Exploring Uruguay

Expat & Travel Resource Guide

beach

Zoë Likes to Scream

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We’ll be doing our weekly update on Zoë every Monday, which means that we’ll be moving our recipe of the week to Fridays.

Last week we mentioned that Zoë is very into dressing up these days. We wanted to share a few pictures.

This is Zoë’s beach attire. She loves to wear her hat and sunglasses everywhere. Of course when we get to the beach they have to come off so she’s free to play.
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Lately Zoë has started walking around the house with one of her hooded towels on her head. Our little super hero.
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And best of all, she loves to dress up in our clothes whenever she gets a chance. Pretty cute, huh?
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But she is still your normal toddler testing her limits. Brian had some errands to run on Friday, so Zoë and I went to the grocery store. Normally she is very well behaved… not this time!

She decided it was funny to scream at the top of her lungs (she has a very loud, high-pitched scream) and run away from me. She didn’t want to be in her stroller and she didn’t want to be held. She wanted to be able to run all over and take things off the shelf.

I thought we were going to have to leave, but she finally sat still in the stroller after being bribed with a small stuffed dog (or “woof woof” as she would call it) so I could grab a few final things. I know this is just a phase that Zoë is going through, so I’m trying to appreciate every minute of it.

Zoë had a very fun weekend. Saturday we met up with a very nice family from New Zealand at Parque Rodo to play.
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And, Sunday we met another family from Norway at the beach and enjoyed the nice weather.
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And the Road Trip Continues: Punta Ballena, Piriapolis and Atlantida

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After breakfast, we set out for our first stop of the day, Punta Ballena. We had heard that it was the Punta Del Este of 15 years ago, but more affordable now, so we wanted to check it out as a potential location for our next home in Uruguay.

We stopped at a viewpoint in Punta Ballena and took some pictures of the beautiful scenery.

This was clearly a tourist stop because there were some vendors set up selling trinkets.

There was also museum nearby. But Zoë fell asleep so we didn’t get to check it out this trip. Instead of waking her to check out the rest of Punta Ballena, we decided to head out to Piriapolis.

I guess a motorcycle convention was in Piriapolis for the weekend because there were motorcycles everywhere.  We really liked the feel of Piriapolis. It has more of the small beach town feel we’re looking for.

Although we didn’t get to spend a lot of time there today, we’ll definitely be taking another trip out there within the next couple months to explore it further.

The only Piriapolis pictures we got were of a fountain at one of the small parks on our drive out to Punta Del Este the night before:

Our next scheduled stop was Atlantida, but we decided to drive though several of the smaller, more unknown beach towns on the way. There were some really neat little towns tucked along the coast. It was really cool to see that even though these communities were very small, they still had markets, restaurants, etc.

We also noticed that peat moss roofs are quite popular in these small towns… Brian kept commenting about how it reminded him of Ireland.

We stopped off and had lunch in one of these small little beach towns at a quaint family restaurant called La Caracola. The owners (I believe it was a husband and wife team) were very friendly and welcoming.

And, the food was excellent. Brian had the Milanesa with puré de papas
(mashed potatoes) and both Johnny and I ordered the Chivitos al Pan.

The portions were huge so in addition to eating her own serving of puré
de papas, Zoë shared with all of us. We definitely recommend stopping
here if you’re taking a road trip down the coast.

After we had lunch, we headed to Atlantida. Atlantida had even more of a sleepy beach town feel… it felt more residential than Piriapolis did. I’m sure during the summer it picks up quite a bit more.

We found a small park with a large fountain so that Zoë could run around. She had spent a lot of time in the car that weekend and was getting pretty antsy. She had a blast running around, picking up leaves and giving them to us as presents.

The beaches in Atlantida were nice as well, but we didn’t get a chance to enjoy them this time around. Here are a couple pictures of the beach in Atlantida we shot the day before when it was raining.

One thing we noticed on our drive down the coast is how untouched the beaches are. You still see vegetation growing on the dunes in many areas (it isn’t pulled out to make the beaches more tourist friendly). The sand even comes back onto the road in many places, making navigation interesting.

We’ll definitely be taking another trip to Piriapolis and some of these other beach towns in the next few months.