MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay: Punta del Este sparkles once more.

It was shortly after midnight on a warm summer night at the harbor in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and tanned young couples were streaming out of restaurants, wondering what to do next.

Walk down the block to one of those well-appointed bars that would remain open until dawn? Or head over to a discothèque on the beach? And what about that all-night electronic music festival at the old airfield?

After losing some of its shine during the 1990's, Punta del Este, traditionally known as "the Pearl of the Atlantic," has reinvented itself as South America's premier all-purpose vacation spot, with attractions for everyone from lounge-music fans and families with small children to sport fishermen and gamblers.

"Over the past few years, Punta del Este has evolved into something that is a single place in name only," said Carlos García Rubio, a local music promoter. "People still come here to see and be seen, but depending on where you go and what you do, you can have three or four completely different kinds of vacation experience."

Indeed, the sheer variety of activities during the December-to-March high season - jazz, festivals, film festivals, rodeos, fashion shows on the beach and various tournaments, including golf, rugby and polo - is dazzling. Last year, the Miss Playboy TV Latin America beauty contest completed the roster of events.

Add to that casinos, nature reserves, spas, top flight restaurants and hotels ranging from basic to such quietly luxurious lodgings as the Hotel-Art Las Cumbres, and the result is a vibrant array of possibilities. With cruise ships now visiting in growing numbers and the E! Entertainment Channel's "Wild On" program popularizing Punta del Este's inexhaustible night life for a broader international audience, the resort's transformation from stodgy dowager into party belle now seems complete.

In its original incarnation, Punta del Este was the preferred summer haven of the Argentine and Uruguayan upper middle classes. From the beginning of the 20th century, generations of families lodged at elegant hotels or rented cottages along the shore, many of which still exist, in order to escape the stifling January heat of Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

But during the boom years of the 1990's, with the Argentine peso linked to the U.S. dollar at an artificial and ultimately unsustainable one-to-one rate, many Argentines who would normally have gone to Punta del Este began flocking instead to places like Cancún or Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, or Miami, leaving Punta del Este to a less affluent crowd.

With the collapse of the Argentine economy three years ago, however, Punta del Este's original clientele, its tastes now internationalized, began returning. Now the region is undergoing a building and tourism boom, with more than 30 new restaurants and hotels going up. Existing hotels are filled most weekends during the Southern Hemisphere's summer high season.

These days, the new, revived Punta del Este extends far beyond the original narrow peninsula that was its center a century ago. Almost the entire 40-mile coastal strip from Punta Ballena in the west to José Ignacio northward toward the Brazilian border is lined with hotels, condominiums, sports clubs, marinas, nightclubs and restaurants.

With the increase in new construction, parts of the coastline, such as Punta Ballena, or Whale Point, now recall a Mediterranean setting - Ibiza, perhaps, or Crete. Off the highway to Montevideo, whitewashed buildings - some of them houses, others luxurious resorts - cling to the bluffs rising from the shore.

Elsewhere, once quiet fishing villages like José Ignacio, known locally for its lighthouse and spectacular sunsets, have emerged as getaways for the rich and famous, including Argentine celebrities and people like the British novelist Martin Amis, whose wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, is half Uruguayan. José Ignacio, Mr. Amis said in a newspaper interview not too long ago, is the ideal place to escape "the world hum" that is "too much in our ears now."

By Larry Rother (NYT)