Opening my eyes and seeing the underside of the slanted corrugated roof on its forty-five degree slope, only a couple of inches from my face, it took me a few minutes to remember where exactly I was waking up. I’m in the loft – or more accurately, attic – of a small shack masquerading as a hostel, a couple of hundred yards from the beach in Cabo Polonio, Uruguay.
The attic floor is covered with mattresses and the nine of us in our group are packed in there like it’s some sort of nest for sleeping travelers. A ladder leads to downstairs, a small kitchen, the proprietor’s bed and a corner fireplace. We headed out here the day before without any reservations or idea of where to stay and stumbled across Daniel, who rented us a house to stay in. Only latter in the day did we find out it was his house and he’d be staying in it too. You’d have to see this place to really understand.
Our place in Cabo Polonio
Cabo Polonio is a smattering of shacks and other structural stand-ins for houses on a sandy peninsula jutting into the Atlantic along the endless beaches of Eastern Uruguay. The cape recently became a protected area under the designation of the Uruguayan National Park System, due to the historical status of its lighthouse and the rocky point below it, which along with two small islands offshore, are home to one of the largest fur seal colonies in South America. Since then any new building has been halted. Before then, the less then one hundred residents who’d been squatting here for decades were locked in a land rights argument with the state. The park status designation seems to be the final card the state has to play in its battle of attrition – effectively promising the size of the settlement will shrink in years to come. Although the amount of tourists being trucked over the dunes each day seems to make that unlikely.
Once Daniel started grilling freshly caught corvina for us shortly before midnight we started to feel a little more comfortable with the idea of him staying in the house we thought we’d rented. While we wolfed down three fish in a row, sitting beside the fire behind the house, crying because of all the smoke in our eyes, but unwilling to move the table as to delay the time before another piece of fish covered in garlic and olive oil would be tasted, he explained how things work since the park took over. No more new building. No more improvements. But as is the norm in these parts, rules have exceptions. All improvements, like the new roof panels he put up last year, are done in secret, at night, during the new moon. Working in the dark isn’t much of a problem out here since only the lighthouse and a few stores and guesthouses with generators have any power to begin with. Everyone is using candles and flashlights. Which makes for some amazing stars. Anyone who comes to visit who hasn’t been living in rural Paraguay for the last two years is thoroughly impressed. I was more impressed by something that lit up a little closer to the ground.
Taking a break from the fire and peaking around the side of the house, Daniel comes back and tells us the plankton are out tonight. He seems a little more excited about this then one should be about plankton. He tells us that’s because these ones are bio-luminescent. And sure enough the waves do look a little brighter then they should given only the sliver of a moon that’s hanging over the giant dunes separating Cabo Polonio from the rest of civilization. When we walk down to the beach it becomes even more apparent that something’s going on in the water. Tapping your feet in the wet sand leaves behind for a fading few seconds a glowing footprint. Splashing around knee-deep in the water leaves streams of blue-green swirls roiling around legs. Squatting down to watch the incoming ripples of already broken waves roll forward at eye level reveals countless dots of firefly-like twinkles in the water. Laughter becomes as contagious as splashing the person next to you.
The next day is our last on the Cabo. We arrived on a whim after spending the past week fifty kilometers up the coast in Punta del Diablo, grilling freshly caught fish, playing in the waves and soaking up the last bit of time together with friends before we all head off in separate directions, on separate adventures. We managed to hit Diabloin the week before
Punta del Diablo, Uruguay
the town of a few hundred residents swells to over twenty thousand for the tourist season. As the week went on you could almost feel the tension building in this little fishing community without paved roads turned ramshackle resort. Each day a few more cars driving by, a little longer of a line at the store, a few more umbrellas on the beach. The lifeguards showed up on our last day. A good sign it was time to move on.
And now we move on again. This time from Uruguay. From impromptu fish grilling and home-made Bailey’s; from terere circles on windy beaches amongst confused mate drinkers and sunburnt shoulders; from meals thrown together for a dozen people tastier then anything you could ever find in a restaurant; from the restaurants that did have something to offer, like some of the best beef on the planet or a little old lady rolling out pumpkin-filled raviolis in leek sauce; from a tranquilo place I selfishly hope few more people will find out about.
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