Day: July 30, 2018

Ponto Cabana – click any image for full size

Lemon Beach is a place we’ve frequently visited in Second Life. From at least 2015 through until early 2017, it was held by Silvermoon Fairey under the name It’s A New Dawn (see here and here for more). More recently, it has been held by Iska (sablina), who initially gave it the name La Virevolte (The Twirl), occasioning us to visit on two occasions in the winter of 2017 and the spring of 2018.

Iska, working with working with Chimkama, and Toxx Genest (ToXxicShadow). has now give Lemon Beach a further makeover, and a new name, Ponto Cabana, presenting a reason to make a further visit as July drew to a close.

Ponto Cabana

In its new guise, the region offers a curious mix of settings. On the one hand, there is a feeling that perhaps this is in part an old Spanish colonial plantation somewhere in the tropics. A grand house sits on the highest point on an island, steps descending down through what might have once been cultivated terraces to where the old road runs past the foot of the hill before snaking its way up to the house. In doing so, the road turns sharply past the single remaining wall of an old chapel. This may have once been a part of the estate, but time has not been kind, the lone wall with its forlorn bell sitting above the sea.

Some of the terraces below the house are still being cultivated, although these now appear to be more for personal use than for growing produce destined for market or export. The rest, sitting before the house and cut by both winding road and grassy footpath, are given over to an informal garden. Meanwhile, the house with its white, adobe-like finish cracked and broken in places and clearly roughly patched in others, has a sense of stately age about it, perhaps just a little at odds with the furnishings within and around it, which suggest the current occupants lean towards a more bohemian lifestyle than one focused on the cultivation of local plants and fruits.

Ponto Cabana

Across the water, on another rocky-sided island, there is a slightly different look and feel. The structures here are mostly more modern in style – if a lot more run-down than the adobe fronted house. A paved road, leading to and from nowhere, arcs past a large house – or about what’s left of it, given its broken form is now subject to nature’s claim. Across the short sweep of road sits an old swimming pool, a pelican perched on the rusting frame of a diving board perhaps wondering just what happened to the water.

Up on a headland, beyond the ruin of an old fort, sit a raised wooden hut with evidence of some occupancy scattered about it, but on the whole the feeling here is of a place now deserted; or at least in the process of being deserted. A car piled high with luggage sitting incongruously on the road outside of the ruined house as if ready to forever depart, a stubborn donkey standing before it, determined to stare it down. The road itself ends just behind the donkey, a set of steps leading down to another pat of the setting that again has a feeling of age about its occupancy in the form of the ruins of a stone chapel.

Ponto Cabana

Of grander stature than the lone, bell-carrying wall near the old plantation house, this ruin speaks of a once proud centre of worship with something of a medieval bent in its design. The way to it has long since been flooded, but stepping-stones offer a way across the water to the foot of the steps leading up to its stone flagged floors even as a wooden bridge offers access to the lands around it. Flamingos wade through the water, while humming birds flitter busily around the flowers growing from it and – in another incongruous, but oddly acceptable touch – two little hippos stand knee-deep in the water.

All-in-all, Ponto Cabana is a strange and eclectic mix. However, it is an eclectic mix that works, and works delightfully well. With places to sit and relax – notably around the old plantation house, surrounded by off-sim islands heightening the tropical feel for the setting, and even a couple of off-shore perches to enjoy, Ponto Cabana makes for an ideal and photogenic visit.

Ponto Cabana

SLurl Details

• Ponto Cabana (Lemon Beach, rated: Moderate)