In the broadcast of Saturday, April 2, 2022, we see Denise and Gerard who exchange the Gooi with their son Stein for the Portuguese hamlet of Alcantarilha. They have their eye on an ancient farm where they want to build a guest house and safari tents on the property. After overcoming the necessary setbacks, the adventure can now begin…
Update Denise, Gerard and Stein
We have now been in Portugal for 13 months and what an adventure this is!! We are still building to this day. Every day we come up with something new to make it look as beautiful as possible. We are also still working on our own house, which is coming little by little. We find it more important that the guests have a wonderful stay.
We are currently the nomads of our own territory. If an accommodation is rented out, we move, which is very positive, because that way we see every time what needs to be changed in the accommodation to make it even better. We still have a long way to go, but what we have now, we are very proud of. In less than a year we have built an apartment, a studio and a glamping tent, each with its own garden. It was a tough year, a great year, an adventurous year none of us would want to miss.
Portuguese life
Portuguese life is wonderful, we are outside a lot, which is especially nice for Stein. Stein can lose his energy here and nowadays goes to bed tired and satisfied, that was different in the Netherlands. Stein is doing very well. He is still at the Dutch school where he is also working a lot on his English and Portuguese at the same time. That all gets a little better and he makes contact with other children even faster. It is nice to see Stein grow in a way that was not possible in the Netherlands. Lola has had a girlfriend Kiki since January. A super cute and playful puppy that brings even more fun!!
A bumpy road
Denise is also getting a little better, sometimes there are days when she is not well and then it is a matter of taking some rest. That is a big task. Geer is a big rock in the surf. There will always be things that we will encounter, but it is one major learning path and that is not a bad thing. We also rock this bumpy road!
We both agree that sometimes we should have called in help a little earlier with some projects. Perhaps we should have handled that differently and there are not many things we would have wanted to do differently. If something comes to mind, we don’t think twice about it. Because you can read up on everything, make budgets, hedge so that things don’t go wrong. But you end up in another country where things just work differently, there’s a pandemic that nobody saw coming and a terrible war that makes all prices sky high. But you’re not in charge, we jumped into an adventure and would like to do it all over again.
All in all, we think this is a very cool experience. We don’t know where we will be in 5, 10 or 20 years. In any case, this project will be finished with a beautiful house, studio, apartment and glamping tent. A beautiful garden with a brown cafe and we are completely self-sufficient. Hopefully we live a very rich and healthy life with space to do all kinds of things that we enjoy. So for now let’s get down to business and work hard in a beautiful country, in our own little paradise. But we can say: ‘that we are living our dream life!!!
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