Cabo Polonio

Beaches & CovesRocha,Uruguay

A Uruguayan cape of dunes with no road and no mains power, only a lighthouse, 130 residents and a seal colony roaring on rocks offshore.

September·Peaking now

Jul–Oct

The wild season: southern right whales pass a few hundred metres off the lighthouse rocks from July to October, the dark-sky core overhead through August. It is cold and the cape all but shuts down, though a handful of places keep going and the ~130 residents remain.

Year-round The islet seal colony, the dunes and the 1881 lighthouse — the cape's one mains-wired building — stand every day; the warm swimmable sea, the pups, the whales and the summer crowds are all seasonal.

Cabo Polonio has no road to it and no grid electricity. The one building wired to the mains is the lighthouse that has swept these rocks since 1881. The cape is a low granite dome tied to the Uruguayan mainland by sand, and you cross that sand on an open truck or on foot. About 130 people live here year-round in a scatter of timber and stone ranchos, with light from solar panels, small wind turbines and candles, and water hauled up by hand from wells sunk into the sand. Three rocky islets lie just offshore, and they carry one of only two seal breeding colonies in the country. On a calm night you hear them from the village: a low, continuous roar under the surf. After dark the lighthouse beam is the only thing moving across the sky, which is why people climb the dunes at night and lie back to look up. From July to October southern right whales pass close inshore on their run between Península Valdés and southern Brazil, and the rocks below the lighthouse are the best place to stand. The cape takes its name from a sea captain wrecked here in 1753. It has been a national park since 2009, and it is quietly changing. Pine and acacia planted to hold the sand down are flattening the last great mobile dune field on the Uruguayan coast, and sand that once walked inland now mostly stays put. In January the village swells into the thousands. By midwinter you can have the whole headland to yourself.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Private cars stop at the terminal on Route 10 — from there it is an open 4x4 truck across seven kilometres of sand and scrub, or a three-hour walk in from Valizas.
Nothing here plugs in — there is no grid, no cash machine and no street lighting, so arrive with cash, a charged power bank and a torch you can walk the dunes by.
The seals are out on the islets, not on the beach — the rocks below the lighthouse get you closest, and in December and January the colony is thick with newborn pups.
Walk past the last rancho and give your eyes twenty minutes — on a moonless night the only light left is the lighthouse, flashing once every twelve seconds.
January turns a village of 130 into a town of thousands — for empty dunes with the place still awake, come in the shoulder weeks of November or March.

Things to do

1
Cross the dunes to reach the cape
There is no road, so the trucks drive on sand. You stand in the open bed for seven kilometres of dune, scrub and shallow water, hanging on as the chassis pitches, until the last ridge drops away and the lighthouse arrives all at once. The old way in is on foot from Valizas, three hours over open dunes.
2
Watch the seal colony from the lighthouse rocks
The rocks under the lighthouse put you as close to the islets as anyone gets from land, and binoculars do the rest. Hundreds of animals haul out on Isla Rasa and its neighbours, the three low rocks Uruguayans call the Islas de Torres. The two species sort themselves out once you look: fur seals small, dark and pointed in the face, sea lion bulls twice the size with a heavy mane.
3
Climb the 132 steps of the 1881 lighthouse
The stair inside the tower is narrow, steep and worth it. From the balcony 40 metres above the sea you finally read the shape of the place: a granite point, the seal islets, the two beaches on either flank, and the dune field running off to the horizon.
4
Wait for the ranchos to blow out their candles
Once the last candles go out there is nothing left to compete with the sky — no street lamps, no glow on any horizon. Walk onto the sand and the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds come up as sharply as they would in a desert, while the beam wheels silently overhead.
5
Eat the catch where the boats land on the sand
With no harbour, the fishermen simply haul their wooden boats up the beach and gut the catch there. The village kitchens cook whatever came in that morning — brótola, corvina, black mussels prised off the rocks — and the families serving it descend from the sealers who founded this place.

Watch

Nearby

174 km

Quebrada de los Cuervos

Treinta y Tres Department,Uruguay