Our normal dog walk cancelled, I took Mocha on the beach all the way into town. There I was reminded of this strange fenced-off footbridge, part of its deck missing.
From the road you can see it through the trees, ending across the road from the iconic (no longer hotel) El Planeta, built in 1939 in six months, offering central heating and hot water throughout. De luxe for 1939 Uruguay!
At the far end of the footbridge there’s a pile of branches, and it’s again fenced off.
You can see how close it is to the road (and you can see that, in 2015 per Google Street View, you could freely access the bridge, which never occurred to me). So why would someone choose the footbridge instead of just using the road?
Which gave me an idea.
What if the road was added later? The red line represents the footbridge. From above, the amphitheater looks a lot like a dam. And there’s apparently (I have never noticed it) a huge drain, and signs of drainage onto the beach (arrows).
[Update: I did go back and explore the tunnel]
Later—more time later than I’d like to admit—I found a diagram of a proposed harbor that was never built.
And there I spotted a break in the Rambla (beachfront road). Notice how there is no Rambla above the arrow.
And here—ta da!—is an aerial photo from 1950 confirming it. Mystery solved!
