High-End Design, Low Prices in Punta del Este

PUNTA DEL ESTE, Uruguay (TheStreet) -- Punta del Este, South America's media darling for the past three years, has emerged as the continent's St. Tropez, with a bustling beach scene, high-end hotels and even South of France prices.

With most hotels priced in U.S. dollars, the once-affordable beach getaway has become all but out of reach for budget-minded travelers. That was until owner Aaron Hojman of the Trading Post, one of Punta del Este's top antique and design stores, opened Casa Zinc along a picturesque bluff above one of La Barra's iconic saltwater lagoons that's become the best luxury-travel deal in town.

Road to La Barra: Punta del Este is a 120-mile drive from Montevideo, Uruguay's capital, or a 50-minute flight form Buenos Aires. A sleepy Atlantic beach town for nine months of the year, Punta del Este awakens every November as the summer getaway of the Brazilian and Argentine elite. A 20-minute drive through the high-rise condo towers and casinos of downtown ends along an undulating bridge and into the sleepy, one-road town of La Barra. Just beyond the bikini boutiques and terrace eateries is the pine-tree hilltop and rolling farmland where Casa Zinc makes its home.

Repurposed materials and furnishings bring green luxury to the rooms of Casa Zinc.

First impressions: The loft-style facade of distressed siding and corrugated aluminum hint that Casa Zinc isn't your usual all-white Punta hotel. Divided by a gravel walkway lined in blooming shrubs and bamboo, the aged, red building is constructed of bricks made by a local manufacturer that still uses actual horses to form the clay. While Punta del Este gives the illusion of a city lost in the future, much of its surrounding towns and communities still work the old-fashioned way -- at least for now. The rambling L-shaped architecture feels like a plantation house or municipal building with a storied past, like so many being uprooted from the coastal towns along South America's Atlantic coast to make room for bigger, flashier resort projects.