Feeling at Home Among the Elite in Uruguay’s Punta del Este - New York Times
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Horacio Paone for The New York Times
A view of Punta del Este from the Conrad Hotel at the base of the peninsula.
By MATT GROSS
Published: January 7, 2007
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.
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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
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/travel/07frugal.html
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Feeling at Home Among the Elite in Uruguay’s Punta del Este - New York Times
Readers’ Opinions
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.
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places in Punta del Este?
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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 coworker, and whose shiny bald head and thick eyebrows I finally spied on the crowded
casino floor.
05/08/2008 11:30 ΜΜ
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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-theelite 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
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/travel/07frugal.html
Page 2 of 3
Feeling at Home Among the Elite in Uruguay’s Punta del Este - New York Times
05/08/2008 11:30 ΜΜ
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.
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