The World's Largest Pool Is Honestly Just Too Big

Image:San Alfonso del Mar/House Beautiful

How big does a pool have to be before it stops being fun and starts resembling the ocean set on The Truman Show? Maybe 871,200 square feet, which is the size of what is now the largest swimming pool in the world?

The monstrous ocean-pool is now open at San Alfonso del Mar, a resort in Algarrobo, Chile. According to House Beautiful,

This saltwater pool, which held the first-ever Guinness world record for largest man-made lagoon, is the exact same crystal-clear turquoise hue of the sea just beyond it. Its size is truly hard to fathom: The pool’s more than a kilometer long, covering nearly 20 acres in area—that’s bigger than 15 football fields!—and it holds a colossal 250 million liters of filtered ocean water. It was developed by Crystal Lagoons, a company founded by a visionary Chilean businessman that has also designed and built several other (smaller!) man-made lagoons around the world.

I actually see the appeal of this pool—a climate-controlled facsimile of the actual ocean, without the threat of kelp wrapping around your legs, sharks devouring you or little bits of garbage patch breaking loose and getting caught in your throat! The ocean, when you get down to it, is a real pain in the ass! Luckily, you never have to deal with the vagaries of nature at San Alfonso del Mar:

The pool is plenty big for sailing—yes, sailing!—and the other water sports and activities are practically endless: kayaking, scuba-diving instruction, all manner of aqua-fitness classes, a waterslide, and more. And should you encounter a day of less-than-blissfully-perfect weather, it even has South America’s only “roofed beach,” housed in a glass pyramid-shaped pavilion, with temperate water and heated sand. (HEATED SAND!)

They lost me at the heated sand. In my opinion we haven’t even really mastered heated car seats (they’re always too hot!). The next time we hear about San Alfonso del Mar, it will probably be because some British countess wound up with third degree burns in her uterus after boiling sand shot into her vagina. Sorry, but it’s true.