Nina’s story 3

Dates & plums

This whole house hunting experience is a lot like online dating — you trawl the house sales websites looking at one random image after another. At first glance you see what seems to be perfection, the ultimate box ticker. How could it be that no one else has snapped up this gem of excellence? What could possibly be wrong? So you make a date. And you march off terribly excited and hopeful — your first date with the amazing object of your future. But when you get there, things are never as they seem. What you see in front of you is the evil twin sister of whatever you saw on the website. The house, like the date, is never as good as it seems as the cold hard truth of reality wakes you up from all the unicorn/fairy dreams. And in that split second you exhale woefully… another broken house-heart. Will you ever find the one?

Then, like a mirage in a sea of shark infested waters, you stumble across the Blissimmo website. And, somehow, you know you are now in friendly waters — waters that present you with elegance of choice, beauty of layout and, most importantly, hope! Hope that on this website, at this moment, on this day — you may find your match.

I will never forgot our first “date” with the house. After so many speed dates with so many other houses, we were desperate for a meaningful first impression… one that gives you that moment of rush; one that makes time stand still; one that reminds you that at the ripe old age of 50 you can still feel like you’re 16 — falling irrationally, spontaneously and immediately in love.

 

It was first thing in the morning and we met up with Karen our Bliss Estate Agent in order to see the house. She asked if we’d mind taking a short cut and plugged the address into her GPS — we were off! Only we weren’t off down a normal paved road but rather we were off down a forgotten farmer’s tractor track complete with pot holes, mud, and a whole lot of meadow grasses growing up through the middle of the path. And like a puppy, reluctant to take that first big jump into a lake, our small, bare, cheap budget car sat at the start of the trail revving its engine in protest as if to say, “I am not going down that path!”.

But we were determined to see “the one” so we ignored the frightened outcry of the engine, pressed down the gas pedal and drove through a variety of buzzers, lights and car alarms that formed an unending symphony of “do not do this!” Up hills, down slopes, across mud, rocks and puddles until we arrived at the property. We pulled into what looked like a simple stone barn. No windows, no doors, and a whole lot of broken wood, debris and rusted corrugated tin in the front garden. Could this be it? Could this be the one?

We got out of the car with measured caution. We couldn’t make heads nor tales of the geography of this place. Just where were we?? We walked along the long length of the building, squashing plums under foot. Each footfall gave birth to another small puzzle piece of the whole house. Where were we going and what we were going to find at the end of the path? We rounded the corner of the house and saw the unimaginable. A view that only mother nature could provide. Big, vast, open and hopeful. This house was like an artichoke — all that hard work of the journey only to get to the central heart of such a beautiful location. This was Le Tuco for us.

 

In that moment, our first date with Le Tuco had turned from naive hope to the dream of a life time. We realized how silly it was to say “We’re looking for a house”…because the truth of the matter is that the house finds you. And Le Tuco was just that experience — it reached out and took us in, uncontrollably.

We took one walk around her land and one walk around her rooms, we were in love!