La Paloma: Oh, the next beach town over

The night before we left Punta del Diablo, I was talking to the Californian marijuana entrepreneur. He asked where we were headed and I told him we would check out La Paloma. His response: “Oh, the next beach town over.” That pretty much sums it up: a forgotten alcove only remembered during the short summer months.

My alternate title to this post was “The Ghosts of La Paloma,” because this place was practically deserted when we passed through. Unfortunately, I don’t really have any ghost stories to tell so I couldn’t really tie it all together. We saw no other tourists, no vacationers and a lot of closed places. That may sound like a good thing, and to some extent it was, but for a town that seems almost entirely based on tourism, it felt a little weird. There were rows of holiday homes, hostels and hotels all completely empty except for a few Uruguayan weekenders here and there. Lonely dogs ruled the streets and followed us everywhere, them and bored small town teenagers. (The teenagers didn’t follow us though. That would have made for a much scarier stay.) The poor girl doing all the manual labour at our hotel seemed like she hated her life.

So. La Paloma. It’s a relaxing place; I’ll give it that. We spent three days or so, beach lounging and wandering through the empty neighborhoods. The water was surprisingly warm so I spent a lot of time jumping around in the waves like a little kid.

(Notice, I still have no tan.)

We ambled along the beaches and took pictures.

That white pole in the distance represents the closest thing to a ghost story I could scrounge from this place. Apparently, in the mid 19th century there were no lighthouses in this area but there were an increasing number of ships full of immigrants heading for the promise of Uruguay. In 1868, a ship, the Lise Amelie, loaded with Scots hit some rocks on the coast and everyone on board drowned. The tragedy spurred local authorities into action and they built a lighthouse with “six elegant and spacious rooms, one specially designed for castaways.” Expecting castaways, they obviously didn’t have much confidence in their lighthouse. That doubt turned into cracks and those cracks turned into another tragedy as the lighthouse came crashing down before it was fully built.

But, ever resilient, the locals persisted and rebuilt it, and in 1878 the newspaper El Siglo published:

Survivor of several generations, many more will continue seeing this sentry post, always here. Has anyone seen the death of a lighthouse?

Indeed!

In the end I suppose it was good that we saw La Paloma in the off-season because rumor has it that this place is going to explode. Investors are buying up large tracts of land all around town, hoping it will pay off in the near future, when La Paloma turns into the next big beach resort. One day the lighthouse could be simultaneously dwarfed by enormous hotels and blown up for package holiday posters. And I’ll be able to tell my kids, “Oh, La Paloma? Yeah, your mother and I were there back in 2010, before it was famous. It was so small then. We felt invisible, two ghosts in a forgotten town; no one saw us and we saw no one. Just like the lost souls of Lise Amelie, you could sink into the sand and no one would know you had ever been.”

Punta Del Diablo and a Brush with Satan

Our hotel kicked us out at ten and we didn’t feel like going to the casino, so we left Chuy before noon. We hung out at the bus station for about half an hour, watching bellies amble past, and then hit the road for Devil’s Point!

Punta Del Diablo is a laid back and friendly surfing village on the edge of a small national park. Supposedly the population swells to 20,000 in the peak season, with party-goers flocking there for a couple of weeks in some sort of mini Ibiza, but it’s really hard to imagine that from what we saw.

Apart from the hostel kids, the town was about as sleepy as it looks. We had a great time just walking on the beach and talking to a few other travellers. We stayed in a rustic romantic suite at a hostel called El Diablo Tranquilo, right on the beach, falling asleep to the sound of the waves every night. Add cheap bottles of good wine to that every night and we couldn’t ask for much else.

It’s strange how hostelling seems to bring out cultural stereotypes so clearly sometimes. We had the loud and slightly obnoxious American girl, the permanently drunk Australian guy, two relaxed and friendly New Zealanders, two snooty British kids, a slightly cold Canadian, and a very hippy Californian. One afternoon, something about the place inspired us to be a bit more social than normal (or maybe my wife was just bored of talking to me everyday) and after that we were absorbed by the hostel crowd, spending a bit of time with them every evening.

My wife quickly befriended the Kiwi girls and I talked to an Argentine guy for a while to practice my miserable Spanish. His English was about the same level as my Spanish so we had an hour or so of pretty garbled conversation. He said he was a poor banker (which in itself seemed a bit interesting but I couldn’t figure out if all Argentine bankers are poor or just him) and liked travelling but couldn’t afford to travel much beyond Uruguay and Argentina. He also said he liked Uruguay much better because it was a bit cheaper and much quieter. Later, I spent some time talking to the Californian hippy, who apparently made all of his travelling money growing and selling pot. His overall travel plan was to get to Africa on less than $1000, possibly on a ship of some kind. Not wanting to be a downer, I didn't ask him if that thousand dollars was just an arbitrary target or actually all the money he had to make this plan work. Strange guy but I hope he made it.

When we weren’t drinking beer at the hostel we were just on the beach

poking things in tide pools

and watching wildlife. 

That picture is just a little guy but we also met the grandfather, a great beast from the infernos just below Devil’s Point – an ancient dragon by the name of Tegu (Tupinambis merianae in full). He set his sights on my wife’s camera, demanding that we make a technological sacrifice (blood is so pre-Internet Age) in return for safe passage. Naturally I refused and commanded him to return to the depths of hell from whence he came. The fury in my eyes sent him scampering back to the hoarded mound of cameras, smartphones, and other tourist gadgets in his lair but not before he cursed us with a mosquito swarm that hastened us on to the next beach.    

The next day, we were climbing on some tide pool rocks and my wife slipped, falling on her bum and smashing the touch screen of her video camera. I heard a cackle from a nearby boulder and saw a tail disappearing into a crevice but I was too late to catch the hell spawn.

The lens was ok (as was her bum) but unfortunately, without the touch screen, the camera was quite difficult to use. The screen was still touch sensitive but it didn't display anything. She eventually memorized the places of certain functions so we could still use it for a few things but we weren't able to determine zoom and focus without the screen.

I suppose we should have expected some sort of unholy sacrifice in return for the great few days we spent at Devil's Point. However, as much as I complain, Tegu stayed true to his offer. After the camera sacrifice, the rest of our trip proceeded without any further significant losses. Some might even say we were lucky to have had him cross our path.