There must be as many real estate sales offices in Punta Del Este as there are places for sale and rent.
No one stays put these days and for all the places here that has someone living in them, you still have plenty of places that are empty. This is a real estate broker’s paradise. Customers come down, fall in love, buy a place, move here, then lose their love and bail out. You get to sell a place over and over and over and you have nothing of yours at stake.
The area is seductive. It is clean, has shopping, has the beach, is easy to get around, is safe. The fact that it is expensive and is a resort community that expands in the good months and shrinks to a skeleton staff in the winter is easy to forget..
If you buy a place here are you going to live in it full time?
How much use will you get out of it?
Who will watch it when you are not here?
Is renting it practical?
Are property values going to rise or fall in the next few years so you don’t lose your reason for investment?
What is the government going to do that will impact the value of your investment, the income you might make from it, or whether you can sell it or not?
Is it really any different here than in Fort Lauderdale or Padre Island or San Diego, California?
If you are in business how are you going to survive lean months.
Wherever I go, real estate is for sale and people are either buying, selling or trading..
As far as I know, Gerardo is the most honest man on the planet and can, for a price,he will find you the castle of your dreams.
My dad was a realtor so I know there are honest ones on the planet.
The need to own a home is not going away anytime soon.
On vacation, where it is warm and people lay on the beach, you forget about Christmas.
Christmas comes in December no matter where you are in the world. In this Punta Del Este shopping mall, Christmas has arrived, decorations are out, Santa has been puffed up, and all that is needed is more customers and a brisk buying season.
During Christmas season we set time aside to do nice things for people we may not be nice too other times. This is the time of year when bygones are to be bygones, when wrongs are forgiven, when giving and getting are almost on par,when open hearts overtake our baser instincts.
Santa waves when I see him.
Everyone knows there is a Santa Claus and he lives in a big house at the North Pole. He has been working all year to make presents for all those who have been nice, not naughty. Ramping up operations, his reindeer are rearing to go but he also uses Fed X, Amazon, UPS, the Post Office, and DPS to help him complete his mission. He has look alikes sit in shopping malls and let kids sit on their knees and tell what they would like for Christmas. Everyone knows Santa can’t be in all places at all times.
Weather doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas. Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Christ whether it is hot or cold, dry or wet, spring or winter.
It remains odd, however, that more people these days worship Santa than Christ.
Punta Ballena is ten to fifteen miles outside of Punta Del Este.
The bus lets you off by a worn out spot on the highway’s shoulder and the driver points you across the highway towards an uphill winding road overlooking the ocean.
This is my first visit here.
Before, on the bus ride from Montevideo to Punta Del Este, I saw this view and wondered what people did in Uruguay to be able to make the money needed to live here? The reality is that many who live here bring money with them.The rich have play places all over the world.
It is understandable that nearly all the land with a view of the water has been sold and has a house on it. Across the street, in beautiful wooded, open areas, are Se Vende signs with phone numbers. There isn’t a hundred yards difference between the two pieces of land, but view adds up to extra millions of dollars in value.
If you have money, you don’t want to walk across the street to see the ocean.
If you have money, you think about things like this.
These two lovebirds, by our standards on the cost of an ocean view, from their front porch, are richer than all of us. put together.
When you come towards the end of the winding road that leads you from the highway to the water, you look down and see a turnaround where buses and cars are parked and people are standing on stone walls taking snapshots of the ocean for their scrapbooks.
I am looking for a white pueblo styled house, ” Casa Pueblo” built somewhere on this peninsula.
Not seeing it, I backtrack and ask a lady with her daughter where the Casa Pueblo is? The woman points and moves her hand a little to the right, pointing over a hill I can’t see through.
I walk back down the winding road, go further than I had before, and spy a smaller road cutting away to the right from this main road. A few more steps and I see white adobe style walls that can only be the famous Casa Pueblo built on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
There are vehicles parked along both sides of the narrow road leading up to its entry and people are trekking towards the National Monument like ants following a jungle trail.
Casa Pueblo is home and studio of Carlos Paez Vilaro, Uruguay’s most famous artist.
Whereas art can be done quickly, building takes more time. There are engineering problems, aesthetic questions, debates about whether concrete and wood can do the things you are asking them to do. In New Mexico, as well as here, materials are touched by hands. Cement is mixed and poured by the wheelbarrow load. Walls are plastered with hand tools and left uneven and undulating.
Wandering up and down stairs through the home and studio and gift shop and hotel and museo, inside and out, there are unexpected turns and twists.
For the longest time it is very comfortable for me just to sit on the back observation deck and look at the water below me change colors. I can stand at the deck railing and look at hotel guests in bikinis trying to get brown when the sun is behind a cloud.
Men’s minds are not all made the same way but if my house was built to fit my mind’s interior it would look a lot like this.
Most of us have castles in our minds, but we just can’t afford to buy them, or build them.
Drawing is about lines.
You have straight lines, curved lines, and a combination of both. With line you begin reproducing what you see, then drawing what you imagine, then making something new that hasn’t been seen before. Something must have snapped as Carlos put pencil on paper, chalk on paper, paint on canvas, clay on the wheel, murals on big city walls around the world.
In his work you see Picasso and the influence of ancient cultures of South and Central America – the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans. You see the influence of African masks and Ancient Greek sculptures. Art fed him like a farmer eating from his own garden.
Some of the works in the gift shop are not to my taste, but that means little. There are many foods but you don’t have to like them all to make them good for someone.
Vilaro’s older works are surprisingly as inquisitive as the early ones since age seems to diminish chance taking and creativity.
I like it here. This place resonates like a ringing dinner bell as the sun goes down and candles are lit on white tablecloths.
Casa Pueblo is one of the must see sights in Uruguay.
The house is the art studio and home of one of Uruguay’s most famous artists – Carlos Paez Vilaro. His biography calls him an abstract artist, painter, potter, sculptor, muralist, writer, composer, and constructor. He was born in 1923 in Montevideo and started drawing in 1939 at the ripe old age of 19. From humble beginnings, he created his life, as he found his way to live it, with friends all over the world.
The Casa Pueblo is, in his own words, “His fight against straight lines.”
The home he made in Punta Ballena, in the 1950’s, then a very remote place in Uruguay, was later expanded to include a museum, gift shop, restaurant, gallery, and studio. On film, in a sitting room at the entry to the historical site, the artist tells of his early life, his travels around the world. Coming from poverty, he identified with struggles for independence and was involved in music and culture of the barrios. He made films and played music. He was a Renaissance Man.
These photos present him as a young man, and then an older man. One of his sons commented, at the time of his death, that “I hope he rests in peace. I’ve never seen a guy who works that much, and I mean it. He worked up until yesterday.”
On the film, the artist calls work his peace.
Give thanks to artists because they are explorers with candles who show us the way in the dark.
At the end of the day, photos are sifted and sorted, evaluated, approved, or deleted.
You take as many photos as possible on trips because you know not all things you shoot are going to work. It takes only a quick point, shoot, then you put the camera back into your pocket, as you walk.There is nothing complicated about snapping a photo.
Sometimes, you look at the camera roll and find something serendipitous. You either see something in a photo you didn’t see when you first shot it, or, you see a mistake that interests you. It wasn’t planned, but it tweaks interest. This photo is one of these second types.
This odd photo is of me and my shadow.
Sometimes I don’t know where my shadow is, but most bright days, when I turn, just so, Mr. Shadow is right with me.
There used to be an old vaudeville song called “Me and My Shadow.” The entertainer would strut across the stage, looking over his shoulder, trying to catch his shadow catching him. It was a catchy Tin Pan Alley song and a catchy show stopper. People loved it. The only reason I remember is the performer played clarinet, and I play clarinet.
The vaudeville entertainer was Ted Lewis. You can Google ” Me and My Shadow ” and catch his thing on You Tube.
A reviewer of the Ted Lewis clarinet playing called it, ” The last anguish of a dying dog. ”
He might have been too kind.
As man’s best friend, and women’s cuddle master, dogs are in Punta Del Este too.
I have seen no dog whisperers here as I did in Ciudad Vieja, but dogs go where their masters are. Dog lovers know that their dogs are worth buying a steak for, grilling it, and cutting it up in nice little bites for them, just the way they like it. There is just something special about having an associate that doesn’t question, doesn’t fight, doesn’t judge, and barks at the people you don’t like either.
This poodle is comfortable and doesn’t snap as I snap a quick picture. Self assured, she maintains her regal composure and gives me only the slightest notice. Up on her comfortable throne, she has a wide open view of the street below.
To be treated in the manner to which you are entitled is every dog’s mission in life, but the first rule, in any dog’s Bible, is get a good owner.
Once you have that you can fix your master the way you like them.
Steve is my age.
He is standing on a ladder in work clothes scrubbing graffiti off pieces of slate glued to a concrete wall. We both agree it is a stupid place to put slate – stucco, or plaster painted, would make more sense. Still, vandals have marked the wall and the manager has to have it removed and Steve is the man hired to do it.
He tells me he is from Uruguay but migrated to the U.S., lived and worked there twenty five years. He came back to Uruguay because he still has a daughter here. For now, he works as a maintenance man for this apartment building but back in the states maintains large resort hotels and keeps commercial kitchens running.
“My wife went back last month,” he tells me, as he washes off graffiti. “I want to go back and drive my truck. I love it. I like Miami. My son has a construction business and a big house I can stay in .”
The conversation confirms that Uruguayans know all about the United States . A young man at the bus station , who spent five years trying to become a legal U.S. citizen, but couldn’t get accepted, expressed his belief that getting ahead is tough in Uruguay and immigration is a way to move up economic ladders.
“In the U.S.,” he said, “it is different. People think ahead.” Here, if your family is not important, you have difficulties.”
Graffiti is on the move around the world and is Punta Del Este’s a canary in a coal mine.
If they catch the culprits, Steve is pretty sure they won’t do a thing to them.
The cost of keeping people locked up has killed more than one government budget.
Lunch is hours away but a foreman is already buying food for his troops before it rolls around
A sale unfolds as I stand on the sidewalk in front of a construction site and watch sandwiches and sweets go into a five gallon bucket. A stooped figure is retrieving orders from shelves in the back of a little van and the subs he pulls out look big to me.
“What you got in there? ”
The young man, bearded, points at two front rows of sub sandwiches, and a back row of desserts.
“Did you make them,” I ask?
“No, I have a supplier.”
“How much for the big subs?”
“In U.S. dollars, six.”
“What’s your name?”
“Edgardo.”
We shake and make a sandwich deal for tomorrow morning same time, same place since I didn’t bring any money on this stroll. He wants to give me a sandwich now and I pay tomorrow but I don’t want to do that because there is lots of static that can get between now and tomorrow. It is nice that he trusts me enough to make such an offer.
I don’t see a permit but I don’t need one because his business is popular, and, for that reason alone, advertises itself.
Helping local small business guys is high on my list of things to do, even when I’m traveling. .
When I work construction I eat out of concession trucks when they are close by at home.
I can’t make this sandwich for what he sell’s them for, and, even if I bought from his supplier, I’d have to walk there and convince them to sell to me.
Paying people for their time and money is never a bad idea.
I appreciate being paid for my knowledge, skills, and service too.
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