Horcon

Horcon has this split personality that took me a whole afternoon to reconcile. Up until the 1950s it was a whaling station, and you can still see the bones of that history if you look, the old processing sheds, the harpoon displayed almost apologetically near the entrance to town, an elderly man who told us over empanadas that his grandfather worked the boats. Then in the sixties and seventies, artists and hippies started drifting in, drawn by the cheap rent and the cliffs, and the whole place quietly rewired itself into a crafts town.

Now the main street down to the cove is lined with stalls selling woven bags, lapis lazuli jewelry, hand-thrown ceramics, and enough dreamcatchers to make you wonder if you’d wandered into a different country. I found it charming rather than kitschy, mostly because it doesn’t feel performed. The vendors seem to actually live here, actually make the stuff, actually not care that much whether you buy it. We bought a small ceramic bowl from a woman who was more interested in telling us about her dog than closing the sale.

The cove itself is small and packed with brightly painted fishing boats that somehow still work the water every morning despite the tourist traffic overhead. We walked the cliff path north of town toward Cau Cau beach, past little seafood shacks perched right on the rocks, and stopped at one where a woman was frying empanadas de mariscos in a pan that looked older than me. Best five dollars I spent in the region, easily.

What I liked most, honestly, was how unbothered it all felt. Horcon doesn’t seem to be trying to become the next big coastal town. It’s got its rhythm, tourists in summer, quiet the rest of the year, fishermen who go out regardless. Lia said it reminded her of towns on the French Atlantic coast before everyone discovered them, and I think that’s about right.

When to go: Come on a weekday outside of January and February, when the crowds thin and you can actually hear the waves over the tourists.