But the proprietors of the restaurant are nothing if not enterprising. They give the wayfarer something even beyond an excellent meal. At the end of the repast each guest is presented with a ticket that entitles him to a free cab-ride to the tramway terminus. The idea is admirable. Nothing is wanting but the cabs! At all events, when I had concluded lunch there the surface of the fine avenue was innocent of any vehicle, and continued so until the walk to the car was accomplished. But the courtesy of the offer had been effectual, and a certain sense of obligation remained.
The bathing-places of Poçitos and Ramirez are akin in many respects to these inland resorts. By the side of the sea here are fewer blossoms and rather smaller eucalyptus groves, but a greater number of open-air restaurants and one or two quite imposing hotels. Indeed, Ramirez, the nearer of the two, is endowed with a really fine casino, that faces the shoreward end of the pier, and that has by its side the spacious and well-timbered public park.
Poçitos occupies the next bay, and is notable for its lengthy esplanade and for the very pleasant houses that give upon the semicircular sweep. This bay, moreover, is the first that has, so to speak, turned its back upon the river and has faced the open ocean. As a token, the waters are tinged with a definite blue, and the air holds a genuine sting of salt that rapidly dies away when passing up-stream away from here. To the Buenos Airen, who enthusiastically patronises the place, Poçitos is delightful, if for no other reason than the sense of contrast to his own surroundings that it affords him. Not that he has any reason to grumble at the river frontier of the rich alluvial soil, from out of which his fortunes have been built. But here, in place of the soft, stoneless mud, is bright sand, and genuine rocks, piled liberally all over the shore, that shelter crabs, and pools that hold fish of the varieties that refuse to breathe in any other but guaranteed salt water. So it is that the summer season sees the long rows of tents and bathing machines crowded and overflowing with the Uruguayans and the host of visitors from across the river.
Both Ramirez and Poçitos are within the range of the ubiquitous tramcar. But this very efficient service, not content with its excursion of half a dozen miles and more on the ocean side of Montevideo, runs in the opposite direction completely round the port bay, and performs the yet more important journey to Villa del Cerro, the small town that lies at the foot of the hill that is so closely associated with Montevideo and its affairs. A far shorter route to this latter place, however, is by the busy little steam ferry that puffs straight across the bay, and that starts faithfully at every hour, as promised by the timetable, although, if that hour coincides with the one specified, the event may be accepted as a fortunate accident.
