The chic go wild in Uruguay

Driving north from Punta del Este, a full-blown city resort with a Miami skyline, a casino and yacht-choked marina on the Uruguayan Riviera, the promise of the much more intimate Jose Ignacio beckons. The light-brown sand of the wide Atlantic beach at last gives way to a promontory peppered with low-slung homes and the stone finger of a lighthouse rising from its jagged point. The sky is lead-grey and briefly I am dubious. Is this really the red-hot new destination in South America for the world's jet-set crowd?

Jose Ignacio, until a few years ago a fishing village unworthy of a dot on anyone's map, is baffling at first. The small grid of narrow streets offers no easy clues as to why you have travelled so far to get here. It offers no colonial architecture and even the main square is little more than a children's playground. You will find no tourist information booths, no obvious sightseeing attractions and not the slightest trace of neon. "In Jose Ignacio, only the wind is in a rush," declares a roadside sign.

Even our hotel, the Posada del Faro, while exquisite in cool white, is not quite on the scale I had imagined. Naomi Campbell has stayed here, as well as Mario Testino and Giselle Bundchen. The pool is cute but has no infinity edge. This is how the celebrities go on holiday? Should there be more glamour? But forgive my dull soul - I had only just arrived and the spell of Jose Ignacio had not yet quite caught me.

It is this modest mien that gives Jose Ignacio its special appeal and why it is being described as a mini-Hamptons in Latin America (that string of towns on Long Island that are the summer paradise of America's most prosperous and decadent). It is why Naomi comes with her friend Giuseppe Cipriani and why Martin Amis has a house here, yards from our hotel. The stars shine brighter in its wind-washed sky and there is an invigorating wildness to its geography, with a backdrop of the Uruguayan pampas, its horizons topped with paintbrush bristles that are distant stands of bending eucalyptus trees. But as big money and international scenesters migrate here from Punte del Este, Jose Ignacio risks losing its rugged spirit.

The homes may still be one storey high but some are modernist concrete and glass boxes betraying the work of expensive foreign architects. A large plot on the edge of town bears signs declaring the imminent breaking of ground by the luxury hotel chain, Setai. Jose Ignacio has now been discovered by the hordes, though of the well-heeled kind, that its first devotees were seeking to escape.

By design, it has no nightclubs and only three decent hotels, the Posada being the acknowledged best. There are few shops or restaurants. What happens mostly happens behind the doors of the private houses, many of which rent for $50,000 (£25,000) a month and sometimes much more in the brief and famously frenzied high season, which spans Christmas and January. "You won't find a bed in town and you won't find a table in here," says Guzman Artagaveytia, co-owner of La Huella, a thatched restaurant and bar that sits directly on the sand and serves as one of the few hubs of visible social activity. Forget trying to park. Each year, just after Christmas, La Huella rings in the season's start with an invitation-only beach party sponsored by Lacoste.

"It can be intimidating," admits Frances Mallman, a celebrity chef in his native Argentina who owns Los Negros, the most prestigious restaurant in town.Go not just to taste Mallman's menu - for us he serves giant shrimps sautéed with proscuitto followed by a sea bass cooked in a two-inch-thick crust of salt - but to absorb his love of poetry. Scraps of poems are written, graffiti-wise, up and down the restaurant's white-painted walls.

The risk in Jose Ignacio is finding yourself walled out by its very exclusivity. "You have to make your own connections," Mallman concedes. "That means going to the beach and connecting with people. If you're in Jose Ignacio it's because you want the action and to get the action you have to work for it."

Listen carefully to the entrepreneurs of Jose Ignacio - Mallman, Artagaveytia and his business partner Martin Pittaluga - and you detect some schizophrenia about the suddenness of its popularity and what that might bring. They are wary of the impact of new development. "When we mention Jose Ignacio to people, we sometimes try not to say it's in Uruguay," Pittaluga reveals. A battle has been fought over the Setai to ensure it keeps a low profile. "We are very worried, because we want to keep the place as unspoilt as possible."

But Guzman and Martin have expansion plans of their own, of a somewhat unexpected nature. Later, we are speeding down the endless beach on Guzman's battered beach-buggy to an area of dunes that is deserted except for a small square hut they are now building. La Caracola will be a hide-away party house with a meat grill and fully-stocked bar for hire by anyone for whom even Jose Ignacio is not quite exclusive enough. There will be no electricity and guests will arrive and leave by boat.

Mallman, meanwhile, has already arranged a more sophisticated escape in Garzon, a near ghost-town that lies about 20 minutes inland. Three years ago, he turned a deserted hostelry into a small luxury hotel and has plans to open a bistro and a small concert hall.

"Jose Ignacio," he says with some weariness, "has already changed so much over the past five years. It's a completely different place and it's for the worse. And that's why I am moving slowly out to come here to Garzon."

HOW TO GET THERE

David Usborne travelled as a guest of American Airlines and Posada del Faro.

American Airlines (0845 778 9789; americanairlines. co.uk) has return flights from London to Buenos Aires from £710. Travel to Jose Ignacio by a ferry operated by Buqeubus (00 54 11 4316 6500; buquebus.com).

Posada del Faro (00 598 485 2110; posadadelfaro .com) offers double rooms from US$90 (£50) to $140 with breakfast. It closes for maintenance in May and June.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Uruguay Tourism (00 598 2188 5100; turismo.gub.uy). Latin American Travel Association (020-8715 2913; lata.org).

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