<p><strong>Published in 'The Oldie', November 2008</strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Today's the day: we're going to buy a painting by a well-known Uruguayan artist. The low autumn sun is bright, and the coast road is virtually deserted. Our destination is Punta Ballena - Whale Point - seventy-five miles east of Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital where we live. A large billboard flashes by: &lsquo;VISA - porque la vida es ahora': VISA - because life is now. I tap my pocket - yes, my Visa card is there.</p> <p><br /> Carlos Paez Vilar&oacute; spent thirty years developing his unique home/hotel/museum/studio from a shack into Casapueblo, the massive, rambling, white-domed creation it is today. As in his paintings, there are no straight lines in this unique cliff-hugging structure. Over the years, he added segments, stretching it along the hillside, up towards the sky, and down towards the sea. He compares it to an oven-bird's nest. &lsquo;I apologize to architecture for being as free as an oven-bird,' he says.</p> <p><br /> We start with an introductory video, backed by the artist's deep, raspy voice. We travel around the world with him to Africa, Polynesia and Europe. We see his huge murals brightening up airports in every continent. We see him with Dali, Picasso, Emperor Haile Selassie, and Brigitte Bardot. But his greatest hero is Albert Schweitzer, whose leprosarium in Gabon he visited.</p> <p><br />We see him in 1972, when his son went missing in the Andes plane crash along with a team of rugby companions and friends. For three months Carlos Paez Vilar&oacute; kept hoping, and parked himself in Chile, helping with the search long after many had given up. When news came that survivors had been found, he was handed the list to read live on Uruguayan radio, before he knew if his son was among them. He blocked out the names with a sheet of paper, sliding it down, row by row, revealing one name at a time ... his son's was fifth, and as he read, he realized another list was forming in the minds of families and friends, of those the mountains had not spared.</p> <p><br /> After the video, we wander through the museum looking at his paintings which show the influence of Picasso, Dali, his travels, African rhythms, and Uruguayan constructivism. We eventually choose a small one, painted in 2003, depicting some of his classic themes - on the left a bare-breasted woman sitting at a table, on the right, a higgledy-piggledy mass of houses, and in the background, a huge ship. The black outlines are bold, and the hues are pink and red, touched with greenish blue, like a Uruguayan sunset.</p> <p><br /> &lsquo;Would you like to meet the artist?' the saleswoman asks, and leads us through a honeycomb of stairs and corridors to his studio, filled with old books and antique African carvings.</p> <p><br /> The eighty-six-year-old man is like his paintings: striking. He starts talking about Africa. &lsquo;I fell madly in love in Cameroon,' he says. &lsquo;Don't tell my wife.' He continues. &lsquo;Once I filmed an artist painting a nude woman, her hair blowing in the wind, against the backdrop of Kilimanjaro. The film was shown in Cannes.'</p> <p><br /> &lsquo;Why have you started using such bold colours?' I ask. &lsquo;Your earlier paintings are more restrained.'</p> <p><br /> &lsquo;I had heart surgery earlier this year. I was close to death. An artist doesn't choose what to paint - it just happens. These colours must be my last desperate search for the vibrancy of youth. I love life. But it's my sunset now. Every day, here at Casapueblo, we have a ceremony: we watch the sun going down over the water, and observe a few moments' silence.'</p> <p><br /> Thank you, Carlos, it was an honour and a privilege to meet you, and when you are gone, I will look at the subdued sunset colours in my painting and think of you.</p>

<p><strong><br />First published in International Living, March 2007</strong></p> <p><br />Perched on a small headland just thirty kilometres north of the glitzy swinging resort of Punta del Este, on the sandy, duny Atlantic coast of Uruguay, sits the exclusive hamlet of Jose Ignacio. Unlike Punta, there are no highrise apartment blocks here, no casinos, no nightclubs. Martin Amis owns a house in Jose Ignacio, and Ralph Lauren and Naomi Campbell often choose to relax here.</p> <p><br />The neat, quiet town boasts a couple of supermarkets, two internet cafes, a clinic, and many, many estate agents. Jose Ignacio is growing fast.</p> <p><br />A popular, excellent restaurant, La Huella, serves fresh fish and sushi at the entrance to La Playa Brava, the seemingly endless white beach to the east of the headland. Half of the cars cramming the access to the beach are Argentinean.</p> <p><br />Ice-cream sellers, and vendors carrying bright Indian blouses over their shoulders, weave their way among the scantily clad, copper-coloured crowds. Kiosks rent out boogie and surfboards and offer surfing lessons.</p> <p><br />Children build castles at the water's edge, youngsters play beach tennis, groups lounge about lazily sipping mat&eacute;. Two lifeguards sit atop their lookout, keeping an eye on the swimmers and surfers. It's three o'clock, and no one seems concerned about the thin ozone layer.</p> <p><br />I visit during the four-day Carnival weekend, on of the busiest times of the Uruguayan summer. I stroll west, leaving the crowds behind, and clamber over the boulders near the lighthouse which is stuck out on the end of the peninsula. Here a few children are collecting shells from the sandy hollows between the rocks. A few fishermen sit quietly contemplating their lines.</p> <p><br />I swing around the point and find myself on another beach, La Juanita, stretching west towards Punta del Este. Here there are no kiosks, no vendors, and very few people. The sea at La Juanita is safer and calmer than at la Brava, though the waves are definitely surfable.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Ahead, a lifeguard gazes into the empty sea from his perch. Plovers, sanderlings and oyster-catchers hop along the shoreline, guiding me towards him. I wade into the cool turquoise water and swim out to sea, diving under a few waves. Beyond them, I float on my back and wonder why this beach is so peaceful, so private. Maybe crowds simply like crowds. Unlike me.</p> <p><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><strong>Tips</strong><br />Jose Ignacio lies 150 kilometres east of Montevideo<br />Frequent buses connect Punta del Este to Jose Ignacio.<br />The season is short: although the best time to visit is between November and March, you won't find much action outside December, January and early February.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />For budget travellers, El Backpacker, just outside the bustling town of La Barra twenty kilometres to the west, is an exceptionally well-equipped and attractive hostel set in a wood. Their $15.00 bed and breakfast rate includes lockers, towels and bedlinen, as well as the use of bikes. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />But if budget is not a problem, try La Posada del Faro, an exclusive small hotel set discreetly in the dunes in Jose Ignacio, where accommodation prices range from $90.00 to $550 per night, depending on the season and the type of room. Naomi Campbell stayed there, and loved it!</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />El Backpacker: www.vivapunta.com.backpacker, backpacker@vivapunta.com, Tel/fax (598 42) 77 22 72.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />La Posada del Faro: www.posadadelfaro.com, Tel 598 486 2110, Fax 598 486 2111</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p> <p>29.01.08</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>At the end of the nineteenth century, Punta del Este was an inhospitable rock on which many a ship floundered. These were the days before the Panama Canal; many of the world's ships were simply obliged to pass this way. A brave, enterprising shipbuilder and poet named Alberto Lussich personally headed fleets of salvage boats to rescue people and goods. He was handsomely rewarded by his employer, Lloyds of London, and so made his fortune from others' misfortune.</p> <p><br />Lussich was a visionary: he wanted to convert the area into a prestigious seaside resort. In 1896 he bought 1800 hectares of land at Punta Ballena, ten kilometres west of Punta del Este. He built a mansion for his family overlooking two of the most stunning bays on the Atlantic coast. However, his wife and nine daughters bitterly complained that that they would leave unless something could be done about the fierce wind. So Lussich tamed the wind: he planted the largest arboretum ever seen in the area, using his shipping contacts to import seeds from all over the world.</p> <p><br />Today, as Lussich foresaw, Punta del Este draws celebrities and socialites to its beaches from Rio, Sao Paulo, and Buenos Aires, and further afield, attracted by the safety and laid-back atmosphere of Uruguay. Flanked by the Atlantic Ocean on one side of the peninsula, and the Rio de la Plata on the other, with its long, sandy beaches, luxury hotels, and glitzy nightlife, Punta del Este has indeed become one of the most glamorous holiday destinations in the world.</p> <p><br />And it's only an hour and a half's drive from my house. I had always felt a kind of inverted snobbery towards the idea of summering in &lsquo;Punta', as it is known. Lovely, bracing walks on the beach in the winter, but in the high season, no. The permanent population of 20,000 soars to half a million in the summer months of January and February. Eighty-five per cent of the visitors are from outside Uruguay, mostly Argentines, with a good number of Brazilians and some Europeans. Cruise ships stop in almost every day. Not for me. Too much razzmatazz, too many models. But this season, it occurred to me that there must be more to visiting Punta del Este than being seen, and making it into the glossy pages of Galeria, our local glamour magazine. I decided to brave it, and go there for the weekend.</p> <p><br />I started with the Arboretum, recently reopened following work to clear up the damage caused by a massive freak storm which hit Uruguay in August 2005. A part of the Arboretum is now owned by the local town council. I was taken around in the original open ten-seater 1927 Daimler which Lussich imported from France, the car purring with its new Isuzu engine through the thick forest of huge acacia, eucalyptus and pine trees, many of which fortunately have withstood the elements.</p> <p><br />The original house is now a museum, where sawn and polished trunk sections displaying a hundred rings or more bear witness to the power of the storm. Also displayed are some of Lussich's poems, one particularly poignant one dedicated to his son. When their ninth daughter was ten years old, Lussich's wife at last gave birth to a boy. As a young man, he wanted to be a pilot, and was tragically killed in an air-show when he was twenty.</p> <p><br />Apart from the weather, the Arboretum is threatened by nearby quarries for the hugely expanding building industry: dozens of new skyscrapers reach up into the clear Punta sky each year.</p> <p><br />From the Arboretum, where I had been the only visitor, I went on to the quiet Cantegril area of Punta del Este, situated several blocks back from the crowded beach, to visit the Azotea, the home and huge garden of Eduardo Victor Haedo (1901-1970), a one-time President of Uruguay, and painter. Haedo is a cult figure here: many political and cultural personalities passed through his home, including Pablio Neruda and Che Guevara. At one meeting, where it was decided to expel Cuba from the Organisation of American Unity, Che was present and people wondered how he would react, but Haedo shared his mat&eacute; with the revolutionary hero and the atmosphere soon mellowed.</p> <p><br />When I visited, I met Haedo's now elderly daughter , who lives there. She is considered by many a political counsellor, and many members of her father's opposition Blanco party seek advice from her at the Azotea. The main house and outhouses are all open to the public during the summer months, and are filled with photos and paintings by Haedo and other artists. This year, the Azotea grounds were used for some performances during the world-famous Lapataia jazz concert.</p> <p><br />My next event was an exhibition of Carlos Pazos' photos in the Fundaci&oacute;n Pablo Atchugarry in Manantiales. The Fundaci&oacute;n is a stunning modern stone gallery which looks as though it has dropped into a field from the sky. It is only ten kilometres beyond Punta, however, it was now six in the evening, which is the time people hit the beaches in their thousands. Rather than heading straight into the traffic along the coast, I took an inland route via San Carlos, tripling my distance but halving my time.</p> <p><br />Carlos Pazos is the finest photographer working in Uruguay today. He is best known for his work with Galeria, the top society magazine, but the exhibition proved that there is more to his work than pop stars and fashion. The photos were neatly and cleverly laid out, mostly in triptychs, playing on themes, colours, shapes and angles. One set that struck me had a central image of a row of empty deck chairs, strung out on a deserted beach, no doubt taken on an early Punta morning when people were still sleeping off the previous night's partying. To its left, a row of ramshackle colonial houses: again, empty. The photo on the right depicted a row of Hereford hides hanging out to dry. Three typical Uruguayan scenes, around the theme of lines. But I was also haunted by the lack of life.</p> <p><br />Next stop, a cocktail party at a restaurant on the wild Brava beach to celebrate the launching of digital TV. Uruguay is the first country in South America to adopt digital TV, and has gone for the European standard over the Japanese. Uruguay has been forward-looking in technology, and is working hard to get computer access to every child in school. Now you can get Wi-Fi connection to various international TV channels from your mobile phone. This was my first taste of the glitzy side of Punta. &lsquo;Who's here?' I asked a journalist. &lsquo;Everyone,' he replied, &lsquo;models, film stars, and interested people, like you and me.'</p> <p><br />Dinner with friends at a holiday home in the centre of Punta started at a very normal Uruguayan time, 10.30 p.m. Among the guests were two European couples who have decided to settle in Punta. Simone, a young English Pilates instructor, told me &lsquo;Two years ago were looking in an atlas for a place that would be far away from the European rat-race, safe to bring up our three children, and Uruguay fitted the bill.' Her husband, a French architect, doesn't make as much money as he did in Europe. &lsquo;Who cares?' he said.</p> <p><br />And so to bed. It hadn't been easy to find a hotel at short notice, but I'd managed to get a room in the Beira View Aparthotel, a passable option on the main road, rather shoddy in its design and finish, but friendly enough, and positioned about five kilometres west of Punta, away from the crowds. It has a small pool, a rooftop terrace, a reasonable breakfast, and easy access to the quiet end of the Playa Mansa, the calmer of the two Punta beaches.</p> <p><br />The next morning I took a beach walk before breakfast just opposite the hotel, and perched on a rocky outcrop to watch the stilts, oyster-catchers, kiskadees, and several types of seagulls. A couple of fishermen were out with their rods. At around ten, I headed east thirty kilometres to do a photo shoot in the exclusive resort of Jos&eacute; Ignacio, where many world celebrities, including Naomi Campbell, have holiday homes. But Naomi wasn't around when I took a bracing walk in the fierce wind along the white beach. Nor was anyone else, apart from a little old man sitting on a plastic folding chair sipping his mat&eacute;, and enjoying the quiet. Stuck in the sand beside him, a sign read &lsquo;Valet Parking.' He would be busy later on, when the fleets of Argentine-registered BMWs headed beachwards.</p> <p><br />I beat the crowds back to the centre of Punta, and had a coffee on Gorlero, the main street, while indulging in one of my favourite hobbies, people watching. It wasn't yet noon: the few people out walking were either families with small children or elderly couples; no doubt many were still sleeping it off. In Punta &lsquo;Matin&eacute;e' parties for twelve to fifteen-year-olds happen between ten p.m. and midnight. Older teenagers and young adults hit the clubs at midnight, and struggle home at around eight in the morning. I heard that some events start at four in the morning, and the partyers go straight on from party to beach, though I didn't see any evidence of this.</p> <p><br />Punta is branded as pricy and exclusive, but I found an excellent place to have lunch: Alberto's on Gorlero, where for just over three pounds, I had excellent pasta, a drink and a dessert. Arlecchino's just down the road was the perfect place to round off the meal with an ice-cream. It was well after two by this time, and a few people were dragging themselves from their beds to brunch.</p> <p><br />It occurred to me that I seemed to be permanently out of synch with the Punta biorhythms. And that this wasn't such a bad thing. Off I went for a siesta on my hotel rooftop - completely alone.</p> <p><br />The evening took me to Casapueblo, on Punta Ballena. The massive, rambling, white-domed creation was started in 1958, by world-famous Uruguayan artist Paez Vilar&oacute;, who gradually added segments to it, stretching it along the hillside, up towards the sky, and down towards the sea. He compares it to an oven-bird's nest. "I apologize to architecture for being as free as an oven-bird," he says. In our spring months, from September to November, you might catch a glimpse of southern right whales from Punta Ballena. What you will get at any time of year is some form of spectacular sunset. That evening it was a fireball.</p> <p><br />It seemed appropriate to return to the area near the Lussich arboretum for the last of my weekend activities. My favourite place in the Punta area is the Medio y Medio, a small restaurant a block from the long Portezuelo beach, just west of Punta Ballena. Apparently the western end of the beach is the only nudist place in Uruguay. The beach is so long I've never walked that far: I shall have to investigate. I have often eaten at the Medio y Medio: the fresh fish is superb, and the home grown rucola and lettuce a rare delight in Uruguay. It also has a back room which is a jazz club, and for the first time, I had got a ticket. This time, I was in the same time-zone as everyone else: the place was filled to capacity when the Argentine classic jazz quintet, led by Mariano Otero, filled the iodine-rich air with their cool, sleepy sounds. I relaxed, closed my eyes, happy to have discovered that there is a point to Punta, beyond glamour and beaches.</p> <p><br />Tips:<br />&bull; Head to Jose Ignacio before noon: once the party-goers wake up the roads become impassable<br />&bull; Book in advance for dinner and jazz at the Medio y Medio - we saw people being turned away<br />&bull; Avoid the area around the Conrad Hotel at night: the traffic gets crazy</p> <p><br />My Punta photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38137&amp;l=b48ed&amp;id=664241054<br />Punta del este Information: http://www.puntadeleste.com/<br />Casapueblo Museum/Studio: http://www.carlospaezvilaro.com<br />Medio y Medio: www.medioymedio.lqf.com.ar<br />Lapataia Jazz festival: www.lapataia.com.uy</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>