Piriapolis the first 24 hours

Meet our cat, Sol (Sun). OK, she technically belongs to our neighbor but since our windows are usually open she comes and goes as she pleases. The perfect kind of cat to call your own. We don't feed her or pay her medical bills. However, when we head out of town we do have to make sure she is not slumbering somewhere in our home before we close and lock everything up! This is where we found her before our departure to the little coastal resort town of Piriapolis.

Amarras Reales (Royal Mooring) is the name of the complex we stayed at, at the invitation of Jorge Rial an especially nice person we met at a Rotary Club meeting.  

 We were on the top floor as you can see by this picture of Bonnie talking to me while I was down at the swimming pool.  Somehow, I always feel I am looking up to this woman!

We went out to dinner but since it was early by Uruguayan standards (8:00) we beat the wait staff to the restaurant, Puertito de Don Anselmo. This is a very popular and well known restaurant right on the water but as you can see we were the first to arrive.

A lovely view of the port as we had breakfast on the terrace.

Here is a view from the living room looking out at the terrace. Bonnie is studying the maps to plan out the sights we will be seeing.

Proving she deserves to be Shawna's sister, one of our first stops is a marine animal rescue center where we signed up to volunteer.

It had a very nice location right on a beach. I had passed it earlier on my morning run and had wondered what it was. The hill in the background (San Antonio) is the hill our complex was built in/onto. The palm fronds are hiding our "home away from home".

 

These penguins were very cute and friendly.

This was a very active sea turtle.



This type of seal is called a Sea Wolf (lobo marino) in Spanish.

This inquisitive baby Sea Lion looked more like a relative to the Loch Ness monster in this photo.

Here he is practicing the pose he will take as an adult.

You can't tell from the perspective of this picture but this is a much larger, full-grown Sea Lion. It made us sad, because he is missing his right eye, and this was the day our dog, Lancelot, was to go into surgery to have his right eye removed.

We rode the chairlift from the bottom of our complex to the top of San Antonio Hill.

This is one of my favorite views. Especially with Piriapolis in the background!

Here is a close-up shot of the city and the beach.

Piriapolis is known for its beautiful views of the sunsets. It was very disorienting for us to have the Sun sinking into the West over the Atlantic Ocean (yeah, yeah, we know it is still technically the Rio de Plata here but you can see the imaginary boundary between the two bodies of water from here).

Returning back down the mountain after the sun has set and the lights are coming on.

In the previous close-up photo of Piriapolis from the top of the hill in the background you could see the beach was full of people who were there to enjoy the sunset. A short time later it is basically empty.

The sidewalks alongside the beach, however, are not empty!

I loved this surf shop because they had covered the floor with sand to make an indoor beach!

While looking for a restroom we wandered down a hall at the back of a video arcade and discovered a courtyard with a swimming pool and human sized "hamster balls".

Of course, we had to try it! Climb inside and hope it really will fill with air.

Hard to believe, but this has always been a dream of Bonnie's, to be inside a giant "hamster ball".  I wonder what Sigmund Freud would have to say about such dreams?

Standing up is much harder than you would think!


They should have paid us a commission since the place was empty when we discovered it and when we left there were dozens of people!

Afterwards we stopped at a Pizza place with a familiar name. That is a genuine wood-fired pizza oven in the background. They are pizza masters here. 32 flavors and they sell it by the meter (that is like us selling it by the yard)?

First of the year feria, peace, tranquility, and ideal weather

I went to the "feria" (similar to a mobile outdoor mall consisting of about 500 farmer's markets, jewelry stores, clothes stores, toy stores, craft stores, and just about anything you can think of) on the second day of this new year. The feria is set up and taken down in a nearby plaza every Saturday. The day was as absolutely gorgeous as the first day of the year was.

Everywhere I go I detect a totally different atmosphere. It can only be due to the fact that the vast majority of people (probably more than a million) are now on vacation for the next month. The feria was very crowded, as usual. The difference was that all of a sudden the vast majority of people looked like tourists to me. I see very few people I would be comfortable asking for directions because they do not look like they live here. Nearly every person who passes me I expect to be speaking a foreign language rather than Spanish.  I continue to be wrong in my expectations.

Kristie, Chris, and Kaori have walked these very aisles with us.

Play Station 2 games are quite inexpensive here and there are lots of kiosks, like this one, full of PS2 games to be had for $5 or less.

There is always someone selling puppies. At least this week they were in a cage rather than a box or running loose, so I didn't have to stop and pet them.  They are still very, very cute and they always make me miss our dog, Lancelot.

 These are a couple of the local recyclers which sort out the recyclables from the dumpsters. Their cart is registered with the city and you see these carts frequently every day as they make their routes checking all the dumpsters on their assigned route. Somehow it just seems wrong that people who make their living from dumpster-diving are licensed to do so by the city.  These boys were working with their father who just stepped away from the cart.

To match the weather, the ocean (river) was a timid body of water barely daring to lap at the shore, and when it did it seemed to apologize and not to stir for quite a while after each such "mishap".

Even more quiet were the streets, as you can see by looking at our street which rarely has more than one or two open parking spots.  Suddenly there are parking spots everywhere all over the city.  This is due to the fact that people are on vacation and are visiting family or have moved out for a month to a summer rented home near the beach or possibly in the interior. Every inch of beach is public property so it is accessible from anywhere. No fences, no homes, nothing bars the way between the coast highway/street and the soft, white sandy beaches, so if you can find a place to rent within a few blocks of the beach, you have guaranteed and unimpeded beach access.  I like that!

Saturday, Sunday, & Monday (Beaches & Food)

I remember when I was in Spain how most everyone took off for summer vacations and the streets and city basically emptied. 30 years later I am seeing the same phenomenon, but seemingly even more pronounced.

The Uruguayans have been complaining because the weather has been much cooler and wetter than what seems "normal" to them. For Bonnie and me, who only know what we are experiencing, we are quite satisfied. Especially since we were prepared for very hot and humid days. However, beginning with the new year, the weather has been outstanding. Saturday was low 80s with a mild breeze and beautiful sunshine.

Here's Bonnie headed to the beach on Saturday. You can even see the river is mostly ocean- blue and clearer (less sediment) than we have seen previously.

The quantity of people on the beach has suddenly ramped up as well.

We headed out to try a little Mexican restaurant in a nearby area that is kind of like an outdoors mall food court. There are about 8-10 restaurants that are side-by-side kiosks with tables and chairs on the sidewalk. Thankfully, the Mexican restaurant was one of the three restaurants that were not closed due to summer vacation. Since Mexican food is not well known here, the waitress went through her spiel of explaining what the nachos were and how to eat them with the sauces provided.

We walked down the beach afterwards and at the far end is a beach sports arena erected for the summer. We watched a boys soccer game before walking back home for the night.

Sunday was fast Sunday and the new Priesthood and Relief Society manuals were passed out, except there is only one per family and none for our family since they told Bonnie in Relief Society I would get one in Priesthood meeting and they told me, Bonnie would get one in her Relief Society meeting!

Thankfully, Aaron & Emily Campbell invited us over for crepes to break our fast. Or maybe it was the kids who invited us after they heard the parents saying they were going to have crepes (creeps) for dinner! In any case we took different brands of Dulce de Leche and had a blind taste test. Here's four of the Campbell kids (Emma, Elijah, Malachi, & Madelena) doing their jobs as taste panelists.
 
 
I snapped another picture that afternoon of our very busy beach and our very un-busy road (the cars you see are all parked cars).

Monday broke with a raging thunderstorm and serious rain for about an hour and later this afternoon the weather broke and the sun peeked out at times so we went down to the beach to read a little and I snapped this shot to show the contrast of how vacant it had become from yesterday and the day before.

Bonnie is making me eat healthier (New Year's improvements) so I snapped this shot of our afternoon merienda- cheese, membrillo, carrot sticks, red peppers, tomatoes, turkey, more cheese, bread, and mayonnaise.

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Tonight we saw the movie "Avatar" in 3D. We think this may be our first 3D movie at a theater. All I'll say is the special effects are what makes the movie- $300,000,000 worth of effects, in fact!


Since the movie is nearly three hours long and started at 11:00, it is now after 3:00 AM, so I think I shall retire for the day.  G'night and God bless.