Cabo Polonio
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Cabo Polonio is a small village located in the eastern coast of Uruguay in the Rocha Department. The place has the uniqueness of having no roads leading to it but is only about 7 km from the main highway. It is accessible by walking that distance through the dunes or by the services of 4x4 vehicles that provide a ride. There is no electricity or running water for the few hundred houses of this town. They make do by collecting rain water or from nearby water wells and using wind power and a few generators to power some of the posadas and groceries stores. There is a light house that gets power from the national grid.
Cabo Polonio sits on the tip of a moon-sliver peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean. On the back side, powerful waves relentlessly knock. But on the other side, on the inside of the moon, the water comes calmly to shore. At the top end, a lighthouse stands sure and straight over boulders tumbling into the sea. Two small, rocky islands dot the coast nearby.
This village principal attraction is the beautiful Atlantic beach, with very beautiful water and sand, a natural reserve of sea lions and one of the few mobile sand dunes, that is, that the sand is blown by the wind and moves around the sandy places so the dunes actually change their position. This is a unique phenomenon, but regrettably, during the military dictatorship in Uruguay it was decided to plant trees in a massive quantity, and this has produced severe damage because the wind is not allowed to blow freely and carry the sand, so it is thought that the dunes could disappear in the future.
The village land is shared by the Uruguayan government and private owners. The government wants to include the area into the SNAP (Sistema Nacional de Áreas Protegidas) National System of Protected Areas.
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