La Gaia

Houses in rural Uruguay seldom have house numbers. If I were explaining to someone how to get to our house, I would say - take Ruta such and such, turn at kilometer marker blah blah, turn right on the gravel road and we are in La Gaia. That is a perfectly acceptable description of our address. Almost all houses in small towns and rural areas have names rather than numbers. Ours is named La Gaia. The name means Mother Earth and was bestowed upon the property by its owners, who live in the U.S. and hope to retire here in the not too distant future.

The property is on 5 hectares (about 12 acres) with a rustic but cozy 2 bedroom house. The house is made of wood, which is a rarity in Uruguay. Most houses we have seen are made from concrete blocks covered with plaster.

For heat, we have a small wood stove in the main bedroom and a fireplace in the living room. It is early summer now and we won't be needing a heat source for quite some time.

Our water comes from a community well. The water is pumped from the well into a huge holding tank in our back yard. Thanks to this arrangement, if the power to the pumps should fail, we would still have a reserve of water, possibly enough to last several days.

It is peaceful and idyllic. That comes at a price of convenience though. If it's 10pm and we're hungry for dinner with nothing in the fridge, we have a 25 minute drive into town. But that is what we are here for, peace and quiet. We have that in abundance.