Then again, we may go with the outdoor solar-panel heated pool...

This way, the "annex" doesn't need to be so large and costly (it's virtually another house as planned right now), and we can have the pool ready by the time we return in September...

What if...

Yes, I am crazy, the house is not yet finished, and I am already planning the next stages. So what if we add an indoor swimming pool? If we did so, the cost of the building housing it would be quite extravagant for non-rich people like us, so we better justify it by adding a guest apartment upstairs. Which brings the whole thing to the size of another house. About 200 m2 or so.

Well, we are starting to bounce ideas with Fabián and Luis, our architects, who seem very unexcited by our requirement that the pool is to be heated with solar panels. These are the first renderings they have sent us. We want the second volume closer to the main house, with the decks-bridge joining both buildings to serve as car port. There will be windows, of course. Downstairs will be the pool, and upstairs probably an all-purpose room with a bathroom, or a bedroom, a living area and bathroom. We´ll see what the final design looks like in a few weeks.

Latest progress before contractors' holidays...

The downstairs barbeque area

Barbi stands at the far end of the living-room. Uncovered beams are the structure for the deck.

View towards the kitchen, starting where the organge pipe thingie is...

Fireplace still unfinished

View of bedroom windows facing the forest

Floor boards in the living room/kitchen

Margarita in guest bedroom


Standing in the virtual living-room by the fireplace

Sunday at Tartaruga

Tartaruga is our favorite restaurant in the neighborhood, actually, about 5 km away in Punta Colorada... It's very rustic, great food, and the views are fantastic. We had lunch there after the beach.

This catamaran has been "parked" right across from our apartment for several days. Photos in the evening and in the morning...

Progress on the living-room/kitchen floor...

They are finally putting the pre-floor boards on! They look iffy, but we were actually able to stand on them. I was terrified, Barbi was very comfortable walking on them. This is the layer that goes before the actual wooden slats that will make the floor.





View of the living-room from the kitchen. The fireplace has evolved too, as I found out yesterday from Fabian. They will put cold-air intakes underneath the fire-pit, and two vents higher up on either side of the chimney to blow out the heated air. This way we may get away with no extra heating for the living-room.



The refrigerator and some kitchen cabinets will sit against a wall that will run along those two iron beams.

Our bedroom floor. Well, this is the layer on top of a layer of styrofoam that sits on the concrete slab. On top of this will go the heating fixtures (coils?) which will again be covered by another layer of cement, and then finished off with a layer of micro-cement (ultrafine cement). The same cement will go on walls and floors in the bathroom, in gray color on floors and ceiling, and white on walls.

Pre-season jitters

My brother solemnly declared to me yesterday that "Punta del Este is empty." I spent five minutes explaining to him that never before have there been so many people here (and from so many different places) in the months of October, November, Dec. So he switched to "But there are no Argentines." My arguments refuting this were manyfold, from "who cares" to "there are, too" or "they are diluted among all the people from other places."

It's not just my brother though. Around this time of the year, freaking out about the season is everybody's favorite sport, just as it is customary to have an Argentine government go all out trying to discourage anyone from crossing to Uruguay. In the end, barring the crises that crop up every 8 years or so, they all come anyway.

So, my prediction for this season: better than ever in the history of Punta. I base this on:

• My irrepressible optimism
• Sales at our stores
• The number of Europeans/Americans/Non-Argentine Latin Americans on the streets of Punta since I arrived in October
• Expected cruise-ship visits
• The ever-growing number of houses and condos
• The huge free publicity received by Punta del Este in the travel press around the world, it would seem it was the "new" place to write about in 2006
• The strength of regional economies
• Etc., etc

Let's see in March how things went...