Meet the sea

Among the 85 rural schools in Tacuarembó is "El Paraíso", the school attended by Lucía, who is in her final year of elementary school. Together with her classmates and their teacher, María, she is about to take part in an unforgettable experience: seeing the sea for the first time in her life. For many rural communities, the sea is a place that feels incredibly distant, both geographically and in everyday experience. The vast ocean that washes Uruguay’s southern coast—a landscape so familiar to many of us that it often goes unnoticed—is, for others, little more than an illusion.