Cabo Polonio

People have used this stretch of coast for thousands of years, hunting sea lions from the cape long before Spanish colonisation. The reefs and islands caused many shipwrecks; the place is named after José Poloni, captain of a Spanish ship that ran aground here in 1753 with all of its crew surviving. The lighthouse was completed in 1881, and the first permanent homes were built nearby by sea lion hunters and fishing families. Commercial sea lion hunting continued under state control for much of the 20th century until it was banned in 1992.

From the 1960s, young nature lovers began to discover the remote settlement behind the dunes, and tourism slowly became the main activity. The area has been protected in stages: a forest reserve in 1942, a natural monument for the dunes in 1966, part of the Bañados del Este biosphere reserve and a Ramsar site, and since 2009 a national park in Uruguay's National System of Protected Areas (SNAP), covering about 25,800 hectares of land and sea.

Only a small number of people live at Cabo Polonio all year, many of them from fishing families; the 2023 census counted 128 residents, while thousands of visitors arrive in summer. Most houses are only used in the holiday season. Residents have generally preferred to keep the village off the power grid, and much of its appeal lies in that simpler, slower way of living. A handful of restaurants, grocery shops and an artisans' fair serve visitors.