Punta del Diablo pine-forest cabin

Punta del Diablo is a small fishing village on Uruguay's Atlantic coast that has quietly turned into the country's most beloved bohemian getaway. It is a place of dirt streets, hand-painted signs, wooden cabins, hippie markets and long empty beaches, and it sits an easy four-hour drive from Montevideo — or forty-five minutes from the Brazilian border at Chuy. This 65 square-metre wooden cabin is a very typical example of the local architecture: pine cladding stained soft green, a corrugated tin roof, a covered porch, and a shaded lot planted with mature pine trees and coastal grasses.

Inside there are two bedrooms (one of them a mezzanine loft above the living room), a compact bathroom, a functional kitchen and a warm living space centred on a small wood-burning estufa. Pine ceilings and floors give it a distinctive summer-house feel. The cabin sits on a fully-titled 400 square-metre lot with room for a second small cabin or a deck extension. Utilities are municipal, though solar and rainwater tanks are common upgrades.

Uruguay is one of the friendliest countries in Latin America for foreign property buyers — foreigners can hold freehold property in their own name, on identical terms to citizens, without needing to set up a company or acquire residency. Purchase costs are moderate, taxes on non-primary residences are reasonable, and the country's political and banking stability is unusual for the region. Punta del Diablo has a small but active local market with a healthy mix of Argentine, Brazilian and European owners.

The village faces three main beaches — Playa del Rivero (this cabin's home beach, 300 metres away, a lively surf beach with wooden fishing boats hauled up on the sand), Playa de los Pescadores (the calmer fishing beach with a small pier) and Playa de la Viuda (a long, wild dune beach stretching north into Santa Teresa National Park). Santa Teresa itself is a huge coastal park of pine forest, empty beaches and Portuguese fort ruins, and is where locals hike, camp and picnic on hot summer weekends. The town has a Ta-Ta supermarket, a bakery, a butcher, a couple of banks and dozens of small restaurants and beach bars that hum through January and February and shift down to a very peaceful pace the rest of the year.