Isla Gorriti and Isla de Lobos: the two islands offshore
Andante notes · 6 min read
Two islands sit in front of the peninsula, and you cannot visit them the same way. Gorriti is a fifteen-minute crossing: you spend the day there and come back in the afternoon. Isla de Lobos is a boat trip that circles the island and never touches it. Since August 2024 it has been a national park, and landing is banned by decree.
- Where boats leave
- The port of Punta del Este, tickets on the dock
- Crossing time
- 15 minutes; the island is about 2 km out
- Departures to Gorriti
- Every half hour from 9 am, weather permitting
- Fare
- $500 return, about US$ 12; children 3 to 9, $400
- Isla de Lobos
- A boat trip of about two hours, 8.1 km offshore
- Landing on Lobos
- Banned by decree since August 2024
How to get to Isla Gorriti
By boat, from the port. Tickets are sold on the dock itself: the crossings are run by Dimar Tours and Crucero Samoa, the two companies with an office in the harbour. The trip takes about fifteen minutes and lands at Puerto Cañón, a small pier on the east side of the island.
Boats leave every half hour from nine in the morning, and the last one back leaves the island around 6.15 pm. Return times are handed out in staggered slots when you buy the ticket, so that the whole island does not come back on the same run. All of it depends on the weather: wind, swell or a low tide stops the crossing, so outside January and February it is worth calling before you plan the day around it.
The return fare is $500 a head, about US$ 12, and $400 for children between 3 and 9; under 3 travel free. Those are the prices the companies published in September 2026 and they rise with the season: treat them as an order of magnitude, not as a tariff.
The same dock is where the narrated Andante walk across the peninsula passes: the port is one of its stops, and what is now the boat basin was the fishermen's harbour for decades.
What is on Isla Gorriti
Two beaches, a pine wood and the ruins of a fort. On the west side is Playa Honda, where the sailing boats anchor and where the beach bar opens in summer; on the north side, Puerto Jardín, more sheltered. The water is the same calm bay water as on the Mansa, and in season the Maldonado lifeguard brigade keeps a post on the island, as it does along the rest of the coast.
Sand paths run from the pier into the pines. There is no village, no shop and no cash machine: the island is a nature reserve and a national historic site, which is why nothing may be built on it. Bring what you would bring to the beach, a chair, an umbrella, a cool box, water and food. The one thing expressly forbidden is lighting a fire. Out of season, with the beach bar shut, whatever you did not bring is not there.
The island that kept its prisoner's name
The island carries the surname of Francisco Gorriti, a Spanish commander and chief of Montevideo in the first half of the eighteenth century, who had a fort built there to hold back the Portuguese advance on the River Plate. What fixed the name, though, was not the building work: in 1752 Gorriti himself spent a year imprisoned on the island for refusing to take part in a military expedition against the region's indigenous people, and the imprisonment became better known than the fort.
Maldonado was defended by seven stone batteries: three on the coast and four out here, crossing fire over the bay. They were tested in 1806, when the British arrived, and they failed: the squadron landed out of range of the guns and took the shore batteries from behind. Only the island held, and it held until the ammunition and the food ran out. After the surrender it served for a while as a British cemetery.
Two more things, in case someone asks on the boat. Pedro Medrano was born on the island on 26 April 1769 and ended up a deputy at the Congress of Tucumán that declared Argentine independence. And the wood that covers it today dates from the end of the nineteenth century: after the fire that stripped the island, the first mayor of Maldonado, Juan Gorlero, the man the avenue is named after, had maritime pines planted.
Isla de Lobos: you look, you do not land
The other island is much further out and nothing like the first one. It is 43.5 hectares of rock 8.1 kilometres offshore, with a 1.3-hectare islet beside it and a score of rock outcrops around them: the southernmost piece of land in Uruguay, and home to the colony of fur seals and sea lions that the port only hints at. Which is which, and how many there are of each, is a story of its own.
Since August 2024 the island, the islet and some 40 km² of sea around them have been the Isla e Islote de Lobos national park, the first entirely oceanic area in the Uruguayan protected-areas system. The decree that created it expressly bans landing visitors for recreation or tourism, the rocky perimeter included, and also the use of the airspace below 500 metres for recreational or commercial purposes, which in plain words means no drones either.
If anyone offers to put you ashore on Isla de Lobos, they are selling something the decree forbids. The trips circle it by water and come back; nobody sets foot on the island, or on the rock beside it.
The lighthouse in that picture is the tallest in South America: 59 metres, one flash every five seconds, visible about 40 kilometres away. It was first lit in 1858, rebuilt in 1906 and has run unmanned since 2001. It is the far light blinking out at sea at night, while the lighthouse in town is the one you can walk up to.
2 km
Isla Gorriti
You cross and spend the day.
8.1 km
Isla de Lobos
You circle it and stay aboard.
The Isla de Lobos trip: how long it takes and what it costs
It leaves from the same port, lasts about two hours and a quarter, and consists of exactly that: sailing out to the island, going round it and coming back. It is not a transfer, it is an excursion: the boat sails once the group fills up, with a minimum of eight passengers, and the best season the companies themselves advertise runs from December to May. The price published in September 2026 is around $3,000 an adult, some US$ 75, again as an order of magnitude rather than a tariff.
Two warnings before you pay. The first is that out there it is open ocean and not the bay: if you get seasick, better to know beforehand. The second is a matter of calendar: southern right whales pass along this coast between July and October, and they are watched from the shore or with operators registered for it, which is not the same thing as this trip.
If you have just arrived and the islands are one part of the plan rather than the whole of it, the rest is in the note on what to do in Punta del Este, and the two shores of the resort in the one on the beaches.
Questions that come up
How do you get to Isla Gorriti?
By boat from the port of Punta del Este. Tickets are sold on the dock, the crossing takes fifteen minutes and boats land at Puerto Cañón, on the east side of the island.
What does it cost and when do the boats leave?
$500 return for an adult, about US$ 12, and $400 for children between 3 and 9, at the prices published in September 2026. They leave every half hour from 9 am and the last one back leaves the island around 6.15 pm.
Can you go to Isla Gorriti in winter?
You can, but the crossing depends on the weather and on there being passengers, and the beach bar at Playa Honda opens in summer. Out of season it is worth calling the company before going down to the port.
Can you swim at Isla Gorriti?
Yes, at Playa Honda and Puerto Jardín: it is bay water, without waves. In season there is a lifeguard post on the island; outside it there is none, as along the rest of the coast.
What should you take?
The same things you would take to the beach: a chair, an umbrella, a cool box, water and food. There are no shops beyond the summer beach bar, and fires are not allowed.
Why is it called Gorriti?
After Francisco Gorriti, the Spanish commander who had it fortified in the eighteenth century and who in 1752 spent a year imprisoned on it for refusing to join a military expedition. In the end it was the prison that gave the island its name.
Can you land on Isla de Lobos?
No. Since August 2024 it has been a national park and the decree bans landing visitors for tourism or recreation, the rocky perimeter included. The trips go round it by boat.
How much is the Isla de Lobos trip?
Around $3,000 an adult, some US$ 75, at the price published in September 2026. It lasts about two hours and a quarter, sails with a minimum of eight passengers, and the season the companies advertise runs from December to May.
Can you see sea lions without taking a boat?
You can, and for nothing: they live in the port all year, a few metres from the fish stalls. Where and what time to see them depends on the fishing fleet coming back, not on opening hours.
While you wait for the boat
The crossing leaves from the port, and the port is the middle of the peninsula, not the end of it. «La otra Punta del Este» is a narrated walk that crosses from the ocean side to the river side, passes right through here and finishes by the water, told by Graciela, who was born in this town when it was a fishing village. You find out what stood on this bay before the towers did, and a good deal more.
One hour · 3.8 km · no app, it opens in the browser · no group and no schedule · $U 199 ≈ US$ 5 · narrated in Spanish
Photos: Juan Pablo Orradre (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Alvaro Errandonea (CC BY 3.0) · Sandra Pineda Arce La Torre (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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