Poker Time: Punta del Este — The road liss traveled

West side of Punta. People definitely have some money in this town.

I was in the mood to play some poker with some real stakes, and apparently the place to do that was in Punta del Este, Uruguay. The quickest way to do it is taking a ferry, so the next day I took it from Buenas Aires across the bay to the port town of Colonia in Uruguay. From there is was a bus ride maybe 4 hours to the popular tourist town of Punta del Este. Uruguay is actually one of the wealthiest countries in South America, and walking around town looking at the chalkboards with dinner deals confirmed that! Lunch specials starting at $15, whaaat? Where am I?? I checked into my hostel and unfortunately shared a room with a whole group of traveling Israelis, literally a nightmare. Packs of young Israelis have to be some of the most uncourteous travelers on the planet, they literally chatted to each other, their friends, parents whoever, in the hostel room, at all times of day. Airbnb time…

As for the casino, I was happy to find out that they operated only using dollars! As for the games, these were the highest stakes I’d seen in South America by far: $2/5 blinds, maximum $600 buy in. Although the action was a bit underwhelming, only two tables and some pretty conservative play. But I started on a Tuesday night, so it’s hard to expect too much. I did win $1200 that night, so not bad. Plus they had some sort of tournament coming up that weekend, so I was optimistic about the games would improve. I booked an airbnb for a week, a studio right on the beach, on the east side (the quiet side). It was good to be able to stay in one place and relax for a while after my pretty travel intensive schedule in Patagonia. Plus the beaches in Punta Del Este are beautiful!

love the sand dunes, did not love the wind

You kinda had to rent a chair unless you wanted to be constantly sprayed with the windblown sand near the ground

The point, (punta in Spanish) is a narrow strip of land with beaches on both sides that are easily walkable. One is more of a protected bay with less wind and smaller waves, while the other side is a bit more raw with sand dunes, higher winds and more of an undertow; prettier but not as nice for just lying on the beach. My airbnb was on the latter side, which is also the cheaper side! Considering the prices of food, it was nice to have a place to cook as well. In the casino the cheapest thing on the menu was a basket of fries for $10, ouch! So for a week I spent my days making sandwiches for lunch, laying on the beach, reading in the afternoons, making dinner, and playing poker all night long. Not a bad lifestyle. Although a bit lonely as nobody speaks English around here, just Spanish all day everyday.

A little bit on an income disparity here

As for the poker, it did not go as well as expected! I was the table punching bag for a few nights, people would just call my reraises with any two crap cards trying to crack my good hands, and it was working! My AA and KK hands were getting smashed. But I made most of it back the last few nights, so I only lost triple digits. Meh. Still pretty disappointing. I could have stuck around a few more nights and probably finished in the black, but the following weekend in Montevideo (capital of Uruguay) they had their big Carnival parade and I wanted to be around for that. I could wait for the better poker games in the US and Cambodia.

I’m a fan of eclectic buildings, and Montevideo has a few

On to the capital, Montevideo! Parade time! It’s called the Parade de las Llamadas, it happens once a year and it’s much more for the locals, as compared to, let’s say Rio de Janeiro. It’s two nights, lasting from 8pm to 12am. I took the bus from Punta Del Este to Montevideo and met a German guy in the hostel to go see the parade with. We foolishly got there at 8pm (nothing in South America starts on time) but the real action and when all the locals streamed in was around 9:30. I think our biggest mistake was not spending $10 to get seats when we had the chance, before you knew it the crowds grew thick and pushy and it was a bit tricky to see everything that going on from a bit further back.

But it was still a lot of fun, bands full of drums, people waving flags everywhere, and of course the scantily clad women shaking what they got! Although that was less of a focal point than I had assumed based on photos that I’d seen of Carnival in Rio! So it was a fun night, good vibes, high energy! I’m pretty sure everyone in town was at the parade. But a few hours of the parade was plenty. I would think doing it for a week straight in Brazil or something would be a bit overkill!

So that was pretty unique, and I still had a bit more time to do some of my usual wandering around the capital! A lot of the city was a lot more dead than was expecting, lots of very empty streets and some pretty run down buildings. But some of the buildings looked cool in that zombie apocalypse scenario type of way. Some obvious drug users in the streets didn’t seem so cool though.

Always fun to see some random tango dancing in the streets!