Silence. The effervescence of Punta del Este was left behind. The 70 kilometers that lead to La Tertulia in the middle of the panoramic route were washing away the remains of the agitation of the spa that is going through the busiest moment of the tourist season. But none of that matters now: next to the concierge, just a small sign announces the arrival and on the horizon the house appears between the hills. Splendid, peaceful and majestic. The house of a diva. A wellness project.
Among the mountains of Garzón, the country house that Susana Giménez built in 2012 is now preparing to be the first cannabis wellness destination in Latin America. With 800 square meters, the mansion is located at the highest point of a 107-hectare property that extends between the rocky landscape that was once baptized as “Uruguayan Tuscany.”
The architect Javier Gentile designed the “ranch” with natural materials that result in a harmonious dialogue with the environment: walls covered in wood on the inside and with stones on the outside, polished cement floor with wood inlays and a pool submerged in the rock which ends gently on the shore. Luxury is in the details. “I proposed to him to do something big, beautiful and with the spirit of a ranch, but sophisticated. It did not seem to me to make a modern house in the middle of the field”the architect told La Nación.
Courtesy YVY Life Sciences
The relationship of the Argentine diva with the country house was intense and fleeting: she immediately fell in love with the place but by the end of 2014 she put it up for sale. “I went one day and fell in love with the place, with the eagles that soar in that little valley, the silence, the peace. The Uruguayan countryside is broken and offers incredible postcards,” the host told Hola magazine in 2017.
He also said that he baptized the house with the name of La Tertulia because it is “a widely used term that refers to colonial times, when the ladies had gatherings and they all sat in a living room where they had long talks.”
The living room of the house is now silent. The meetings in which the Argentine actress and presenter hosted are already part of the past, but everything remains in place. The rustic furniture, the moldings on the doors, the carved tables, the sinks painted with sunflowers, and the wide armchairs are the same ones that Giménez chose to decorate her vacation home: everything is exactly as she left it.
The galleries are wide and white curtains flank the path until you reach the main bedroom, where the window at the foot of the diva’s bed opens and a mountain landscape unfolds where in a few hours the sun will set. A private show every day.
Courtesy YVY Life Sciences
Courtesy YVY Life Sciences
A wellness and cannabis center in Garzón
Andrea Krell is Uruguayan and Kevin Nafte He is South African-Australian, but they met in Israel when they were studying, got married and moved to California. It was then that he faced a difficulty: he did not have access to pharmaceutical medication for psoriatic arthritis. He then found in cannabis a way to alleviate the symptoms.
“In California everything was legal, medicinal and very accessible. Cannabis helped me a lot at that time and I had access to the best cannabis in the world, quality products, knowing exactly what I’m consuming,” Nafte explains in dialogue with The Observer.
Cannabis production on family farms in Northern California is part of the history of the industry and it was there that he worked on the plantations, learning about cannabis production and its uses for a year. That was the couple’s inspiration when they arrived in Uruguay and the beginning of YVY Life Sciences.
Courtesy YVY Life Sciences
When they arrived in Uruguay they began to produce hemp with small producers in the department of Canelones, but when the Swiss market fell they decided to enter the field of pharmaceutical grade cannabis.
In 2021 they met a new partner and told him about their vision. “We would like to have lots of family farms across the country producing cannabis and hemp. We were always looking for a centralized place where we can bring in the raw material, process it, bring the farmer in for training, have a farming model, and do something touristy there.” explains Nafte and remembers that in three days they received a video of La Tertulia.When they arrived they fell in love with the place, just like the Argentine actress and host.
“Thank you, Susana Giménez, for trusting us with your temple”, tweeted the businessman Facundo Garretón, part of the Terraflos cannabis holding and partner of YVY Life Sciences. After five years, the diva finally closed the deal on the same day as her birthday for four million dollars.
Courtesy YVY Life Sciences
The house with four bedrooms –each one with an exit to the outside–, five bathrooms, a kitchen –which could well be the size of an apartment– and a living room with two wood-burning stoves covered in stone, it will be transformed into a boutique hotel with some units in the middle of the landscape with the purpose of becoming a health and wellness center.
“Today there are the two extremes: the recreational and the pharmaceutical. We are the intersection between these two worlds, we aim for well-being,” Krell said in an interview with Galería magazine.
It is a center in which guests are served with a holistic perspective, offering yoga classes, meditation, walks in nature, Ayurvedic medicine treatments accompanied by a healthy and conscious gastronomic proposal with organic raw materials. But they also hope to offer, for those who want it, access to the consumption of cannabis to take advantage of its therapeutic effects.
Courtesy YVY Life Sciences
“We are in this process of seeking our own well-being. I have an autoimmune condition and cannabis is good for me, but it is not a cure. For me the best thing is a combination of a very good diet, working on stress, being more in nature and yes; taking cannabis, doing yoga and exercising. Do something more holistic. That is the idea that we want to bring to this place,” says Nafte.
“A niche in the world of cannabis”
Everything is ready, but to launch the experience it is necessary to modify a key aspect of the regulation of the commercialization of silver derivatives in Uruguay: that it can be offered to tourists.
In June of last year, the Frente Amplista deputy Eduardo Antonini presented a bill in Parliament to modify the legislation that regulates the production and sale of cannabis to guarantee access to legal marijuana to non-resident aliens.
“Tourist ventures that are accredited by the Ministry of Tourism may associate with membership clubs,” indicates the initiative and seeks to bring together the different agents involved in this initiative, such as the National Drug Board (JND), the Institute of Regulation and Control of Cannabis (Ircca), the Ministry of Tourism, self-cultivators and members of cannabis clubs.
Courtesy YVY Life Sciences
“Uruguay may be a perfect place for cannabis tourism and it may be that this is its niche in the world of cannabis. We already know that many people come looking for cannabis, but when they come here they see that they cannot buy it legally and they have the same rights as Uruguayans,” the businessman considers.
But while they wait for the regulation of cannabis tourism, Susana Giménez’s country house is for rent. During the first half of January it is possible to spend a night in the residence paying three thousand dollars. “For now we are renting the house and we are in full transition towards the cannabis club license, in which for now we are only going to have Uruguayan members and residents. We are looking for genetics that we know well, with which we already have experience in the medicinal field and we understand well what the therapeutic effects are,” he says.
Courtesy YVY Life Sciences
Nicolás Silveira is a cannabis grower, he grew up in Montevideo and specialized in the production of pharmaceutical grade cannabis, but eight months ago he received the proposal to move to the La Tertulia property. When he found the calm of the place he didn’t have to think twice.
He tours the property accompanied by Susanita, the brown border collie who lives in the house as a tribute to the Argentine diva, while he explains how the process of planting cannabis is in the greenhouse they installed on the land. His job is to find the best specimens of the varieties they have to improve the genetics of the production.
The visit ends and the heavy wooden doors close. On the way back, the silence becomes polluted, the landscape is transformed and the tranquility of the house nestled in the rocks becomes a parenthesis. And again, the turmoil of the season.
