Well, a week has come and gone here in the small beach village that is Punta del Diablo. It was exactly the type of place we wanted to spend the Christmas holidays at.
The village consists of dirt roads, lots of cabañas, one ATM (which won’t be turned on until the high-season starts in January) and a permanent population of 700 or so.
We were lucky enough to find an apartment to rent, because we heard that accommodations filled up pretty quickly here.
We had settled into a great rhythm of waking up late, having breakfast while we stared out towards the water, then going down to the beach for a couple of hours and then coming home to clean up & take a nap. We would then wake up at 7:00pm or so to start making dinner. Enjoying the simplicity of just ‘living’ made it so great to stay here; taking a break from the busy ongoings of travelling. This was also the longest stint we went without eating at a restaurant, where we cooked all our meals at home. Surprisingly, cooking our own meals has been one of the top five things we’re looking forward to when we return to Calgary.
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During the Christmas weekend, we spent most of the time skyping with family back home. A nice little treat for me was when I had a short skype call with some of the folks at the iStockphoto office.
It’s pretty easy to get sentimental over the holidays, but at the same time, I haven’t stopped thinking of these folks throughout our trip. For Christmas Eve, we hung out at the beach, Dan surfing for a couple of hours, while I entertained myself with my ipod, a book that Matas had given me, and the sun – which for the first time ever, I came out with a bit of sunburn!
In the evening, we ‘rang in Christmas day’ with the locals and shot off some fireworks by the beach. Earlier that day I had conceded when Dan was eyeballing some of the rockets, and so we found ourselves in the evening shooting them out towards the water. The scene reminded me of Christmas/New Year’s in the Philippines.
Christmas day was pretty much the same, with the exception of fireworks. The village was actually really quiet and good thing we bought all our food provisions the day before, because not a single store was open. So, we took to the beach and later on in the evening, we enjoyed our Christmas dinner: beef steak with fresh corn and mashed potatoes. No turkey dinner this year, because the apartment only had an electric stove top.
We will look back on this very special Christmas holiday with fond memories and are so grateful for the many things God has given us, including loving friends and family back home. We are now on our way to Colonia for a couple of days, which apparently is a good looking coastal town filled with old colonial buildings – our last stop in Uruguay.
