Many of the most popular beaches in South America can be found on Uruguay’s Eastern Coast. From    to Punta del Diablo, there are seemingly endless kilometers of white sandy beaches and beautiful sunsets. While in Uruguay, we rented a car and drove through as many of the quaint beach towns as we could stand. We didn’t find a good information source on the best places to visit and so we ended up going to whichever city looked interesting on our map.

We ended up visiting 5 cities:

• Maldonado–a small city outside of the trendy Punta del Este which offers modest and budget hotels for travelers interested in staying a safe distance from the clamor of Punta. The city has a cute plaza and we ended up staying in the nicest hotel in town that features a view of the plaza.
• Punta del Este–the most famous and posh of all the beaches in Uruguay. If you say you’re going to go to Uruguay to a South American, the best bet is they’ll ask if you’re going/ have been to Punta. Its very built up and more high-end than all of the other beaches we went to.
• La Paloma–a cute town on the beach. There didn’t seem to be much to do here, but it was pretty and we had some good pizza.
• Punta del Diablo–this is definitely a destination for backpackers. Though there were only 2 hostels and 3 hotels in the city, there was a lot of camping and rustic cabins available if reserved in advance (which we neglected to do). The town is very interesting and has a gorgeous beach.
• Piriápolis–this was by far my favorite of all the places we stayed. We were able to find a room in a 16-bed hostería for only US$42 per night (which was much better than all the other places which were $50+ in high season). The beach is good, its got interesting architecture, and there are endless amounts of restaurants.

We left feeling satisfied that we had seen the vast majority of Uruguay’s coastline and actually most of Uruguay. Next stop: Curitiba, Brazil.