went to Lo de Charlie , one of Punta's more expensive restaurants — I'd barely spent half my budget so far. An intimate bistro with pale violet walls and an open kitchen, Lo de Charlie hummed warmly with a dozen diners.
I sat down to eat — a lot: a pile of chipirones, or baby squid, sautéed with onions; an orgy of side dishes like pommes lyonnaises; and — to avenge Steve Irwin — pan-seared stingray with an aromatic saffron sauce. All that, plus a bottle of fruity Uruguayan viognier and cheese-flavored ice cream, came to 1,030 pesos, and since I was paying cash, I got 10 percent off. I slept well that night. But I awoke Sunday morning feeling oddly empty. I had nothing to do that day but watch surfers and pretend to read Zola's “Germinal.” But check-out time was nearing, so I packed my belongings, fired up the rented Chevy, and drove off to get one last glimpse of Punta del Este.
To the northeast, I found a beachfront complex of modernist brick apartments topped with gargantuan red pipes; to the west, a vertically oblong vacation home of unpainted wood, with enormous windows and an outbuilding in gleaming crimson. And in the countryside, a farmhouse with a rotting 60-foot yacht in its front yard.
I took pictures until barking dogs chased me away, then drove out of Punta with more than $200 still in my pocket. Wait a minute, I thought, were the baccarat tables still open?
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/travel/07frugal.html
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