Gaging the season, or reading the tea-leaves

Guessing or estimating "how good" --or bad, for that matter-- a season is becomes an all consuming activity for residents, home-owners, business-owners and even the very tourists whose dollars we´re trying to count.

Thus, it´s not surprising to find that one man´s half full glass is another woman´s half empty. The comments I heard in late November from several home-owners about properties for rent having an excellent season, for example, turned into "rentals have been a complete flop," uttered by many realtors, and echoed by the press on a seemingly hourly basis.

There is an explanation for these diverging comments: since the enactment of an income tax applied to rental income (10.5% after some deductions) last year, the entire rental market seems to have gone underground, that is, to have by-passed the official real-estate brokers who are easily audited and thus under pressure to do everything by the book.

Threats by our revenue authorities to unleash a pack of inspectors on the town to check whether rented properties have been properly declared sound laughable, more so when considering their promise to do so "without inconveniencing the vacationing tenants."

But I digress. Beyond the rental market and its still unclear results, the hotel industry posted an apparently record year-end season in terms of occupancy, and griped profusely about lost profitability due to the dollar devaluation that prevented it from transferring higher costs to guests.

On the street, for a couple of weeks the crowds appeared to be at record highs, while the display of fancy, really fancy cars, seemed to be endless and shocked even the most jaded of residents. Some days trying to have lunch in the Peninsula was a futile endeavor, and walking up Gorlero, with its wide sidewalks, required serious dribbling skills to avoid the Portuguese speaking crowds.

Then the Brazilians were gone and a more subdued Argentine and Uruguayan contingent took over. Tienda Inglesa still requires a strategy for successful grocery shopping with no injury (if a sunny beach day, 5 pm, with bad weather, early in the morning).

Altogether, things continue very busy and crowded, despite the multiple interpretations on who is and who is not in town. The number of social events also appears to have grown by an order of magnitude, testing everyone's endurance and actually making us welcome some bad weather cancellations here and there. And let me ask, How many Peruvian restaurant openings can there be in a single week?

Cruise ships, four at a time on some days, have become a usual fixture by now, as have the tour vans by the dozens.

Officially, we're slightly up in terms of tourist arrivals (3% to 5% depending on the day and the official quoted) and slightly up in dollar spending (28%, against 23% USD depreciation vs the UYU ) so not a bad outcome at all for the year the world collapsed.

And as usual, the high season continues to reward us with fantastic, free spectacles such as the departure of yesterday's regatta in the late afternoon, on a gorgeous, crisp day, a sight that brings a smile to anyone's face.