Lego for grown-ups

OK, so it´s all Randy´s fault who´s been pestering me asking for info on building with containers in Uruguay. I once happened to mention that my brother has a set up with two 40 footers for caretakers home and storage, laid out parallel to each other and with a detached roof covering both of them and generating a covered patio in between, which prompted Randy´s enquiry, and brought the subject up, where it has remained in the back of my mind for a couple of months already.

Now that we have empty land in Barra de Portezuelo (near Punta Negra) and Las Grutas (Punta Ballena), little money, and worst of all, NO ONGOING BUILDING PROJECT, when talking to a shipper this week I remembered to ask about the containers for Randy, and I seem to have opened a can of worms. It just so happened that this shipper was somehow connected to Multicontainer, the Uruguayan company that sells and customizes containers for other non-shipping uses.

The results of the initial enquiry were that a dry, non customized 40-footer costs USD2,600 plus delivery which all the way to Punta del Este is about USD500. Of course, this needs some sort of foundation, connection to utilities (water, sewage, electric), plus all the adaptation work and materials. Because they said that the prices for their finished products depend on the configuration, I have obtained an estimate for a standard 40-footer turned into a 2 bedroom dwelling, with a basic kitchenette (no appliances, this is Uruguay) and bathroom with no water heater.

The design, materials and finishes are pretty horrible if you are design-conscious, and very correct if all you need is inexpensive shelter. With vinyl walls and ceilings, awful kitchen and bathroom fixtures, small ugly windows and doors, and the most insteresting I think, the original wooden floors of the container refinished (more on this later), the price quoted, tax included with delivery and placement on the spot with a crane comes out to about USD12k.

These are pictures from the other company making the containers, Frimaral, but they are indicative of the depressing design that seems to rule in Uruguay container homes... nothing like the www.fabprefab.com fare...

Up to yesterday I was wondering how much I´m able to blow this price to smithereens... I always fantasize about being able to be thrifty-cool, but it happens on few occasions, such as with our kitchen cabinetry, which is thrifty cool, mostly, except for the expensive granite countertop. But then Randy on the Southron forum mentioned this other company, Frimaral, and their website would suggest that a) they manufacture the actual containers, and b) they are able to do with them whatever you want, unlike the other company that told me that joining vertically stacked containers was a problem, and c) my guess is that based on their size and manufacturing capacity, their prices may be lower.

I was further encouraged by the pictures on the site showing openside containers, which come with those sexy looking industrial doors. I had been thinking "too bad, those doors are so cool but they´re located at the end of the container. But no, they can be installed on any side! That means great views potential and full safety/weather protection.


Amazing doors! Am in love....

So now the challenge is to come up with something thrifty cool to dump on the lot where the pool is, to contain a storage room (Barbi´s tool room!), a bathroom and a large room that can be extra guest quarters, or gym/spa area. No, I´m not building a yoga room.

A most important function will also be to serve as wind barrier for the pool lot, which is so windswept that I have referred to it as "the steppes." If we somehow create a barrier that can give trees and plants a chance to grow, then slowly we will be able to expand a green barrier. Another potential use to this is to serve as the support for solar panels to heat the pool eventually. They would face North, which is where they have to face (in the southern hemisphere) and i would not be messing with the actual house´s roof, or just plunking them on the ground, which I´m not too excited about.

The Setai is alive!

Well, I thought that after who knows how many years from the original noise, the whole project was dead. In fact, if I remember correctly, some investor(s) had pulled out. Maybe with things so bubbly now they decided to give it another go, or maybe they were dealing with licenses and such all along. Whatever. Welcome back Setai is what I say. All the more so if, like the WSJ says today,

"Between $110 million and $130 million will be spent on the development, with plans to build a luxury compound including a spa, 10 cabana hotel suites and 40 private houses on the La Juanita beach and in the nearby woods. About a mile up the road, the 300-acre Laguna Escondida project is planning a 70-room hotel and 240 housing lots."


On other matters, I have to say that after about 40 days of being in our new house, we feel soooo priviliged to be living where and how we're living. The house gets nicer by the day. The last pieces of furniture and missing curtains have arrived, we now have two couches, a nice LCD TV, DirecTV, a cleaning woman who comes three times a week which is as much as I can handle the interaction (plus pool and garden people), a lawn that is getting nicer every day, and expanding into the non-lawn areas quite fast, a sweet dog that makes a big fuss when we come back home, and friends who come and spend the weekend or a few days of their vacations with us.

Not being on vacation myself, it makes me feel luckier than if I were. I punctuate my work-day with walks on the beach or along country paths (watching cows graze, the dog chase the hares, it's too bucolic) or swimming at the beach or in the pool. And "my office", overlooking forest and sea, from where I stare out the windows and watch the falcons chased by the swallows, the ducks flying, or any other of the myriad National Geographic scenes that unfold on an hourly basis.

I credit ourselves for our conscious choice to make this happen, against blank stares or outright discouragement by many people, but I also credit the success of our business for allowing us to build this house, and last but definitely not least, our architects' genius in making this house the way it is. I know we made a million little choices along the way, but they were all informed by their gentle prodding, or simply us choosing from options produced by them that we had never imagined or contemplated. Also, some things I was just informed of, in a no-nonsense kind of way, as in "The living-room roof is now 1.5 meters lower. Anything higher is out of the question." Now I look at my ceiling and think, "how could we ever have lived with 5m high ceilings if 3.5 feels sooo high?" I remember one very funny exchange with Fabian where he emailed me a list of questions for us to decide on 10 issues, in the form of "multiple-choice quiz." I was really proud when he said I scored 9 out of 10.

I talk about this house as if it were a huge palace, but no, it's just very simple, comfortable and as big as I could afford when we made it (only 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms). Still, as simple as it is, it literally stops traffic. Every day we get people driving straight into our car park and getting out to take pictures. We go from proud to annoyed to proud to annoyed, but in the end it's good news I think.

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...

New Year´s Eve

Our traditional program: a rushed dinner at my Mom's with family and friends, then a sprint down to the harbor for the countdown, and dancing until the knees gave in. New Year's Day in a coma after way too much champagne...

Mirtha and Coco

Cousin Nacho, Barbi and pretty pregnant Rosina
Lots of women in sexy dresses everywhere...

A very mixed crowd with lots of children and a few grannies as well

My brother Rafael commands the dance floor, well, the street

The Mirthas, Mom and Aunt

The count-down

My bubble

A word of advice: Stay away from them!

I left Uruguay about two decades ago because even as a teenager uruguayanness made my blood boil, and in order to return I have had to come up with certain "techniques" to prevent stress from ruining my health. You know how it is, whereas in a foreign land good manners and a certain detachment mean you can or should be benignly tolerant of certain questionable customs or actions of the locals, when it's your own country that tolerance is quickly replaced by full-blown indignation.

So our natural choice was to move to "Punta del Este" as it´s less Uruguay than the rest of Uruguay. The second step was to actually be "away from Punta" in a tiny corner of the coast basically unknown by everyone by it´s real name, which is Barra de Portezuelo, because the absence of people makes it less Uruguay than even Punta.

Another self-removal strategy is to abstain from reading the local papers. I only glance at the "Cities" section of El País on Sundays, on occcasion. This morning, seeing as there were lots of headlines about the economy for 2008 in Sunday's paper, I opened the "A" section to find the column by Andrés Oppenheimer, the top journalist Latin America has produced in my lifetime. The voice of reason. The guy can write, but more than anything, he has forged a career (based in the U.S.) doing the unthinkable in Latin America: bringing some common sense to all the folly that surrounds us, calling a spade a spade, something afforded only by the physical distance from his subjects, as otherwise his writings would have been dropped, his paper or TV station bombed or his person eliminated multiple times over the course of his career.

I digress. Still, Oppenheimer and all, I stick by my regime of not reading the papers. I do scan my Google-assembled patchwork of headlines and an occasional item in full, but that's more like entertainment, I try to keep it light. The tiger-mauled brothers, the disappeared Indian girl who reappeard after abandoning her Chicago-area husband, the Canoe Man saga, etc. More to do with "humanity" than with "current events."

Resutls: pretty good so far. When I go to civilization I'm in Punta del Este, a fantasyworld where most people are on vacation and where most of the "issues" I will hear about pertain to Argentina, so no biggie. The rest of the time, I am almost unaware -- in a frame by frame sense I mean -- of all the ridiculous or unreasonable things that could make me angry, stressed or bitter like some people I know who insist on "knowing" and cannot stop ranting about this or that.

The Middle East is blissfully far away now. Whereas until a couple of months ago I experienced the Middle East in the flesh -- by Middle East I mean that confluence of Islamic culture and eternal spring of never ending violence of all sorts -- now I perceive it as something remote, that faraway place where streets crawl with leering men, where people can't even pinpoint anymore why they're so angry or bitter, where bombs and killings are language, where the air is always thick with conflict of many sorts. I now remember it maybe once a week at the most, and I feel a twang of guilt at my mental hygiene process on account of the friends I have there, and of all the good things that are drowned by the bad, unfairly, but -- to pile the cliches -- the bottom line is that life is short.

Altogether, I firmly believe our new life and my newly-implemented techniques will be seriously health-enhancing. And my resolution for 2008 is to keep fine-tuning my bubble, which always seems to leak "real world" from one end or the other. Happy New Year.

My recently-visited-for-the-first-time restaurant reviews

Let me start the review with the happy ending to our pathetic Xmas eve. Christmas has never been a big thing in our home. My mom´s excuse is that since her mother died (in 1970!!!!!!!!) she lost the joy of it. However, truth is she never had her own Xmas, and neither did we. Then she opened a shop (in 1981) meaning Xmas Eve (in Uruguay you actually celebrate Xmas Eve and Xmas day is for recovering from the previous night´s excess) became the end of a very busy day. Then my brother opened his shops, and things got even worse. Couple that with my mom´s aversion to buying presents, ("Here, go spend $50 on each one" she would tell me on the 24th at 4pm pushing some money into my hands) and my refusal since last year to be the family last-second gift buyer, and things could hardly be worse.

But although in the end everything turned out OK, as pathetic Xmases go, this year we outdid ourselves. My mom´s insistence that I had to go to Punta for dinner "because at least we´ll all be together" overlooked the fact that a) there was no food at her house, and b) she had made no reservations. So at 10 PM we launched our tour of restaurants in Punta del Este, Barbi driving and cursing, Mom and I laughing at the ridiculous situtation. We started by the harbor, where there was not a single table to be had. The new Blue Cheese was closed, on Pedragosa Sierra, so I decided to try Floreal, a Punta classic that we never go to which was also packed, everyone looking so nice and well dressed and happy while we looked worn-out and hungry.

Finally, we decided to give a try to that restaurant we had passed that seemed to be half empty and which none of us had ever heard of. We were met at the door and explained the "system" which is pretty similar to a rodízio, the Brazilian steak houses where meat is brought in a never ending succession to the table. However, our host stressed the "very fresh variety of salads" and we were sold. Plus, it was 11 PM and had no other choice.

Well, the evening confirmed my brother´s comments when he arrived that "This is supposed to be the best meat place in all of Punta del Este." The salads were indeed fresh, and different from the usual fare in Uruguay. The home-made flavored breads were delicious, the meat was outstanding, and things had been done to it beyond slapping it against the parrilla (chicken with blah blah herbs, etc). The meats also came paired with bbqued fruits and vegetables, such as the pork matambre with bbqued pineapple and pears, which was outstanding. The french fries with scrambled egg on top were super crispy and delicious, and everything else, up to the desserts which included barbequed nectarines, was fantastic.

It cost something like USD100 per person, with wine and champagne, and although it was not cheap, it was worth it and I´m sure no more expensive than most places for that night or New Year´s Eve. We´ll go back and fast for the whole day, because at some point we had to send the waiter away without trying something that looked wonderful, some fried huge ravioli with ruccula and mozzarela...
Avenida Pedragosa Sierra yLa Paloma 480898-488260

We had another excellent dinner about a month ago in the hills over Las Flores, at Carumbé, which means turtle in some native language. It´s a little restaurant and tiny, 2 -room inn where chef Juan Pablo Capdepont cooks his high-end fare. I was a bit deceived, told by my friend Inés who was having a romantic weekend getaway at the inn that the food would be "criolla" or Uruguayan creole. Far from it, but the suprise was nonetheless positive. The food is of the fusion type, and all of it (we were four for dinner) was outstanding. I had curried rabbit something something, some cheeses, and the dessert I can´t even remember because we had two bottles of wine. Again, not cheap, probably USD50 per person, but well worth it. The place itself is very homey and cozy, with a view of the kitchen, and the chef´s wife and the chef himself do all of the table service. There are about 5 or 6 tables, so better make a reservation. According to my friend who had the brunch, it´s worth driving from Montevideo for. She said Capdepont claims to have opened the inn just to have an excuse to prepare brunch.

Carumbé, on the hills over Playa Verde, Ruta 73 at the Tarariras stream. No children allowed (043) 27093. Rooms are USD120 per night.
(Update, sadly chef Juan Pablo Capdepon died on Sunday, Jan. 13 in a car accident.)

And now to Piriapolis. We have been exploring the "neighborhood" quite a bit, trying out different places. The problem is many of the places in Piriapolis are of the everything on the menu variety, so you can´t get a feel for how good a place is until you´ve had both the parrilla and the pizza and the real food. We like Terranova, a corner in the same style of fare as La Pasiva, but which won us over with an excellent chivito al plato and olímpico sandwich. The pizza on another occasion was completely bland, not recommended.

At La Rotonda we had excellent cordero. Greasy and stinky and tender, the way I like it. A huge chunk. The salad was generous and had lots of ingredients, although in the classic Uruguayan style which is basically a pileup of vegetables and other food which then you have to turn into an edible salad yourself in another dish. Lots of work. Still, very reasonably priced, attentive if somewhat rough service, and we like it for what it is, a basic Uruguayan style eatery.

I´m a disaster as a reviewer because I don´t remember even the name of another place we went to on the rambla, not on a corner. We gave it points for being open on a Tuesday when most places were still closed. The decor was very Heidi style, with little wooden window-frames, checkered table-cloths, etc. It had a DVD playing of some really good Brazilian music show, which I loved, and the waiter was super. The food was OK, not great, and the price was a bit expensive we thought in relative terms, vs food quality, but still, sometimes ambience is a lot and that day it was the perfect place to be, watching the sunset after a storm. I´m sure we´ll go back.

The most recently visited place is Trattoria Da Piero, on the Punta Fria waterfront. It was jam packed last night, with large families (the three generation thing is big in the Piriapolis area, and lots of babies and toddlers screaming, a stroller gridlock, etc. Not my favorite kind of scene, but we were drunk from a caipiroska pre-dinner, so we dealt with it OK. The menu made us laugh, fusion gone mad, such as "entrecot con vegetales al wok con crema y tandoori" which had drunken me cracking throughout the dinner. I ordered a chicken "en reducción de bondiola con pure de papas y rucula" which was as tasty as it promised, but unfortunately the chicken came undercooked, and returned to me tough as a truck tire. Barbi´s plancha del mar, a fish and seafood medley looked cute and he says it tasted OK. My recommendation for this place is to go very early and sit on the terrace overlooking the sea, not inside where the big family action is. Prices were reasonable and staff and owners very eager to please, which gets points from me always.

On a decidedly negative note, last night, on our third attempt we finally found Tartaruga open. This place, in Punta Colorada, has an enviable location, on the tip of a point in the road overlooking a little lighthouse (not house, just a lantern on top of an iron structure) with sea views, etc. Cute wooden structure also. It used to have a great menu, about three years ago. However, they started reducing the menu season by season, to a point where now it is a plastic laminated single page of seafood and pasta, only two salads (they used to have a great selection of four or five) no beef or chicken dishes whatsoever, and the attittude of a 3-star Michelin rated place.

"Can you add carrot to the salad?" I once dared ask last year. "The chef does not allow anything off menu" was the answer, as I surveyed a completely empty restaurant, with us the only customers. I laughed last night when a lady in the table next to us dared ask for garlic and parsley on her fish. "The chef does not...." came the swift reply. In the end we chose to have a couple of capiroskas and drive to Punta Fria for dinner.

Closing the year with a couple of real estate deals

I don't know why it is that we are always moving or closing on real estate in the month of December, but when we think back, we notice that's the way it is.

First, my mom finally signed the purchase agreement for her Brava 28 condo. It's been several months in the making (we started negotiations when I was still in Turkey), but after much coming and going, she's got the best unit in the second nicest new building on the Brava side of Punta del Este. (The nicest being of course Vignoly's Aqua, but that, starting at $3 million, is beyond our budget.)

Mom shows my aunt where the sea views will stop... On the left, the built in parrillero, or bbq, nice as an outdoor fire pit even without cooking. The green lawn seen on the right is the roof of the gym and party room, smart that they covered it in grass... the two covered circles on the ground deck are jacuzzis.


when they finish building across the street. The views will be fine up to the palm tree on the left of the white building. Luckily, the new building across the street will have gardens and swimming-pool on the street sides, adding more green and water to our views.



So why is it the best unit? Well, the building is an inverted L shape if you see it from the road, and she is on the leg that is pushed back into the lot, about 50 yards away from the road (less traffic noise), protected from the winds by the other section of the building, and bathed in sunlight all day long either in the front, side or back of the apartment. Three exposures. Also, we chose the floor very carefully: the 2nd floor won over the 3rd floor, surprisingly, because the views on the second include a lot of green in the field of vision (from garden as well as the beach dunes), over just sea views on the third. Also, the terraces on the 2nd floor are all covered in hard wood, both walls and floor, while on the 3rd it's ceramic tiles. Ironically, 2nd is cheaper than 3rd, as usually at least in Punta condos are priced in ascending floor order.

The living room/dining room is pretty big, but my mom being my mom, she will knock down the wall to the master suite (there are three other suites, so no problem), which happens to be the corner with wrap-around terrace, and make it all living room, adding about 175 sq ft to the existing 460 sq ft of living and dining area, and most importantly, guaranteeing afternoon sun in the winter.

view of the bedroom that will become living-room... lots of sun and views of the landscaped houses on the side of the building.


The living room is a bit too long and narrow now (for our pain in the neck demanding tastes), but when we open up the master suite at the right side against the terrace, it will have tons more view and light and a friendlier L shape, rather than the corridor propotions it has now.
Sea views all the way from the kitchen in the back...
View of the breakfast area in the back of the kitchen, overlooking the Rincon del Indio forest and gardens...

On our more modest news, beyond the momentous moving into our house on Dec. 1, we have decided to buy out my Mom's share of the lot we purchased together in Punta Ballena last year. It just so happens that lots in that corner have gone up 100% since last year, so we decided we want to keep it as our future backup lot (for building if we sell our house, or if we win the lotto) and will lock in the price now before my Mom's share becomes unaffordable to us. After having secured a verbal agreement with her, we have just now put up for sale the other lot we bought last year in Barra de Portezuelo. I feel sad about it, because it's beautiful and we love it, but we own 3 adjoining lots now where our house is, and we can even sell two with the house and have one spare to build if we want, so it makes more sense to sell that one and buy out Punta Ballena before it becomes too pricey for us. We had been even thinking about buying another lot in Las Grutas (the Punta Ballena corner we like) that was $50k last year but I was just informed that one is gone and others on the same block are up to $100k, so this is the catalyst for selling our newest lot in Barra de Portezuelo. At its $35k asking price for a quarter acre, it seems so modest now... but our area is yet to become trendy, so it's a fair market price.

Barbi collecting flowers last year right after we bought it, from the back of the lot looking towards the sea...