After four and a half hours on the bus, we approach Punta del Diablo with some apprehension. In 2008, Lonely Planet drew attention to it as a place worth discovering. Will it have been ruined in the past 10 years, thanks to No-longer-so-lonely Planet? And what has the diablo got to do with it?
Perhaps the devil likes colour. It’s the first thing that strikes us about Punta del Diablo: wooden houses painted in unabashed, strong colours. On our first walk, I feel like a five-year-old: look at that red! Did you see that blue? Some of the colours are pleasingly crazy.
Or perhaps the devil, who must be lazy, likes beaches. The area abounds with long, energising half-moon bays. We walk them in all kinds of weather. It should be hot and sunny at this time of the year (early summer), but it isn’t. It drizzles, it rains, occasionally it pours; we are grateful for merely cloudy. One night we wake up to thunder claps so loud it sounds like god is banging her fist on the table in fury.
The tourist season may be around the corner, but during our stay Punta del Diablo is quiet. We sip mango juice; we watch the foam on the waves. We become a bit obsessed with frogs as we stroll the unpaved roads gashed by heavy rainfall. There is very little traffic but we spot a large number of frog bodies, flattened out like pancakes, all in the same unmistakable shape. The ones that have escaped the devil’s wheels are oblivious: they hop along merrily in the middle of the road. We try to guide them to the soaked grassy edges (to repair our karma after killing mosquitoes in the night) but they don’t get it. The sound of their excited conversations is everywhere.
We are in the northern corner of Uruguay, close to the border with Brazil, staying with a small family from Argentina. The house relies on solar energy and hums with family, neighbours and friends joining us for early-morning yoga, breakfast, an impromptu afternoon guitar jam or a wander through Santa Teresa national park (which has over two million trees). Nobody is in a hurry, and time begins to feel a little fluid. Ewan joins an impromptu life drawing session; I get a haircut, because I must, at the only hairdresser’s in Punta del D. His salon covers a couple of square meters in his front garden, he does not speak any English, he needs to warm up some water to wash my hair, it is going to cost me 300 pesos (about £7) – it is a recipe for disaster… But he cuts with flair and I leave with a spring in my step.
Our week in Punta del Diablo is long and short. We spot various old VW beetles and spray-painted camper vans and wonder if this is where all the ones we’ve been missing in Europe have travelled to. The relaxed vibe is contagious. We love the place. We hope it stays just as it is, and that Lonely Planet never mentions it again.