Equipo Williams

About a week ago, we camped in Parque Nacional Cabo Polonio. It is a national park on the east coast of Uruguay with a town called Cabo Polonio inside of it, hence the name. Cabo Polonio is a very small, cute town, with very cozy tiny houses. This doesn’t mean that the houses are tiny homes, per say, it just means that each house is about ten feet by twenty feet, so small. There are a few heladerias, (ice cream shops), and many restaurants with delicious seafood. The main attraction of the town however, are the Lobos, meaning Sea Lions. 

There are at least a hundred of them on the rocky area next to the beach, as well as many, many more on a few islands off the coast. The sea lions swam, played, and mostly slept on the rocks and in the waves, which was pretty magical to watch. I know they are called sea lions, but I would probably call them not lions, but bears. This is because, when they flop around, they looked a bit like bears running, bobbing up and down in the same way, but they also sound a bit like bears. All of the adult lions were sleeping, but the younger ones and the “teenage” lions were playing and making noises, having generally a lot of fun. 

We walked along the coast, next to the rocks where the lobos were, and saw many dead sea lions, which was not only gross, but sad as well. Syd got really interested in digging up the bones of these lions, which, judging by his usual  behavior of whimpering and looking away from bones and dead things, was to me a bit surprising. We saw recently deceased animals as well, which was disgusting, since you could smell them and their rotting dead bodies. Blech. 

As you might have guessed, the park was on the coast and fairly isolated from anything else. I assume because of conservation reasons that they didn’t want any tourist’s cars to come to the town, so the method of transportation we used to get to the town was pretty interesting. They have these huge double decker safari trucks that take you in on the bumpy sand road. It felt like a roller coaster on the way there, but it got better. On the way back, we rode at the top and in the back, so the ride really did feel like a roller coaster, especially because Syd’s seatbelt wasn’t working. All in all, Cabo Polonio was a really cool experience and I’m glad we went there and saw the lions.