Pinamar
Pinamar is the reason for these stories.
We lived there for more than two years. It was paradise: a house in a pine forest within blocks from the beach and fine surfing. The open space sure beat a cramped city apartment for growing and energetic kids. They played out on the sandy lanes and in the forest. This helped keep us parents sane.
Then the crappy global economy forced us back to fast-paced Buenos Aires.
Can we get back to our paradise? That may be difficult. My son has autism and his needs exceed the services of the beach community.
At least for now.
We still spend summers in Pinamar, a relaxed life of barbeques, walks and the beach, plus a healthy bunch of friends and occasional run-ins with stray dogs out to get whatever is on our grill.
by Charles Newbery
Posted in: Pinamar
No lights, small town.
MY NEIGHBOR IN Pinamar is a dear friend. I met him on my second day in Argentina and we worked together at a ski resort in Bariloche. Then we worked together at a newswire in Buenos Aires. Some years ago we took a trip to Pinamar and decided to buy land next to each other. And so began our Pinamar adventure that continues today.
We were all there for the winter holidays last month, and we arrived to bad news: a robbery. The thieves, once largely limited to targeting tourists in summer, had taken a fancy to the houses of the year-rounders, many of them in our neck of the woods. Our neighbors demanded help. The town put on a team of cops to patrol. And we came to rest a bit better in the darkness of our pine forest on the beach.
Almost.
The darkness crept in and in the shadows lurked our fears. My friend, already with lights in his garden, installed yet more. Up went wood posts with lamps on top. They were spaced out in his garden-cum forest, shedding light into our garden that has been referred to by some as the mouth of the wolf for its darkness. My friend told me not to write about his lights as I have done before in Pine Tree Paradise. So I won’t. I won’t write about our chuckles about the shape of the lamps or that all the light could be scaring away the wild animals and pixies that my three children say roam the darkness of our garden.
I won’t. [click to continue reading…]
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by Charles Newbery
Posted in: Pinamar
"We once lived in a forest..."
OVER THE PAST year my family has watched houses sprout up in the forest behind our brick house on the Argentine coast. For years we’ve been on the frontier. Behind our house stretches a forest and sand dunes with intermittent meadows, stretching until the edge of the next town down the coast. But this is Pinamar, and it’s getting more popular. And without much town planning, developers are expanding at the edges, creeping further and further into the forest and the dunes to sell more land and sell more dreams of your own house on the coast.
We’ve watched one project in particular. It’s a corner house, on the frontier of southern Pinamar and the wilderness. It’s a log cabin, a large one with a small fort doubling as a water tower. Most houses in Pinamar are made of brick or stucco. This one looks right out of the Wild West; only the logs are glossy. [click to continue reading…]
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by Charles Newbery
Posted in: Pinamar
Blight.
I ONCE READ about a surfer in Central California who would only surf spots he could reach by bike. I liked the idea. It mustn’t have been easy. His conviction limited him to spots he could pedal to, while his brother and friends drove up the coast. And they would come home by car with tales of excellent surf at points and reefs further north and out of reach for the man and his bike. He must have seethed. But the idea really sunk in with me.
I still like the idea of only going to where you can reach by bike. I’m not much of a practitioner, really, because I don’t own a bike here in Argentina, where I live. And I drive to the beach. But what I don’t do is drive on the beach. That’s out of order. That’s not cool. But you wouldn’t guess that here in Pinamar, where driving on the beach is the craze. It gets so bad at the height of summer in Carilo, a ritzier beach to the south of Pinamar, that the beach turns into a 10-lane highway like 9 de Julio, the main thoroughfare in Buenos Aires. It’s chaos. [click to continue reading…]
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