It's simple and charming

Sandwiched between its larger neighbours Brazil and Argentina, tiny Uruguay is often overlooked, leaving much of its sandy coastline blissfully empty, says Benji Lanyado

WHEN the southern hemisphere summer approaches, swarms of tourists descend on Punta del Este, the money-drenched St Tropez of South America on Uruguay's Atlantic coast.

Circling a packed peninsula lined with scores of snazzy hotels and designer boutiques, the beaches will be buzzing from January to March, perpetually topped up by a cavalcade of South America's rich and famous.

Within half a day I hate it. For some, this is a perfect holiday destination. For me, it's a soulless, high-rise cultural vacuum of burgers and chips, boob jobs and casinos, dissected into zones and scrubbed to within an inch of its life. The street signs are sponsored by Visa for gawd's sake.

Luckily, the total opposite is only 40 minutes' drive away. Stretching north of Punta del Este, the landscape and atmosphere of the Uruguayan coast changes swiftly and dramatically - huge swathes of empty beach, boutique hideaways on isolated outcrops, candlelit hippie towns and tiny fishing villages. With the bright lights of Punta, it seems, Uruguay is selling visitors a rather clever dummy.

But it does yield one nice surprise. Gary (my travelling buddy) and I manage to find a Fiat Uno for $32 (BD12) a day in one of the dozen or so rent-a-car places within five minutes walk of our hostel. Within 20 minutes we're in a different world.

The road that lines the coast is flanked to the right by grassy dunes and miles of empty beaches. To our left, pine forest, lakes and shrub dissolve into the distance. As we turn off the road to photograph the hand-painted sign that indicates our arrival in Jose Ignacio, our first stop, a donkey and cart trundles past in the opposite direction. Peeking over the lip of the dune a row of fishing rods is strung out with lines dipping into the water, and a single fisherman waiting patiently.

Over the last few years, the eyes of the in-the-know locals who are looking to invest in the Uruguayan coast have been drifting north. Yet if Punta is testament to the utter incongruence of money and taste, Jose Ignacio, occupying a thin peninsula in the middle of two wide coves, is a restrained, elegant demonstration of how high-end development can be done well - the Jaguar to Punta del Este's luminous yellow, souped-up Hummer.

Driving through the village is a surreal experience; almost every house is an architectural showcase. Brightly coloured pastel facades dot the stilted ranches on the plains between the Jose Ignacio lagoon and the sea. Others are futuristic cubist experiments - elongated single storeys with glass box living rooms, whitewashed cottages with modernist flourishes.

We check into the 12-room Posada del Faro, considered the best bed in town, and are led to our room through an asymmetric, airy lounge area beyond the entrance. Every detail is executed with effortless grace; there is wooden and wrought-iron furniture on a stone and beam floor, a red painted brick wall at one end of the room, whitewashed stucco and a fireplace at the other.

We sit on our balcony overlooking an octagonal pool, the cove beyond sparkling in the afternoon sun. Gary dons his board shorts and plods gingerly to the pool. For the rest of the day we loaf like the other half.

In the evening we get back into the car - a sacrilegious lump in the Posada's drive - and head a few minutes back down the coast to the tiny village of La Juanita, to La Olada, a restaurant on the front porch of a local chef's house.

The road north from Jose Ignacio dips into the Uruguayan countryside - vast, flat grassy plains yellowing with the onset of summer - before returning to within a kilometre of the coast. A sign by the roadside welcomes us to Cabo Polonio, where a handful of trucks with space for passengers in the rear loiter by the side of the road. We park the car under the trees, pay the 120 pesos parking tariff, and board one. For 20 minutes our ride wobbles through the sand dunes towards the sea, and the final kilometre hurtles us along the beach towards the outcrop upon which Cabo Polonio sits.

The peninsula is roughly the same size as Jose Ignacio's, but there the similarities end. Cabo Polonio is a self-contained community of hippies and fishermen; with each dwelling an individual endeavour - scattered across grass and dune are wooden huts, one-room stucco houses and inventive shacks with roofs of thatch and multicoloured corrugated iron. It feels like somewhere between a kibbutz and a neat but chaotic shanty town. We've gone from utter luxury to Mad Max on sea.

At the northern peak of the cape a few posadas and cafes are lined with hammocks and young locals play guitar and sing. A handful of people walk along the beach in the low tide. On the way to the southern shore we pass solitary horses grazing, squawking roosters and wandering fishermen in T-shirts, shorts and caps.

We meet Alfredo, the Argentinean owner of the Cabo Polonio Hostel, the only hostel on the peninsula, and cart our bags to his wooden shack on the beachfront.

Next to the shack a water tank sits hoisted on poles above the house, 'Hostal' painted on two planks by its side. Like everything else on the peninsula it's totally uncontrived; basic but not uncomfortable. Simple and charming is the Cabo Polonio way.

As the sun sets the village darkens and candles are lit - there is no electricity on the peninsula. We sit on Alfredo's porch, his fishing rod hanging overhead and tomorrow's bait flapping in a bucket on the sand. Our host begins cutting up wood for the stove, sipping a drink and telling us stories about the village.

For 40 years people have been building houses here illegally, essentially squatting. To earn a living they fish, build and repair houses or sell trinkets to visitors. The community governs itself, but there is one policeman in the village, who is also the manager of the Cabo Polonio beach football team.

We've struck gold - Alfredo used to be a chef by profession. Dinner is fresh-caught sole cooked in butter and herbs with stir-fried vegetables, eaten by candle-light on the porch. It's the best meal we have in Uruguay. Friends of Alfredo pop in and out in standard Uruguayan stance: hot water flask in one hand, a pot of mate (the ubiquitous herbal tea) in the other.

Forty minutes drive north, our final stop is Punta del Diablo, 25km from the Brazilian border. We drive to the seafront, where two fishermen are toiling to the rear of the beach, turning cogs that wind a rope attached to their boat to tug it in from the sea over wooden planks. Half a dozen other boats rest on the sand, groups of sunbathers sprinkled between them.

Easily accessed by road, and a natural stop between Punta del Este and the southern towns of Brazil, Punta del Diablo is increasingly popular with Uruguayan, Brazilian and Argentinean holidaymakers.

The entirety of Punta del Diablo is owned by a single farming family which, over the last few years, has begun steadily selling off their land, forcing away the squatters who previously occupied the village.

The flashy Portal del Diablo website has dozens of properties on its books available for short rent, and a raft of beautiful new houses suggest that in the future the town will more likely resemble Jose Ignacio than Cabo Polonio. But for now, it's a delightful compromise between the two.

Finally we're turning back on ourselves, retracing our route down the coast, aiming for the rent-a-car in Punta del Este. If this coastline ever gets fully developed, I hope it happens in this direction, taking the lead from Punta del Diablo with a gentle development down, rather than large-scale and from Punta del Este upwards.

For further information visit the national tourist board at www.turismo.gub.uy