TOURIST INFORMATION
About Punta del Este
Punta del Este is in the Department of Maldonado, 130 km East of Montevideo, the National Capital, and is the geographic limit between the Rio de la Plata and the Atlantic Ocean.
Punta del Este is beautiful and safe. Uruguay is a country very calm, free from the typical violence of the developed countries. It exists an excellent police covering and much security. For the tourists, Punta del Este is an exceptional place to spend unforgettable vacations.
How to move in Punta?
Punta del Este is big. It is always better to have a vehicle or to rent one. Also mopeds or bicycles can be rented (most of the avenues have bike path). The buses are varied and with frequencies that allow you to move with comfort. The taxis are very expensive and be careful, because they like to "drive" you if they realize that it is your first time in Punta.
The Peninsula is the main point of the city, with the Gorlero Avenue as main protagonist. Here you'll find the best commerce, shops, cinemas, etc. and is an obligatory long walk if you want to know Punta del Este. The Boulevard, the Port, the Lighthouse, the Square with its Fair of Craftsmen, much to see ...
La Barra has become the nocturnal center par excellence, mainly for youth people. There is infinity of bars, discos and restaurants, so anyone can find a place to fit great.
The beaches, either the Mansa or the Brava, are excellent and allow the practice of most of the aquatic sports. Our sea is friendly and drowned cases in our beaches are really exceptional. Lifeguards are very good.
U.S. Dollar or Uruguayan Peso?
Punta del Este is a very cosmopolitan city. U.S. Dollar, Argentine Peso and Brazilian Real, are accepted everywhere. The great majority of the commerce accepts the payment with anyone of these currencies. In addition, there are houses of exchange and banks in abundance, which allows you to change currency without no problem and to the right price (the change is free). International credit cards are accepted in almost all the places as VISA, MASTERCARD, AMERICAN EXPRESS, DINERS, in addition to other national cards. Traveler checks are hard to exchange. Some accept them, but they charge you with a small commission.
Costs and Prices
At this moment Punta del Este has an agreed level of prices with the region and an excellent relation quality/price. For Europeans or North Americans it is cheap. A taxi from or to the airport of Laguna del Sauce costs 20 dollars. A ticket of local bus, 50 cents. The cinema costs 5 dollars, a double room with bath from 40. A supper for two people in a good restaurant, 30. In a supermarket, 2 liters of Coke: 1,60. Meat kg: 2,50. A kg of sugar: 0,30. The gasoline 1,20/liter. Diesel: 0,80/liter. But the beaches and the sea are free as well as many strolls and events during the summer.
History of Punta del Este
The origin of the name is geographic, the East Point of the bay of Maldonado. Nevertheless, Juan Diaz de Solis, in 1516, gave the first name of Cabo of Santa Maria and Rio of Santa Maria to the Rio de la Plata.
In the maps from century XVI to century XVII it was denominated Cabo de Santa Maria and although from the expedition of Gaboto the river was called "de la Plata", the rocky end to his entrance was still called: "Santa Maria". Just in century XVIII begins to be denominated Punta del Este having itself forgotten the one Santa Maria.
From aims of century XVIII a battery existed, the one of San Fernando in the southwestern end of the peninsula, in front of the Boca Chica, with the corresponding quarter of guard and powder magazine. It was constructed between 1765 and 1766 and reformed in 1780, it was the first construction raised by the man in the peninsula.
Farms and artillerymen
In 1820 farms existed where they lived marine and employees of Francisco Aguilar, concessionaire of the operation of the Island of Wolves, dedicated to the task of the wolves and the transfer of leathers and the oil from the island to the port and there to Maldonado in carts.
In 1827 the Brazilians occupy the peninsula taking advantage of the miss protection caused by the invasion of Rio Grande, where most of the combatant troops of the region were transferred for the war, that culminated with Batalla de Ituzaingó. They construct a redoubt of artillery, added to the possession of the Gorriti Island, allows them the use of the Port of Maldonado, vital to maintain the sea communications from Brazil to Montevideo. This gives rise to violent combats which causes its abandonment.
In 1829, already being an independent country, Francisco Aguilar and the Council of Administration of the department, they propose the creation of a town in the peninsula, theater of the described combats, denominating it Ituzaingó, in memory of the greater battle in number of contenders that got rid in our history, between the Brazilian imperial forces and the republicans of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata the 20 of February of 1827, in the course of the War of Independence 1825-1828, in which Maldonado participated with a Division.
The economic difficulties of the new country and the interminable civil wars prevented the necessary stability for the establishment of a population in this zone of difficult ground communication lines due to the sand dunes that surrounded it.
During the decade of the 30 it would practically remain desert with a single used construction, of the State, in the port for guard, although land denunciations and divisions on the part of citizens of Maldonado had taken place, the always present Aguilar, Alvarez de Bengochea, Coit, Susviela, Formoso (most of them administrative authorities).
In the heat of Great War, in 1843, the Government of the Defense, presided over by Joaquin Suárez, sells by 45,000 pesos of silver the peninsula to Samuel and Alexander Lafone. The sale included the Gorriti Island and conditioned the land division and establishment of a population in the Punta, yielding to the State the two third parts of each block.
Defining and measuring
These English installed a salting hose, with corrals, deposits for salty leathers and also a salt mine in the "Punta de la Salina", but they did not delineate the population to which they were compromised in the sales contract. Neither the salt mines nor the salting hose prospered. It was easier to take the cattle to the salting hoses of Montevideo and in the bay it did not exist an operative port of load.
In January of 1873 the successors of the Lafone asked that the defining and measuring of the lots of lands. In September the Ministry of Government orders that the "judicial mensura" practices. The surveyor Francisco Surroca carries out it in 1874 and the Public Work Main directorate approved it in January of 1886, 14 years later, lapse in which an action of invalidity of the cession began on the part of the State, in 1880, since the town had not been constituted.
Solved the lawsuit between the State and the successors, the National Court of Property solves that it is come to parcel out the peninsula in January of 1886. The Executive authority the 29 of January of 1889, three years later, orders that it is come to divide to the Punta del Este in streets and apples and that these are divided in lots. The same surveyor Francisco Surroca is the one who presents a blue print dated in March of 1890, with the name of Ituzaingó. In September of 1890, the Direction from Public Works proceed withthe drawing from the lots between the State and the heirs from the Lafone, 27 years after initiates the proceedings and 57 years after carried out the purchase. If we thought that now the proceedings are slow.
There were soon claims and transactions and the lots were begun to notarize just in 1910. Nevertheless, in the middle of the decade of the 90, it come on sale the lots according to the blue print of the Ituzaingó town, in the East Point. It started to populate and the first villas were constructed. It is to make notice that previously, in 1857, it was begun the construction of the lighthouse, that was inaugurated in 1860, and between 1885 and 1887, it is constructed the Customs building and the wharf. It remained isolated, the communication was made by a footpath between sand dunes, in car or cart as there was not existing wagon road between Maldonado and Punta del Este, until 1911, when the road was constructed.
Zeballos and baron Rio Branco
In 1906 a commission of neighbors asked for the official erection of the Ituzaingó Town, this designation made possible the establishment of a Court of Peace, a police station, a school and the constitution of an auxiliary meeting of neighbors, everything what would contribute to benefit the rising population.
The Ituzaingó name was not capricious because it was the name it really was known the town and it was the name that appeared in the surveying planes. But this name was not made official.
The name of Punta del Este and non Ituzaingó, as initially it was projected, was due mainly to one Argentinean and one Brazilian Dr Severe Estanislao Zeballos Juárez and Jose Maria de Silva Paranhos, Baron of Rio Branco.
Punta del Este was strongly developed by the Argentineans, at the end of the decade of the 70 and beginnings of the 80 of the XX century; a spectacular development of buildings and landscaping of the zone of the last 60 years was due to Argentine capital, and in smaller proportion to the Brazilian.
History of Punta Ballena and Antonio Lussich
Antecedents
Antonio Lussich was born the 23 of June of 1848 and educated in a German School until 14 years of age. Its education will become rich with time, readings and trips, acquiring a culture so that, among other things, will allow him to dominate five languages like his own.
Being politically white, he enlisted as soldier in the rows of the army that Timoteo Aparicio raises in 1870 against the Government of General Lorenzo Batlle, and in the Tricolor Revolution of 1872, where he participates in the battle of the Zumaca Carolina with the steam ship General Artigas.
In 1879 he gets married with Angela Opening, she will give him 10 children (9 women and 1 man). When dying their father in 1889, Antonio and Manuel Lussich bought to their brothers their parts of the shipping company that inherited from their father, being Antonio with 60% and Manuel with 40%. The 5 of October of 1896 acquire 1,500 hectares in Punta Ballena and initiate their great work. In 1917 the company business stop and its Gray Fleet is acquired by the National Administration of Ports. Passing away in 1928, when he was 80. According to his desire, he was buried in Punta Ballena, between his plants and the rumor of the sea.
The Navigator
Antonio D. Lussich was born in Montevideo. Son of Don Felipe Lussich inherited from him his greater liking to the sea and the spirit forged for the fight. With his brother Manuel founded the famous fleet of rescues that made history in the Rio de la Plata, on a period of more than forty years.
The company went away developing and around 1882 it has 15 schooners, ketches and sloops and their first steam, the Silver, that was very famous between the Montevideans by its incredible feats. New boats and tugboats will be acquired or constructed in the dock of Lussich to cover crescents necessities. The affluence of greater number of ships to the port of Montevideo will do necessary to increase the fleet of boats and tugboats, acquiring other steam ships that also will be famous: Emperor, Atlantico, Huracan, Powerful.
The prestige that the company I win by its excellent services to importers, exporter and shipbuilders, food its growth, arriving to have 15 steam and tugboats and 70 boats of load. And at the beginning of this century it opens to a new activity, establishing a line of steam for load and passengers between Montevideo, Maldonado and the Dove, with the ships Tabare, Salvor and Cabo Polonio, removing the distant territories from Rocha of his isolation. But they were not the reviewed activities those that gave universal fame to the Lussich company, but its active participation in the rescue of lives, loads and ships.
The Rio de la Plata, of intense I deal and difficult navigation, was scene of numerous and tragic shipwrecks. By 1870 they arrived near 1500 overseas ships at Montevideo, and the average of 4 shipwrecks was of but of and average per month. These numbers were increasing as the marine movement grew. And during long serious Lussich time the hope of the shipwrecks and the guarantee of recovery of the goods in danger. The people are hundreds who had the salvation to him of their lives, and are but of 200 the ships attended from 1882 1917, seven for year, representing numerous capitals.
In the stormy nights of the winter, mainly, in dangerous places, great foreign boats were shipwrecked, whose captains did not know, often, our coasts, perhaps by defect of hydrographic letters or in other cases by the violence of the weathers in places little sheltered.
The fleet of Lussich with its dangerous crew went and made feats in the heat of sea, as the slogan the same Lussich in its interesting book "famous Shipwrecks". From Rio de Janeiro to the Strait of Magellan, the Gray Fleet of Lussich, as were known popularly it, I gain fame, and decorations of England, France, Spain and Italy, receiving important decorations.
In opportunity to give to Lussich a gold medal, in recognition by served, Ingles Consul, said.... "..Lussich directed personally, during three nights of robust weathers the rescue of those shipwrecked poor men... exposing his life, and refusing to receive he compensates... It is to notice that the Government which I have the honor to represent in this act, has attractive to very few people with this medal, being considered in England of extreme value, according to I create, is the unique one that has occurred in Sud America... "
The salvataje activities began in 1884, when the vaporcito safe Silver to passengers and crew of transatlantic ingles Hermes. And many but they followed it: the English boats Mabel and Georgina, the Amoor steam, the Canadian Brazilian battleship Solimoes, the torpedo Rosales Argentinean, the Brazilian package Balls, the English lugger ingles Kaffir Chief, packages Muriel and Zarate, the French San Martin, etc.
They are all ships helped in those years in the Silver, or in the Polonio, the Island of Wolves or the Ingles Bank. It would be necessary to add to the transatlantic Espagne French saved in the bay of Rio de Janeiro, the insolvent attempt of the Corocoro in the Strait of Magellan, the salvataje of the Hazel Branch in Santa Catherine, the Hero, the Corunna, the Weybridge, etc. As opposed to the Argentine coasts and so many boats more.
The Poet
Romantic, enthusiastic spirit, Mr. Lussich also sang to the Majesty del to him sea, to the beauty of our earth, and al radiating power del sun. In 1870, when he counted 22 years of age hardly, he got up himself to the revolution of Timoteo Aparicio. The lived experience was gathered in the gauchesco poem "the Three Eastern Gauchos", whom th
light in Buenos Aires in June of 1872 saw.
The work was well-known by Hernandez that, six months later, published "Martín Iron", poem summit of the gauchesca poetry. This I take to Borges to say. "... I think that the right of the previous dialogues of Lussich to be considered a rough draft of the definitive book of Jose Hernandez is unquestionable...". In 1873 Lussich another poem wrote, "the Matrero Luciano Holy", that also had great repercussion in our means.
Acquisition of Punta Ballena
More of once, in the pleasing ones crossed by the valuable possession whose direction trusted to us years ago, we listened to of lips of Mr. Lussich history of how it acquired east piece of earth that populated with trees in abundant and select form. Helped of his privileged memory began telling that in 1896, it had promised to a group of journalists, who when with the fleet that it had it made some important salvataje, would take them to take a walk to Punta del Este.
That year it accidentally happened the shipwreck of a boat, to which without enormous efforts one was not able to save and fulfilling the promise one of the tugboats got ready and they embarked with Mr. Lussich, Samuel Blixen, Arturo Brizuela and others, at that time prestigious editors of main newspapers of Montevideo.
The excursion could not be more pleasant; the attractive river offered manifold, being able to be appreciating the Uruguayan coast, so ondeante, so winding, to where the waves arrived to undo in sands or to strike strongly on rocks to transform itself into foam.
The fishing was, during the trip, another great attractiveness, but no, like the ingenious chispeante and verba of Don Antonio and Blixen. After several hours of slow sailing they arrived at Punta del Este, whose natural enchantments already were known although neither the railroad nor the ways made it accessible to the tourism, then incipiente.
Still she was desert the one that is today one of the concurred summery localities more of the Rio de la Plata. Their counted houses had their straw or zinc ceiling; its cooked mud walls, their earth floor. There was Don Pedro Risso, soul to mater of the place, that later offered lodging them inviting them to eat a lamb in Punta Ballena. They acceded tasteful and the stroll was prepared.
When arriving at the indicated place it attracted the grandiosidad of grottos, the sea, the mountain ranges and the sands. Samuel Blixen, before the contemplation of as much wonder could not less than to exclaim: "This is a revelation...", whereas Mr. Lussich talked back to him with studied skepticism: "Then to me it seems to me not much", explaining the reasons to him that it had to consider it thus and treating about not giving more importance to everything what they saw astonished. Then Blixen, somewhat made cross, said to him: "it is known that you are not artist". One changed of subject. One lunched gladly. Risso, always so communicative, told that they were going away to sell those earth and those rocks, that were several interested, he among others, to which said Mr. Lussich: "I would not give nor céntimo by everything". They returned to Punta del Este.
Don Antonio Lussich found out the name of the then owner of Punta Ballena, pretended an ailment that could not dissipate being in Punta del Este and announced his hasty trip to Montevideo, to return days later. Naturally that Samuel Blixen and his colleagues of journalism insisted on accompanying to him but it promised to them formally to return immediately recommending them in special form to Mr. Risso.
"the Hurricane" put to sea. It arrived Mr. Lussich at Montevideo and established the purchase of that property. It offered few thousands of pesos by these sterile and apparently little propitious earth for any industry or practical application. The supply was discussed and had to be increased and finally it took shape. After several days, it returned "the Hurricane" to Punta del Este and returned all to Montevideo.
It had not spent one week when Mr. Lussich called by telephone to Samuel Blixen and radiating of joy he announced that he finished to him buying Punta Ballena, signing the writing that extended Don Manuel Alonso. It is to imagine the surprise of that to that Mr. Lussich, indeed, had discussed respect to him to the enchantments of these places, in the trip that we left narrated before. So it is, in broad strokes, the process of the purchase of this possession on the part of Mr. Lussich.
The Creation of the Forest
He is interesting, for the best study of the zone, to know the geologic origin and the value litológico the Mountain range of the Whale, rocky elevation that in form of long chain extends of north to the south to finish in the well-known End populated with grottos.
The sterile and apparently unproductive sands and the mountain ranges populated with chilcas, espadañas, caraguatás and other weeds, as soon as clarified by some indigenous trees, occupied most of that possession. Bathed, surrounded by juncales, diverse ditches and hongales or dunes, where some very rustic vegetal species used to see themselves.
But a man arrived from iron will, of enterprising spirit. He left his fleet in the coast, disembarked plenary session of optimism, escudriñó the hidden treasures of the region and with clear vision he seeded.
Before beginning its work, that dates from 1896 I consult the best botanists and all agreed in which it would have to plant solely on the slope This. But Angela, its wife, already had planted first you hoist in the lateral west and bloomed so well that Lussich, encouraged, continuous planting of that side. When the forest began to have aspect of so, I invite the botanical scholar Arrechavaleta (who ten years before had expressed to him that were a plantar utopia in Punta Ballena) and showing its work to him it said to him socarronamente: "As it can see, I followed its advice exactly..."
The Technician I answer astonished: "Don Antonio, is this greater mentis given to science". She surrounded herself by all the apt men of the region and their groups of laborers planted the first trees, made almácigos in fabulous amounts; they removed infected plenty of vipers, and everywhere where one thought difficult that she prospered a vegetal species, there same one stood and she grew with difficulties until finally she rooted.
Other times to plant in the bathed ones, the laborers with the water by the waist, had to make knolls or hornitos of earth and on them place the plantita, because otherwise it was to lose it everything uselessly. When the plantation was ordered in the heat of hill or resorted to the system of "sowing to the voleo" after an abundant rain or strong iron bars, tips or powder were opened to wells between rocks, using.
It was for one of these cases, that Mr. Lussich adquirio certain amount of explosive by year 1897, when the fratricida war threatened the ruin of the country and had to cost long managements before the authorities for the office and transfer to him of that material, of suspecting there that it could be taken advantage of in the fight...
How different it was his application. That powder was going to open the escarped mountain range stops in her to deposit the fecund simiente or the tree, instead of being used for desvastar towns and suppressing to lives, seeding the death, desolation and the ruin. He is doubtless that that work was not of a day; logical it is to think that the efforts and the expenses happened frequently and that when it failed a plantation began other to replace first.
Thanks to it today coexist, in pacifica harmony pines of Japan with pines of Mexico and Jerusalem, Cedars of the Lebanon and the Himalayas, the tree of the silver, the south of Africa, with the gold tree (Gingko she-wolf) of Japan, the Creole willow and the poplar of Carolina, the suberosa casuarina of India with the Thuya Gingantea of the U.S.A., the indigenous Pindo, with cycas revolutas of Asia.
We did not follow this relation not to tire the reader. Let us say if, to give idea of importance botanical of Forest Lussich, which according to Ernesto Villegas Suarez, that outside their administrator, is so many the species and within, so great I number there of represented varieties, "that stops its serious Integra classification necessary to dedicate many but years to the investigation". That harmonic coexistence of you hoist of the places and disimiles climates but, suggested franc-Uruguayan poet Jules Supervielle to baptize to the forest like "the crossroads of the antipodal ones".
The forest presents/displays, in addition the particularitity to lodge plants and you hoist that they bloom at different times from the year, assuring therefore permanent the colorful one, even in winter. And their thousands of orquídeas, offered an incredible spectacle. Agreeing with its friend, the escultor Jose Luis Zorrilla of San Martín, for whom "a forest without birds is as a flower without perfume", Lussich brought it of all the corners of the world.
And so that the forest was not an impenetrable forest, ways and footpaths became that crossed it in all the directions. This wonderful forest of eight hundred hectares, suggested to an illustrious visitor of Punta Ballena the following phrase: "a famous North American poet wrote" the lost Paradise ", Lussich found it.
A fact significant to remember: Lussich began the forest to the 50 years, when the life index did not surpass the 55! It explains that when crossed it, accompanied of his smaller son, Milton, it commented to this one: "what today we are seeing, son mine, tomorrow will be a great forest that your you will be able to enjoy... I not".
But the destiny arranged that the things happened of another way...: In 1921 President Balthasar Brum knew Milton in Punta Ballena and I am captivated with his affection. For that reason, from return to Montevideo, to its request, I authorize to give a return to him in a military airplane. Unfortunately the apparatus key to earth (in the own "Arboretum") and Milton passed away in the act. Hardly tapeworm veintiún years. Tragic destiny.
Who could think that the forest created by Lussich and that covered to him with glory, it would be also the indirect simiente of his greater sadness: the death of its only son man. Its great pain I am reflected in acrostic an exciting one, written the 15 of June of 1921, whose first part says:
Wanted Milton, I dreamed that it saw you
and that you embraced to me with filial tenderness
Raising the bitterness fog
Terrible that as much afflicted to me
Impía forgets the pain the viciousness
Nourishing the faith to me of always verte
Cheer and arrogant, noble and strong
Swimming between youthful pleasures!
Everything was an illusion... febrile dreams...
Oh cruel destiny! That angry death!
The tenacity, the certainty, in a work of these, is decisive. Thus it happened.
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