In the Saturday April 2, 2022 broadcast, we see Dennis and Gerrard exchanging Gooi with their son Stein in the Portuguese village of Alcantarilha. They have their eyes on an old farm where they want to build a guest house and safari tents on the property. Having overcome the necessary setbacks, the adventure can now begin…

Dennis, Gerard and Stein update

We have been in Portugal for 13 months now and what an adventure!! 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 building our house which is coming in little by little. We find it extremely important that guests have a wonderful stay.

We are currently nomads of our lands. If a dwelling is rented, we move, which is very positive, because in this way we see every time what needs to be changed in the housing to make it 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 built an apartment, studio and luxury tent, each with its own garden. It was a tough year, a great year, an adventurous year that none of us want to miss.

portuguese life

Portuguese life is great, we are outside a lot, which is especially great for Stein. Stein could lose his energy here and go to bed nowadays tired and satisfied, that was different in Holland. Stein works very well. He is still in Dutch school where he also works a lot on his English and Portuguese at the same time. It’s all getting a little better and he’s communicating with other kids faster. It is nice to see Stein grow in a way that was not possible in the Netherlands. Lola has a girlfriend Kiki since January. Super cute and fun puppy that brings more fun!!

hard road

Denise is also getting a little better, sometimes there are days when she’s not feeling well, and then it’s just a matter of taking a break. This is a big task. Gir is a big rock in the waves. There will always be things we’ll run into, but it’s a great learning path and that’s not a bad thing. We also rock this bumpy road!

We are both convinced that sometimes we should have asked for help a little earlier with some projects. Maybe we should have done it differently and there aren’t many things we would have liked to have done differently. If something comes to mind, we don’t think twice about it. Because you can read it all, set budgets, and hedge so things don’t go wrong. But you end up in another country where things work differently, there is a pandemic no one has seen coming and a terrible war that makes all prices skyrocket. But you’re not to blame, we’ve gone on an adventure and we’d love to do it again.

All in all, we think this is a very nice experience. We don’t know where we will be in 5, 10 or 20 years. In any case, this project will be completed with a beautiful house, studio, apartment and a luxurious tent. Nice garden with cafe built and totally self sufficient. We hope to live very rich and healthy lives with the space to do all kinds of things that we enjoy. So now, let’s get down to business and work hard in a beautiful country, in our little paradise. But we can say: “We are living the life of our dreams!!!