Uruguay’s Punta del Este is home to fewer than 10,000 lucky individuals who get to enjoy its beaches and stunning landscape all year long. During the summer, the population swells to around 150,000, mostly with visitors from other cities in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil — but also with North Americans and Europeans seeking its relaxed and elegant lifestyle.

If you are only spending a few days and cannot do all there is to do in Punta del Este, here are some tips to help you prioritize.

Brava or Mansa?

Punta del Este has two main beaches, one over the Río de la Plata and the other over the Atlantic Ocean. Those preferring calmer waters, such as families with young children, will enjoy the Mansa beaches along the Claudio Williman promenade. Surf enthusiasts and others looking for rougher waves will most likely prefer the Brava beach and its waters that stretch along the Lorenzo Batlle promenade.

Film Festival or Fashion Show?

Film festivals in Montevideo date back to 1951, when Argentinean entrepreneur Mauricio Litman organized the first edition of the Punta del Este International Film Festival at the Cantegril Country Club. Stars like Joan Fontaine, Gèrard Philipe and Silvana Mangano attended the event where films by Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman were shown. After a long pause, the festival was reborn a few years ago. It now takes place every year near the end of the summer season, around March.

For those who prefer catwalks and couture to cinema, Punta del Este offers annual fashion shows. Argentinean designers and their Uruguayan counterparts organize outstanding shows, with the most prominent one held at the Conrad Hotel every January.

Celebrities such as Shakira, Zinedine Zidane and Pierre Casiraghi, Prince of Monaco regularly attend shows to see the work of designers like Jorge Ibáñez, Claudio Cosano (Argentina), Karin Coo (Chile), Hernán Zajar (Colombia) or locals Pablo Suárez, Nicolás Osano and Charlotte (Uruguay).

Casapueblo or La Mano?

This question has to do with which spot to choose to best commemorate your stay in Punta del Este. Most tourists choose the monument for the drowned created by Chilean artist Mario Irarrazábal to take a photograph that proves they have spent some time in the most elegant seaside resort in Latin America. The giant sculpture of a hand with fingers emerging from the sand is arguably the most well-known landmark of Punta del Este.

Others choose the famous sunsets at Casapueblo to record their visit. Built by noted Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró, the house is a Mediterranean-style citadel sculpture that pays tribute to the artist’s son, one of the 16 survivors of the crash of Flight 571 in 1972. It includes a museum, an art gallery and a hotel.

Seafood or Farm Fare?

Twelve miles from downtown Punta del Este, visitors can enjoy free tours to Tambo El Sosiego, where the famous La Pataia Dulce de Leche is made. The tours show visitors the process of making the favorite dessert in the region. Every summer since 1996, the dairy farm also hosts an International Jazz Festival with artists from around the world playing their melodies surrounded by hills and nature. The farm is an excellent choice for those who enjoy nature, families and music.

However, the most popular gastronomic choice is, by far, the fresh seafood that many restaurants along the Punta del Este harbor offer to those visiting the yachting facility with its breathtaking views of the nearby Gorriti Island.

Gorriti or Lobos?

There are two small islands a few minutes away from the coast, and visitors who want to see them can take short boat rides that leave every day from the port. The tour to Isla de Lobos takes about two hours and offers tourists a glimpse of the largest seal colony in South America. Visitors choosing Isla Gorriti, an island half the size of Isla de Lobos that was home to a prison in the 18th century, can enjoy long, relaxing strolls and a meal at the small restaurant that faces one of the island’s two beaches.The beach is a preferred spot for water sports enthusiasts and is surrounded by thousands of pine trees.

Casting or Clubs?

While it is a fact that Punta del Este is all about sun and beaches, it is also true that the city has a very active nightlife. Bars, lounges and clubs receive thousands of tourists around midnight. La Barra, with its famous undulating bridge and its many clubs, has attracted stars such as Michael Bublè and Naomi Campbell, as well as many other visitors who look to spend a lively night after a relaxing day at the beach.

During the day, the Maldonado Stream is the preferred spot for those looking to cast a line and enjoy a day of saltwater fishing. Fishing enthusiasts can rent a boat or fish off the dock and cast their lines for tuna, anchovies and bluefish.

Those with lots of energy can fish during the day and hit the clubs at night!

Pat Antuña Yarza is a freelance writer and translator based in Montevideo. Mom to three and a relentless juggler, she writes copy for digital agencies and creative studios as well as news and culture magazines. With an MA in Cinema & TV Production and 10-plus years’ experience in translation and advertising, she also runs a team of 30 audiovisual translators and blogs on media & subtitling at www.widdmedia.com. She loves films, advertising, music and parenting. You can follow Pat on Twitter @datcopypat. (This article was first appeared in NSAM’s sister publication Global Delivery Report.)

By Tim Wilson

The city of Monterrey in the state of Nuevo León, Mexico, is seeing a revival. Already the city with the nation’s highest per capita income, Monterrey is seeing new investments by high tech firms looking to take advantage of its skilled workforce and close proximity to the United States.“Monterrey is on the right track,” says Guillermo Safa, the Director of the Software Industry Council of Nuevo Leon, known as Csoftmty. “Manufacturing exports, automotive industry growth, bank stability, as well as activity in other sectors are important factors for our current success.”

The gulf between haves and have-nots is widening at a rapid pace in Mexico and Chile, shows a recent OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) survey conducted in 33 countries across the world.

The international organization has blamed the 2008 global economic crisis for the widening gulf, because inequality worsened more between 2007 and 2010 than in the previous 12 years.

Inequality was already widespread in several countries by the time they slipped into recession. “In some of the countries where the crisis hit harder, poorer households either lost more income from the recession or benefited less from recovery,” the report pointed out.

In the countries surveyed, the richest 10 percent earned 9.5 times the income of the poorest 10 percent in 2010.

The other countries where the economic disparity widened further include Turkey, the United States and Israel.

“Nordic and central European countries have the lowest inequality of disposable income while inequality is high in Chile, Mexico, Turkey, the United States and Israel,” the report stated.

Incomes of poorer households also fell by more than 5% annually in Mexico, Iceland, Greece, Ireland and Estonia.

“A relative income poverty – the share of people having less income than half the national median income –affects around 11% of the population on average across OECD countries, with large country differences,” the report added.

Herszkowicz of Linx: IPO is Smart Way to Go

By Filipe Pacheco

Raising funds has never been easy for Brazilian enterprises. With interest rates typically above 7 percent, borrowing money in Latin America’s biggest economy has always been difficult so an increasing number of IT firms are pushing headlong into the Brazil stock market – gaining big cash infusions through initial public offerings.

TBR research has recently found evidence to suggest rapidly accelerating pricing pressures are seriously impacting professional services firms lacking global scale. Specifically, global delivery models that includes the labor categories of onshore resource, landed onshore resource, and remote or offshore resource will undergo a fundamental shift, as countries that were early offshore hubs transform into local services arms delivering in-country expertise around IT transformation and implementation deals.

IBM recruiter Laird says private training is often the best substitute 

By Clayton Browne

Rapid economic growth throughout Latin America has created a situation where the educational systems in the region simply cannot produce enough people with the required skills to meet expanding demand. At a time when Latin America continues to edge closer to making meaningful contributions to the global workplace, intense debates are taking place across the region about the shortcomings of university educations – from the rigor needed in science and technology education to mastery of foreign languages.

The number of broadband connections in Brazil rose to 25.5 million in 2012, with more carriers luring consumers with high-speed Internet services, according to a survey conducted by the IDC.

The research firm, whose study was sponsored by Cisco, stated that the figure was not inclusive of connections made over smartphones.  Given the report, Brazil has 35 mobile connections for every 100 fixed-line connections.

“Fixed-line data connections include two new definitions: Broadband 2.0, for speeds of 2.0 Mbps or over; and Broadband 1.0, for connections between 128 Kbps and 2 Mbps,” says Cisco, adding that connections of 2 Mbps and over are considered the minimum speed for enjoying what the Internet has to offer.

Interestingly, Cisco says, average speeds rose 148 Kbps between January and June 2012 to an average 4.88 Mbps.  The main reason behind this increase was changes in speeds introduced by service providers aiming to meet Internet user profiles, where streaming, collaboration and social media are increasing.

Compared with other Latin American countries involved in the survey, Brazilian average speeds are second only to Chile, with 6.22 Mbps during the survey period.

In Brazil, the report says, Broadband 2.0 fixed-line connections grew 11.5% between January and June 2012, almost three times as fast as Broadband 1.0, totaling 9.2 million connections, or penetration of 4.7% for each 100 inhabitants.  Broadband 2.0 represents 52.7% of fixed-line broadband connections in Brazil, 40% of which are 10 Mbps or more.

Cisco predicts that Brazil will have more than 39.2 million fixed (broadband 1.0 and 2.0) and mobile connections by the end of 2016.  Of these, mobile will represent 31.5% and fixed-line connections 69.3%. Two out of every three fixedline connections will be Broadband 2.0.

“Brazil should be targeting an increase in broadband speeds and quality, and everyone should be shouldering this responsibility: the government, operators and technology companies,” says Anderson André, director of Cisco Brazil.

Cisco says xDSl connections continue to dominate the Brazilian market, up 8.2% during the survey period to 11.5 million connections.  Together, xDSL and cable modem connections represent 95.5% of all fixed-line connections.

Given the survey, there are over 6.1 million mobile subscriptions, representing 3.1% of the population.  3G subscriptions rose 10.6% to over 6.1 million as of June 2012.

China’s offshore services industry earned $8.1 billion in revenue in the first three months 2013, reports China Daily quoting an unnamed government official as saying.

The Chinese paper also stated that the domestic outsourcing service providers had received $11.7 billion in contracts during the same period, an increase of 43.6 percent when compared to the same period last year.

The official who spoke to the paper is with the Commerce Ministry and was attending a forum held in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province.

As of March, China’s service outsourcing industry has 4.46 million employees, and 67.7 percent of them are college graduates. The communist country generates 350,000 computer science graduates every year and these professionals get half the salary of their counterparts in India.

China has long been trying to outsmart India in the global outsourcing market. Many Latin American countries too have invested in China’s outsourcing sector. Brazilian IT companies such as Stefanini and Ci&T have delivery centers on the Chinese mainland.

According to reports in Chinese papers, the communist government is aiming to increase its outsourcing sector by 30% annually over the next three years.

Nearly $5 million goes to BPO in Choco region

By James Bargent

An unusual alliance that has brought together multinational business and international aid with the local public and private sectors is set to test the social impact of outsourcing with a bold new project in Colombia’s Afro-Colombian heartland.