Cabo Polonio

Cabo Polonio is one of the last places on the Atlantic coast of the Southern Hemisphere where the sea arrives without apology, its lighthouse the only manmade feature on a stretch of coast distinguished only by dunes, coastal forest and the uninterrupted sound of the ocean. The hamlet sits on a sand promontory between the sea and a lagoon, accessible from the inland road by a six-kilometre sand track that becomes impassable in heavy rain and is barred to conventional vehicles, the only wheels allowed being the tractors that pull supply carts from the nearest town. The permanent population is fewer than one hundred people, who live in a scatter of wooden houses and basic hostels along the dunes, and the electricity supply depends on private generators, a situation that has kept the place deliberately out of step with the pace of development on the rest of the Uruguayan coast.

In summer the population swells to several thousand as visitors arrive for the beaches that have no names, the sea lions that colonise the rocks at the base of the lighthouse and the sense of a landscape that has not been organised for the convenience of tourism. The beach in front of the village is wide and clean, the sand coarse and dark with mineral content, and the water is the cold green of the South Atlantic, arriving in long Atlantic swells that make the surf more interesting than the calm shores of the Río de la Plata further north. The national park designation protects the dunes, the forest and the marine mammals that breed on the rocks below, and it is the combination of these elements that makes the experience of arriving at Cabo Polonio feel genuinely remote.

The lighthouse itself marks a significant turn in the coast, a granite tower built in 1881 that was automated in 1976 and now operates without a keeper, its beam still cutting through the coastal fog on dark nights as it has done for more than a century. The mechanism that rotates the light is a clockwork timer that dates from the original installation, and it is inspected periodically by technicians who arrive by boat or across the sand from the inland road. The light is visible for thirty nautical miles and was an essential navigation aid for ships rounding the southern tip of the continent before the Panama Canal reduced the traffic through these waters.

The approach to the village from the parking area involves a walk of about twenty minutes across sand dunes, and the first sight of the lighthouse through the trees is the moment the place announces itself: a flash of white against the Atlantic sky, standing alone in a landscape where the only other vertical elements are the eucalyptus trees planted by the original settlers to break the wind. The dunes are constantly reshaped by the prevailing westerly winds and the ecology of the area depends on the movement of sand, which creates a landscape that is never quite the same from one year to the next. The lagoon behind the village is shallow and warm in summer, a contrast to the cold ocean water that makes it a favoured swimming spot for visitors who find the Atlantic too cold.

The lighthouse, sea lion colonies and unnamed beaches are accessible without the infrastructure that characterises most of the Uruguayan coast.

The sand-only access road has kept the place genuinely remote in a country that is otherwise thoroughly developed.

The national park designation protects a landscape of dunes, forest and marine mammals that is unique on the Atlantic coast.