Al Cabo

This isn't the name of a Uruguayan gangster, but it means 'to the cape'. Today I headed from the capital to Cabo Polonio, a legendary remote village up the Atlantic coast, not far from Brazil.

The journey was relaxing. The landscape is fairly flat but extensive dunes spread from the beaches and morph into grasslands used to feed livestock, one of Uruguay's mainstays. Where the dunes have built up mature vegetation (at school the word 'climax' was used to describe this process, to endless hilarity as a teenage boy), the scenery is very pleasant. One town name struck me as amusing: Pan de Azúcar, which literally translates as Sugar Bread.

Cabo is off-grid in that it's not connected to electricity or water mains. Obviously people have done clever things with generators and wifi. There is no proper road access, and it's only reached by trekking through the dunes for a few hours or riding in a modified beach buggy. This lack of infrastructure has been a conscious decision by the inhabitants to reduce the danger of explosive tourism growth, and to encourage sustainability.

This strategy appears to have worked, if the presence of wildlife is an indicator, which it should be. Uruguay has important breeding colonies of fur seals and sea lions, including on islets offshore from Cabo Polonio, and along the rocky headland next to the village. It only took a few minutes of barefoot scampering to see huge numbers of these impressive beasts, the air full of short-tempered honking and punctuated by the stench of rotting carcasses. This is birthing month for pups but as of now, most of the females seem to be basking on the rocks in their pregnant states. A few males hauled themselves out of the water as I watched, their bulk and ferociousness truly awe-inspiring.

In countless other examples of rapid tourism growth around the world, this wildlife wouldn't be surviving so close to development, at least in such a natural-feeling form. It's reason to believe that promoting tourism doesn't have to totally trash the environment.

Cabo Polonio itself takes on various identities. Originally a community of fisher families' shacks, in peak season as it is now, it resembles a hippy commune, the set of a show like Shipwrecked or a music festival. Structures are all fairly transient-looking but there is a lot of entrepreneurial spirit to ensure tourism revenue flows whilst not transforming the surroundings radically. It'll be a tranquil place to spend a few days and I'm looking forward to getting lost in the dunes, and staring at seals.

In the evening, the rustic atmosphere in the hostel intensified with some Argentinian live music and then I went with a group of 21-year olds from northern Argentina, Diego, Gero and Javier, to a party on the beach where people were passing around near whisky and being over-awed by what was some very lacklustre hula-hooping. It was excellent hearing the views of these guys on Argentinian politics and socialism.