Powering Down to Power Up The Adventure

I triple dare you to stay a week in a town with no electricity, no running water, where the only way to reach it is by walking 7km or by horse or by an all-terrain vehicle through the sand dunes.

What’s your answer???

I did go, and needless to say it is an amazing place! The name? Cabo Polonio. Where? On the east Atlantic coast of Uruguay.

The only thing that runs there is the wind. There aren’t many people and they’re not at all runners. They are quite the opposite. Time doesn’t exist there, it’s like a magic town with only 70 inhabitants. There are more, if you count the sea-lions! Colonies of fur seals and sea lions live on the islands adjacent to the cape. The rocky area of ​​the cape is home to the only continental settlement of fur seals in the country.

A handful of fishermen and artisans call this place home, the numbers increase as the tourist season unfolds. Without electricity in the town, the nights reveal a canvas of stars, inviting wonder. Those who escape here for summer find solace in the embrace of nature, cherishing the simplicity and beauty that surrounds them.

Cabo Polonio is well known for it special air in the area, full of iodine.  As soon as you are there, you smell it, and it’s a lovely sensation to take deep breaths. It has sandy beaches, dunes, rocky points, native coastal forest, wetlands, ocean environments and islands.

The name Polonio comes from the shipwreck of a ship with the same name on 31^st January, 1735.

When I went with my family we went to Valizas (the nearest small town to Cabo Polonio). We took the all-terrain lorry – I would have never dared to walk 7km with two small children – and firstly we crossed the Valizas stream on a small boat. Once on the other side, we took the all-terrain lorry and felt we were part of one of the Indiana Jones’ films! It was amazing and terrifying at the same time to be driven through tall sand dunes. It was like driving into another world when we got there. If you’d ask me just one word to describe it I think it would be: peace.

We spent a day there as we were spending some days at a nearby town but would have loved to stay there for at least a week. The problem is that once you have got used to just live in such a simplicity you start loving it and would maybe never want to go back to reality. That’s also when you realise how dependent we are in modern life. I invite you, my dear reader, to make a stop, take a deep breath and consider if you really need all the expensive gadgets that surround you. Do you think you could live without them?

To finish, as I started, I triple dare you to (at least) think about it!