Scary storm and potential good news

It looked like a horizontal twister or something, and when it started pounding us I have to confess I got a bit scared. In the end, no damage, and a good chance to test the windows for leaks. I doubt that it can get much worst than the amount of rain that fell yesterday, or the wind-strength (Uruguay´s classic horizontal rain).

First we had the big scary twisting cloud come through...

Then all hell broke loose...


The poor garden guys had to seek cover in our barbeque area for about half an hour before they returned to work... Rather than declare it a "rained out day" they went back at it for hours after the worst part of the storm, even though it was still raining on and off...

Then, sun again, and even a couple of rainbows to end the day on a good note.



Onto the good news. After a very eventful day (semi-stalking of my friend Tamara by a local who approached her at the otherwise empty beach early in the morning, and mentioned he had "seen"us yesterday in our pool, later befriending by Tamara of 3 other cute guys at the beach of which she approved, heavy traffic at the house between garden people, pool people, cleaning lady, etc.), while I was trying to nap after the storm to rest a bit from so much excitement, I heard Tamara, ever the friendly one, welcoming a female voice to the house. I got up, went down and was introduced to a lady (American residing in Punta for the past 30 years or so, former owner of a restaurant I used to love) who came to introduce herself as "your new neighbor" and to inform us she had purchased four lots including 2 hideous houses to be demolished and replaced with a house in the style of ours. This is like winning the lotto for us, as the two existing houses on the lower end of our block are quite an eyesore to us, and the empty lots around them always a question mark, instilling fear of further ugly construction...

Also, her and her Uruguayan husband were such nice people that it was great to know they´re our new neighbors, intending to live here year round, rather than having four small and ugly empty beach houses, having a single house with lots of landscaped land around it, and inhabited by cool people!

A further boost to my ego was her statement that they had always loved the area but had decided to go ahead with this project after they saw our house and the fact that we had almost one acre of land between the 3 plots. This is validation for all I had theorized but without any proof that my reasoning was right every time I went ahead and bought another plot. (Why do you need another plot? To raise the value of the land around me and ensure that other people are encouraged to build on more than one plot, keeping the density of the block low, preserving and improving the views with more greenery.)

Anyway, we have to wait and see what comes through in the end, but I have high hopes, as they even asked to contact our architect. Funny thing was that I was suggesting this same investment to other people until a couple of days ago, and someone I didn´t know went ahead and did it. Now I think I will try to buy more land on the block if it comes up for sale...