Beaches in Uruguay

A short Atlantic coast that empties for ten months and fills entirely in January, when Argentina and Brazil arrive and the country's summer address moves to the sea. The water changes at a specific point: west of Punta del Este the Río de la Plata makes it brown and silty, east of it the Atlantic is clear, and the two beaches on either side of the peninsula's tip are unalike for that reason. Punta del Este is the built resort, a spit of towers between a harbour and an ocean beach, with Casapueblo and the Brava's hand emerging from the sand as its fixed images. José Ignacio and the coast running east towards Rocha are progressively emptier, ending in dunes, fishing villages and Cabo Polonio, which has no road, no mains electricity and is reached by four-wheel-drive truck across the dunes, with a sea lion colony on the rocks below its lighthouse. Inland from all of it is grazing country that reaches almost to the sand. Practically: the season is January and February and prices within it are high and outside it are not; the Atlantic here has real surf and cold water pushed up from the south; and the drive from Montevideo to Punta is about two hours.