Uruguay’s Cabo Polonio is both a stunning hellhole and a hideous wonderland, rife with thieves, drugs, poets, and hippy backpackers just aching to steal your milk.

Cabo Polonio has one tienda. The owner, Rigo, has the monopoly; meat, produce, red wine... he's the guy. There is another tienda, but it's fifty kilometres away, so, fuck that. Cabo Polonio has one bar. The owner, Waldo, has the monopoly; beer, grappa, cocaine. Again, fifty kilometres, fuck that. Smatterings of what resemble other establishments exist also. Two hostels, a boarded-up restaurant, and a dotted landscape of odd looking structures some might call houses. Electricity is restricted to the early evenings, internet is unheard of, and access by road… don't be stupid.

Here, in this picturesque Uruguayan hamlet, things are fine, if a little tense — with zero ability to check the football results, there is only a finite amount of perfect sunsets a man can take. I pull up a chair at a rickety plastic table supplied by Coca-Cola, a notion juxtaposing the natural beauty of the landscape. Chatting with uppity European backpackers, yawning at the hipster braggadocio on subjects such as wine, cheese, and coffee, I notice that the usual unspoilt beach has become contaminated. From the Brazilian north, a lone silhouette staggers up a small sand dune beelines towards us. A lump forms in my throat; who is this guy? Another acoustic-guitar weilding hippy? A knife-weilding psychopath? Both? Regardless, my route to Cabo Polonio now seems rather boring in comparison: bus from Montevideo to Rojas, change to the Chuy bus, ask the driver to drop me on the highway in front of the National Park office, stand around looking lost for ten minutes, figure out that I must pay five dollars at he office that for all intents and purposes looks deserted, then either walk for two hours over the sand dunes the water appears, or, preferably, catch a lift in the tray of a monster truck that's designed to trample Mother Earth into a state of 1950's housewife submission. Boring as batshit.

The figure looms large in his sudden approach, and this makes me nervous. I’m a writer. I don’t like people. A Chileno national who calls himself Tetrix plucks an a-minor ballad on a beat-up guitar, apt in my hesitation to accept reality while I’m white-knuckling the table. A Dutch motherfucker plucks a guitar too. He sucks. He stole my milk and thinks he’s Bob Dylan. Actually, the similarities between the two are quite present; Bob Dylan can’t sing either. Opposite me, a long-haired Italian communist hogs the weed. Hannah, a lesbian, sits next to him, and I want to fuck the man-hate right out of her. Luis, the hostel owner, excuses himself as a drunk Dane throws a plastic chair into the bonfire. And the ominous figure looms and lengthens, transforming his silhouette into an actual human, drunk, swaying, a bottle of half-drunk tannat swinging loosely in his right hand. ”Obrigado!”, he says. I don’t know what that means.

Turns out Daniel is a Brazilian from Sao Paolo, and after a three-day bender has decided to cross the border and walk down the beach until he hit something. An affable chap, oozing gregariousness and drunken philosophy, a Latino Hemingway of sorts, he immediately controls the direction of our conversation and how the evening may, or may not, pan out. First, we must burn a shitload of meat. Off to Rigo’s. A slab of horse and two bottles of wine later, I’m debating the merits of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with some English guy who smells of potato chips and sun-ripened vinegar. Douglas Adams must be credited with the invention of the internet. That’s all I’m sayin’.

Tetrix sidles up beside me and places his hands on my shoulders. With a wobbling head, he signals that he would like a private conversation, and abruptly yanks me into the pitch black. My sphincter clenches. Ain’t nothin’ about to go up there. “We should do some blow”, he says. “Will be a nice way to spend our final night here.” And me, scoffing, saying, “Whaadaya think I’m in South America for? The culture?” And he says, “Well, put some pants on and let’s go.”

Joined by the Brazilian Hemingway, we blindly follow a snaking trail into the opaque nighttime. Ripping my pants on a nail on a gate that I inexplicably climbed over rather that opening it and walking through, I swear that I’m going to “Do more blow than Maradona.”

Waldo’s bar is a love affair between cramp and dinge. Lacking a roof, it has no toilets, and is run by the seediest looking motherfucker imaginable who, as it turns out, is one very seedy motherfucker. Tetrix and I follow Waldo into a dark room and make the deal. Now we’re seedy motherfuckers too. At fifteen bucks a gram, we make many more trips to the dark room. Waldo allows us to snort straight off the counter. Mirrors are too passe for Cabo Polonio. There are no police, and the drunk at the bar couldn’t have given a stuff. Enter Alvaro.

Alvaro is a poet. Old. He owns a boy toy and refuses to allow us to speak to him. Tall, dressed like a plumber, boy toy is Alvaro’s muse. Alvaro also claims to have invented the phrase, I think, therefore I am. Seems Descartes is a damn plagiarist.

Under no delusion, I quickly realise that Alvaro is our friend solely due to free coke on offer. I assume he leeches onto every coke-snorting backpacker he sees. But who cares? It’s an honour to have my wallet bled dry under the banner of this unique environment by an old local poet. After all, isn’t that what we writers do?

The five of us waffle on for a few hours, pretentiously debating each other's perceptions of Tibetan spirituality, improvising spoken word poetry, and of course, powdering our noses. Then the Dutch motherfucker rolls in. I despise the Dutch at the best of times, but this guy, in this isolated situation, lord have mercy. Understanding that all he wants is a free line, I go all snooty high-school girl and screw up my face while twirling my hair. He ain’t bogarting my drugs, that’s for damn sure. He stole my milk!

Ultimately, Waldo closes up, so Alvaro suggests we all go back to his house to continue the party. As we’ve been talking about poetry for much of the evening, he now wants us to read some of his work. The real reason? He wanted more coke.

Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven’ sound weird in Spanish, and once I explain that the meter is all wrong and the poem is supposed to rhyme, Alvaro throws the book into the fire. Still in the beta phase of my Spanish language journey, I enjoy the confidence boost that comes with each glorious line of coke. Spanish spews from my mouth like a South American football commentator, and when both Tetrix and Daniel compliment me on my skills, I tell them that I’ve been speaking Spanish for years. Who knew that cocaine turned people into absolute bullshitters?

It's a microscopic, incestuous world, Cabo Polonio. This very morning, while on my daily walk to hang with the seal colony, I’d been admiring a particular house for its unusual structure, nauseating colour scheme, and foxhole mezzanine. This house, turned out to be Alvaro's.

To see inside the house was a stone cold trip. No straight angles, a circular kitchen, and a mezzanine level designed to fit one person only. Writings and homoerotic paraphernalia litters the main room which houses many cigarette butts. On the wall, etched in Spanish and written in English, are those famous words, I think, therefore I am. Proof Alvaro must be the inventor.

Daniel, Tetrix, Alvaro, Boy Toy, and I sit around some octagon coffee table, hoovering up lines like a 1950’s housewife. Finally, surise hits, and me, I’ve had enough. Quite ironic that at the precise moment I run out of cocaine and money that I would decide that I also want to go to bed. Regardless, many friendships have been sealed.

As five becomes three once more, we stroll the beach for a while, desperately clinging to a wonderful succession of hours that of course, must inevitably end. Daniel and I wrestle on the beach. He wins.

All is rare and all is beautiful, and as the sun rises over the unspoilt horizon, the coke wears off and I throw up, commanding Daniel and Tetrix to fuck off and never touch me again. I’m a writer. Unless under the influence of a mood enhancer, I really don’t like people.