The first minor issue we were aware of, it is now Autumn here, we noticed it in Buenos Aires, and certainly in Montevideo (where we got caught in a couple of massive downpours) but it was even more apparent in Punto del Diablo as it was cool, cloudy and the wind was gusting strongly. This change in the climate had lead to a more major issue, the tourist season was over. This was starkly indicated to us as we disembarked the bus by a number of the restaurants in the centre of the fishing village being boarded up for the winter!
Punta del Diablo is a small fishing village east of Montevideo with a number of beautiful beaches. Or at least that is what it used to be. Due to its position on the Atlantic coast half of the year it is full of surfers who come for the nearly empty beaches and large waves, we'd just happened to turn up just after the party had finished, quite literally judging by the hungover state of the hostel staff and the general distruction of our hostel's restaurant and bar area which we were informed was now closed for the winter!
We weren't particularly put off by this but we were hungry so we set out to try to find somewhere that was open. One of the few places we had seen that looked like it may still be accepting customers was the restaurant just next to our hostel called La Bouyita. We entered to find that apart from us there was only 2 other people in what looked like a 150 capacity restaurant (for the next few days we were usually the only people in the restaurant). The other problem we then encountered was the fact that even though some places were open they didn't have a large selection of the food menu available (this is a good and a bad thing, usually it means that they cook food from fresh ingredients, but that you have a limited selection of it to chose from as they don't have that many ingredients in stock).
It turned out this particular restaurant was a great find, the home made, mainly fish based pasta was some of the nicest we have had in the whole of South America, and they also had a really tasty seafood cazuela, which is a stew containing all sorts of muscles and other mariscoes.
A difficulty we did encounter was working out which restaurants were. Obviously boarding up is a good indication of closure but a handy hint to show you are open would perhaps be turning the open/closed (or abierto/cerrado as it is in Spanish) sign around. This is especially important if you have no other people in your restaurant,When we went to the bouyita a second time we ate an hour later than we needed to as we figured the closed sign on the door meant they weren't open yet and even with us in the window several people were confused and did not enter because the sign on the door indicated it was closed.
There were a couple of other places in the centre of town which were open. As with many beach places the food there was good if you stuck to the simple fish dishes.
Despite the lack of people and the weather (for the first 2 days we spent there it was windy and on several occasions incredibly Stormy and wet) we were won over by the beauty of Punta del Diablo, the beaches were wild an beautiful and the town itself had a lot more character than a pre built beach resort might. It is definitely worth the 5 hour bus ride from Montevideo, just a shame we missed the party really as it looked like a good one!
Pictured below are Cod Ravioli and seafood cazuela from La Bouyita as well as some shots of the beaches and town at Puerto del Diablo
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