The second water embankment started being envisioned in 2024, after experiencing the good results of the first one, while also projecting some improvements and extending that feeling of joy that so well developed into a new one.

The first embankment was very successful on many dimensions. Firstly, because it has been always full of clean water for over 3 years, which is something key for this kind of developments. And these are three key factors to consider: to gather and keep enough water to have make it full, to make it drain over small or heavy rains, and third, to make the water as fresh and clean as possible in its a natural ecosystem – given we won’t be adding any chemicals at all. It was always very successful because, between the small deck and the sauna, it has become one of the main attractions for our tiny festival. 

However, there were two things that could be improved, on one hand, the distance and elevation to get to it, and more over the gradient to climb back, we’re talking of a difference of 30m in a 200m walk. As you can imagine, the deeper it is, the bigger the amount of water you can catch, but also, the longer and heavier the walking.

The other consideration was that, given it has become such a big entertainment for adults and kids, we thought it would be great to build something tailored for families, while we could leave the original one with a small deck and sauna mostly for adults.

Given these considerations, we planned the following goals for the next water retention embankment:

• Location that could be more reachable in distance and altitude.
• A similar size of water or even bigger if possible.
• Develop more attractions for families.

We chose once again to work with Green Curves (https://greencurvesdesign.com/), who did the survey for the location, the designs and the building. The construction staking, excavation and wall building was done during a week of August 2025, and given we had a really dry summer, it got full of water almost a year after with the heavy rains we had in the winter of 2026.

It ended up having very similar specifications to the first embankment, although this would have a much smaller watershed (we’ll see how that evolves with the summers), a curved wall of 59m and a panoramic view to the valley, given it’s located 123m over the sea level.

The location ended defining what it would become the main extension of the festival, since between this place of water and the Beduquincha, it framed a new area, just less than 100m and almost the same level to our main gathering and camping. In addition, it’s also almost next to a very small forest of Coronillas trees (an emblematic tree in Uruguay), and given this beautiful place, we started thinking about a deck that could also serve as a bridge to reach this small forest, and that’s what we started building before it got full in November 2025. 

We did the structure before it got full of water, and we completed the work after treating with natural protection the 22m of boards that would come over. We also developed a small beach where kids could play in the sand, this job mostly consisted of a sandbox of ~30m2, a geotextile cloth that could let the water flow while avoiding the vegetation to grow through, and we also added piping to the borders for channeling the water since this is a very wet area. To sum up, we added two straw parasols (developed by the same team who did the Beduquincha) with benches and tables.

As always, this is still a work in process, we still haven’t had the chance to take advantage of all its capacities since the weather has been really cold so far, we’ll see how it evolves in the future.

Special thanks to Lu for the inspiration to make a wood bridge, JP who followed the excavation while I was traveling and to Jaime for always sharing so much patience and muscles for this building.