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)?