Cabo Polonio

People have hunted and fished on this cape for thousands of years. Mounds near the Valizas stream, part of the Cerritos de Indios of eastern Uruguay, hold axes, pottery and mortars about 5,000 years old, and hunter-gatherers came each spring and summer to hunt the sea lions on the islands offshore. Under Spanish rule the hunting continued, and the nearby Cerro de la Buena Vista marked the line between Spanish and Portuguese possessions agreed in the Treaty of Madrid of 1750.

The islands and reefs wrecked hundreds of ships. On 31 January 1753 the Spanish ship Nuestra Señora del Rosario, bound from Cádiz to Buenos Aires, ran aground off the south beach; all 316 men on board survived, and the cape is named after its 25-year-old captain, José Poloní. The lighthouse, completed in 1881, reduced the wrecks without ending them: in 1892 the Brazilian monitor Solimões struck a rock between the islands and 123 men drowned. Around the lighthouse grew the first permanent settlement of sea-lion hunters and fishing families, joined in the 1940s by villagers expelled from Rincón de Valizas.

Protection came in stages: a forest reserve in 1942, a natural monument for the dunes in 1966, a place in UNESCO's Bañados del Este biosphere reserve in 1976, a Ramsar listing in 1984, and inclusion in Uruguay's National System of Protected Areas in 2009, when new construction was banned. Sea-lion hunting in Uruguay ended in 1992.

Cabo Polonio is known above all for what it lacks. With no road, no mains power and no running water, it has long been presented as a traditional village set apart from modern tourist towns, and much of its appeal is the glimpse it offers of life before urbanisation. In the late 20th century it became something of an improvised hippie colony, with cottages built on public and private land as visitors sought a rustic, intimate contact with nature.

That outlook remains strong. In a 2013 survey 85 per cent of residents opposed electrifying their homes, and many still treat objects salvaged from old shipwrecks as treasured possessions. Fishing families, artisans and long-staying summer visitors share the cape, and in summer its bars and restaurants give it an active nightlife.

The cape has also entered literature. Caro De Robertis's 2019 novel Cantoras is set there over a period of 36 years, and Pedro Mairal's 2025 novel Los nuevos is largely set here.

The 2023 census counted 128 residents, up from 95 in 2011, though in 2024 about 500 people were estimated to be living on the cape, fewer than 100 of them all year. Houses multiplied from 128 in 1985 to 458 in 2004, when 94 per cent were used only in summer. In January 2015 more than 30,000 tourists visited.

Daily life is shaped by scarcity. Houses take water from rainfall or boreholes, and a few inns and the grocery store run on wind power and generators; only the lighthouse is connected to the national grid. There are no health services, rubbish is collected only in summer, and there is a school and a police station. Tourism is the main source of income: since 2023 favourable exchange rates against the Argentine peso have brought a boom, and many fishing families now build houses and run tourist services, helped by four-wheel-drive trucks that replaced the old horse-drawn carriages.

Current issues follow from that growth. Vehicle traffic is damaging the dunes, summer crowds strain the supply of drinking water and sanitation, and between 2022 and 2024 an outbreak of bird flu killed sea lions along the coast, including here.

Food on the cape is simple and, for most visitors, partly self-catered: rented cabins have basic kitchens, and supplies come from a few small shops. In summer a handful of restaurants and bars open, and a few stay open after the season ends.

The cooking is that of the Rocha coast. Fish caught locally is grilled or fried, with corvina and brótola, a white fish, the most common, and rabas, rings of battered squid, are a standard order. The signature is buñuelos de algas, fritters made with seaweed, sold from stalls and kitchens in Cabo Polonio and Punta del Diablo. The butiá palm that grows in Rocha gives small orange fruit made into jam, sweets and a liqueur.

Otherwise, food follows the Uruguayan pattern. Empanadas are the everyday snack, the parrilla, or grill, turns out beef and chorizo when there is a fire going, and tortas fritas, fried dough, are the traditional treat on a rainy day. Mate, the bitter herbal infusion sipped from a shared gourd, is drunk at all hours, and dulce de leche fills the alfajores sold in the shops.