The Mérida Initiative

More changes

2012-01-29T08:30:00.000-08:00

doors, before

This is how you keep spending when you thought you were done for now. I thought we could make do with some of the old doors for a couple more years. But they looked so terrible once the other work was done, and neither one closes properly anyway, so now we have two new ones. Meanwhile the work on the patio walls is also finished. When Victor sent the photos, I sat mesmerized, toggling through the pictures again and again. I must have needed a psychological break from the relentless weather around Victoria the past couple of weeks: snow, ice, and windstorm after windstorm. This is my favourite hammock spot, so I am daydreaming about leaving those patio doors open to the breeze on lazy afternoons.

It was nice of the builder to provide a sense of scale

Settling in

2012-01-23T22:10:00.000-08:00

Seven a.m. The sky has been brightening for almost an hour and now early sunlight is splashing on the wall across the street and over the tiles on the garage floor. Birds are calling. I don't know their names, but their sounds are distinct to this place. The nights have been cool lately, which is both welcome and not.

Each time I come here the house feels more homey. I'm not sure if this is because it's gradually accruing furniture and other conveniences, or whether it's just becoming familiar. Little details are getting done. A ceiling fan, already destroyed by ants, is replaced. The patio is cleared again of leaves and weeds, some crushed limestone is spread around and new plants are heeled in. Even the unrenovated old addition at the back of the house looks more charming with a new fringe of spiky snake plants along its footings. One night I stood out there, admiring the changes and the glow of the patio lights. For the first time it felt like a pleasant place to hang out, not just a fairly unattractive space with "potential". I shared the early evening stillness with with a small bat that swooped about the patio, hunting insects.

It has been busy, getting jobs finished, furnishing, arranging, overseeing. Cleaning. Lots of cleaning. I learned that white vinegar, undiluted, really does do a good job of removing the mineral deposits, or sarro, that build up everywhere that the hard tap water collects - there was a lot on the kitchen sink and the ceramic floors. I think some harsh chemicals, like muriatic acid, had been used on it in the past without complete success in removing it. But I soaked a dry cloth in straight vinegar and left it on any particularly nasty spot for an hour or so, and the sarro dissolved and wiped away easily. No scrubbing!

Sarro bugs me a lot. I've whined before about what it does to hair - mine is already coarse, and within a few days of exposure to tap water it's stiff with buildup. Now that I have large garafons of water in the house, I'm indulging in washing and rinsing hair with bottled water. It seems like a guilty indulgence, but it seems to work.

Just because I love before-and-after pictures, here are a few. It's still a work in progress, so maybe they are really before-and-during pictures. Still, it's encouraging to see the difference.

Reclaiming lost space

2012-01-15T06:47:00.000-08:00

before

(photo by Victor Cruz, Estilo Arquitectura)

Sometimes you don't get to do things in the order you want. A pool has been high on the priority list. It was going to be the next thing. But then one of the high stone walls began to collapse at the back dogleg section of the property, so it had to be fixed.

I guess a few rocks and some mortar would have patched it up for the time being. But we're beginning to turn this neglected area into a garden, and the walls in that section appear to be built more haphazardly than at the front of the property. I hate to do the same job twice. So it made sense to rebuild the wall properly now, following the plans from our architects. Otherwise we'd have to redo the repair at a future date and also destroy any landscaping done in the interim. At the same time as the repair on one side, we decided to replace the low, crooked wall that borders the other neighbor at the back.

I love the traditional limestone walls around here, but these ones won't be solid rock. They are being built with concrete blocks, and the sides along the path will be faced with rough limestone pieces. The face that will someday form one wall of a casita at the very back of the property will be smoothly plastered, and painted. I'm sure it will be a nice contrast to the adjoining solid stone walls.

Even though it wasn't at the top of our to-do list, I'm looking forward to seeing the transformation as this abandoned bit of land turns into a private, usable garden space.

The old man after the party

2012-01-03T21:33:00.000-08:00

Remains of El Viejo, Jan 1, 2012, Merida

Scenes like the one above would have been very disturbing to visitors to Mérida this week if they weren't aware of the tradition of burning the "Old Man" on New Year's Eve.

It's a good thing I read about it on one of my favourite Merida blogs just a few days before I arrived, very late, on Dec. 31st. The tradition is, people stuff old clothes with paper and fireworks, then set it on fire right at midnight. There's symbolism that I won't pretend to know. I briefly saw a viejo propped up on on our street corner, from the taxi window, minutes before midnight. Once lit, it blazed and banged and shot out dangerous flares and shrapnel for a good long time, with neighbors viewing the spectacle a bit closer than seemed entirely safe.

Cycling around the quiet centre of the city the next morning (searching in vain for coffee and something to eat), there were remains of incompletely incinerated "viejos" all over the place. It was kind of creepy. I wonder if the unburned parts carry any special symbolism for 2012?

How things change

2011-12-27T16:02:00.000-08:00

adam_d_/Flickr_d_

Here's a great way to start a new year: dropping in to Mérida for a week. This is how I imagined it would be someday; making more-or-less impromptu plans, and slipping back into our casa like a pair of comfortable shoes. There will be a few minor errands to accomplish, a chance to shake off the chill of a West Coast winter for a few days, and time, I hope, to see a few friends and neighbors.

Meanwhile I'm trying to comprehend the many different traditions and celebrations in Mérida at this time of year: Ramas and posadas and Guadalupe day and the Three Kings. The calendars for Mexico and the Yucatan are packed with celebrations and holidays, and it seems that we land on different ones every time we arrive. I wonder about practical things, like, will the buses run on their usual schedules? What offices and businesses will be open or closed between New Year's Day and January 6?

adam_d_/Flickr

Here in Victoria, old traditions and rituals shift. This Christmas was different, and perhaps a glimpse of what's ahead. For the first time in 22 years, our son was not home with us, but instead, at the other end of a Skype connection in Tokyo, where it was already Boxing Day.

We're fascinated by his descriptions of the cultural differences there, too. Who knew the traditional Japanese Christmas dinner is KFC, and 7-Eleven is a four-story retail mecca that sells everything including furniture? La Princesa wants him to bring her back a robot.

We begin to see how our own routines and obligations will change, in the future that's not quite so distant anymore. Already it's more than two years since we put in a house offer and began our Mérida "initiative". Since then I've met, online and otherwise, so many people also tilting southwards, preparing and making the move to Mérida and other locations in Latin America. I identify with Lee and Barb, writing about paring down possessions. Others like Sara and Ty uprooting their lives and plunging in to become full-time Mérida residents. Our Victoria friends Paul and Jody packing up their lives in Canada to go live and work in Honduras for CUSO.

Everything changes, and faster than we think.

"Green"-ery on the ceiling: Our new LED lights

2011-12-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

Photo by Victor Cruz/Estilo Arquitectura

It's very exciting, for me, anyway, to see pictures of the new ceiling lights in our sala. I know, I am a nerd. They look like plain little fixtures that you'd see anywhere. Nothing as impressive as a dramatic arch or beautiful tiles.

But they are LED, which means they will use hardly any electricity, which in Mérida, and all over México, is quite expensive and produced by highly polluting methods.

The new LED lights go along with our solar hot water heater. It is a wonderful feeling to stand in a hot shower and know there's no gas-fired tank at the other end of the pipe. I often hear people say these things are not economical; that is, they don't pay for themselves, or at least not in a decent period of time. Neither do cars or many other nice things, but that's another discussion.

The economic argument for solar water heating is actually pretty strong in México, anyway. Here in Canada a solar water system can cost $7,500 or more (US or CDN, your pick) and because the light is weaker here, it doesn't provide sufficient hot water for a household. With Mérida's broiling sun, you need no backup (though you might need a second one for a large household), and it costs $1,500 U.S. or less, installed, including an electrostatic water softener.

I'm not sure why they cost so much more in Canada. But the cost made it a no-brainer here. Sure, it's a lot more than a new gas-fired water tank that will rust out in a couple of years, but for me part of the attraction of living in Mexico is the idea of living more lightly and reducing our resource footprint.

If I had a ton of money, I'd get a photo-voltaic solar system to replace at least part of the household electricity. Mexico has a net-metering program so the electical utility company will give you credit for feeding excess power from a PV system back into the state power grid. Haven't yet met anyone who has done this, but it's a long-term dream.

Internet service: Telcel Banda Ancha review

2011-12-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

Back in March I found one kind of solution to my unhappy state of internet-less-ness.

I had been wandering from park to café, wearing out the laptop battery, getting a sore butt from sitting on wooden benches for hours.

With some helpful advice from a couple of local store employees, I got a broadband internet USB stick, called Banda Ancha, and bingo! I had working internet access for the first time at our almost-empty house. It does make a place feel cozy.

At that time I posted that I would give a more fulsome review after using it for awhile. I was reminded of that when someone on the Yolisto forum asked this week about broadband USB "dongles". During my last stay in Mérida the little device got a good workout and I now can say a few things about it:

Ease of use: It's pretty easy to install, once you figure out where you need to enter different bits of information (such as the CURP, which you will have if you have a Mexican cellphone. I'm not sure how else you get one). When I returned after several months, of course I forgot everything I had learned but it wasn't hard to plug it in and get it running again, once I had figured out how to top up the account.

Price: It's advertised as 199 pesos for 2 weeks, but that appears to be based on light usage. I went through more than twice that amount in a week. So it would start getting expensive, compared to a cable or telephone company internet service, if you were going to use it on an ongoing basis.

Performance: It was pretty good. It does time out sometimes, but you just have to reconnect, hear the little jingle, and you're back in business. There were a couple of evenings though, where it would not connect at all. It might have been what technical people call a PEBKAC error (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair). Or not.

Speed: Not fast enough for Skype. It would crash, even without video. I missed my little chats with the family and the dog.

Recharging the account: Your Banda Ancha stick essentially has its own phone number, so you can go to any shop that will recharge your Telcel account, give them the number and the amount you want to add to the account, and hope for the best. This worked for me the first time, when I did it at the Soriana supermarket checkout. The second time, at a small independent shop, it didn't work. Perhaps the account wasn't entered correctly.

My conclusion: I was glad to have it, and still think it's a good solution for occasional use, if you don't need enough bandwidth for video or skype. But I'm getting Cablemas internet service installed this month.

Winter blahs

2011-12-07T06:47:00.001-08:00

Feeling sluggish, slowing down. It's hard to do get motivated to do much after work these days - so tired. Can't seem to execute plans to get out and get some exercise. A man on the radio is saying this is a normal response when the days get shorter and colder and greyer here. He's suggesting one of those lights that trick your body into thinking the days are longer.

I wonder if this wintertime energy deficit is less of a problem for people living closer to the equator? These days I'm trying to work out a date for getting back to Mérida in the next couple of months. Despite my own laziness, work is underway there, as well as here in Victoria, and I can't wait to see the results of both.

In Mérida, we await the installation of cable and internet service - the comments I read about long waits and no-shows by installer gives me a bit of concern, especially with holidays approaching. The other work that's about to be done includes replacing one hideous door and one that doesn't open properly with two new ones. They will be custom made to match the sole remaining original door in the house. We'll get new iron protectadores for the back door. As well, a couple of damaged sections of stone wall at the back of the house will be repaired, raised and I think some lighting will be added. This abandoned space will become an extension of the garden until some far-off day, when we see the need to build the casita in our architect's plans for a little extra guest or studio space.

In Victoria, the long-delayed plan to transform Fallingdowne, our rambling 1911 eyesore, is currently in the hands of a local designer, Will Peereboom. Since it has nothing to do with Mérida, that project has got its own blog space here.

...will be replaced with ones similar to this.

These worn-out doors (pre-reno)...

Small kindnesses

2011-11-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

We needed a 60-meter garden hose to reach the beginnings of a garden at the back of the property. Some big lush plants, thinned from someone else's place, had been dug in there. They were looking limp.

Lucio said a place downtown called Fernandez had good prices for a manguera de jardin, a garden hose. Barato. Cheap.

Found Fernandez, parked the bike, bought the hose, and lugged it back to the parking garage. 100 meters actually, because it didn't come in 60-meter length. Did you know, 100 meters of garden hose is heavy? I didn't. I had a feeling this could be a problem to bring home on the bike.

I rigged up something to hold the hose to the rack, using the bike lock and my only bungee cord, paid the parking attendant, who wished me luck, and started home. It was precarious and the bike wobbled along the busy street. I had to go slow. A couple of blocks along a woman in a passing car pointed at the back of the bike and I looked. I was losing my load. The coil of hose had slipped halfway off the rack. I found a quiet spot on the sidewalk and tried to untangle things. Somehow in the process I had lost the key to my bike lock.

I looped the heavy hose over my shoulder and started to walk the bike and the damned manguera the 10 or so remaining blocks home, thinking of how much it was going to hurt. Then a bottle collector, a scavenger, pulled up on his tricycle - the cargo carriers that are ubiquitous here. He said something about how I should tie the hose to the bike rack - it could take 80 kilos.

I told him something like, I had tried that, it was too heavy, it had already fallen. I was feeling irritated, and was probably kind of dismissive.

Overlooking my lack of graciousness, he calmly took a skein of twine from his own bike rack and methodically unwound a length. He brought it over and expertly, patiently, bound the hose to the bike rack, looping and knotting it on three sides. Now it won't fall, he said. Ahora no se calle. I asked if I could pay him for the twine but he refused. After I thanked him and asked his name, Juan Jose wheeled away, merged back into traffic with his collection of empties and disappeared around the corner before I could take a picture.

It was extraordinarily touching to receive this needed help from someone who surely didn't have a lot to spare. Why reach out to this foolish gringa lady who should have, could have taken a cab or something?

I made it home without a hitch and slowly untied the hose from the bike rack. The twine was a fine braid of henequen, strong and soft from long use. Such a simple object, and a simple act of kindness on a busy street. Both of them, typical of this place. Tipico.

The fair

2011-11-11T17:42:00.001-08:00

I won't be at the Feria Yucatán x'matkuil (Yucatan state fair) this year. It opened today. Unfortunately, I have a previous engagement to sit around shivering in the wind, cold and dark of a Canadian November. But if I was there, I wouldn't go so early this time.

I'm one of those nerds who can't figure out the right time to show up for stuff. So last year, I thought I'd beat the heat and catch an early bus. Rides make me dizzy, and I try not to each too much fair food, and I wasn't interested in the night-time concerts. I mostly wanted to see the sights. Mostly I was interested in the displays of local products,such as stonework and furnishings and things that might be nice for our new Merida home. I also had read about the spectacle of kids playing in fake snow, and dolphin tanks, and suchlike things that appealed to my taste for the bizarre.

Well, at the end of an interesting bus ride from the main Merida market, I got to the fair and the plaza was nearly empty. Most of those who arrived around the same time as me were school kids, who didn't have any choice in the matter. Many of the commercial displays I wanted to see weren't open that early in the day. But I did get to see the livestock (one of my favorite fair features) and walk around a bit. Bought a nice hammock at a reasonable price. The Mayan building near the entrance was a nice touch - you are definitely not going to confuse this with the Red River Exhibition back in good old Winnipeg.

Next time I'll go late, with friends, like everyone else.

Getting around the neighborhood

2011-11-06T07:53:00.000-08:00

Usually when I tell people the neighborhood we're in, I get a blank response. Even people who've lived in Mérida a long time have never heard of it. Chen Bech, also spelled as Chem Bech. The house was advertised as being in Mejorada, which is better known but still not very familiar to a lot of people. I am still not sure if Chem Bech is truly part of Mejorada, or if it is in Chuminopolis, or is a separate place of its own.

I can't feel too smug about my own knowledge of the neighborhood. I hadn't heard of it either, until house-hunting a couple of years ago brought me to this place. And until now there hasn't been much time to check out the neighborhood much, with all the renovations and other things to do.

On this trip I decided to make it a priority to get off my own beaten path to the usual destinations. Some mornings, before light, I'd strap on the sneakers and go for a little run down the side streets to the north and east of our house. It's always striking to see how early people start their days here. At 6:15 and 6:30 in the morning they're leaving the house, kids in their school uniforms, adults carrying their work things. Most of the houses are modest, but there are some grand old colonials.

I follow the rhythmic thrum of machinery up one street and come upon a factory. A big one. "Hilos Agricolas de Yucatan". Here's what I learn about it online:

"Hilos Agricolas de Yucatan" grows hemp, manufactures hemp yarn and other products of sisal fibers. It history dates from the eighteenth century, producing such items as beds and sacs, to the present days, in 1993 that was acquired by the state government of Yucatan."

A corner of the henequen factory.

Who knew that this link to the region's history was sitting on the edge of the neighborhood? Well, everyone who lives around here, I suppose. Heading east I pass a disused soccer pitch and then in the distance, people in white are streaming towards a large building complex. Medical staff, starting the day shift at the public IMSS hospital. I'm told it's the biggest public hospital in the city. I didn't know it was so close to us. On the street fronting the hospital is a busy commercial strip, including at least a couple of Chinese restaurants, numerous copy and office supply stores, tacos and other handy shops.

Elsewhere on my explorations by bike and on foot I have found a campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the stately complex that used to be a sanitorium.

Next to it is a park with free wifi. The park is named Articulo 123 and it features a statue to an unknown (to me) historic figure. Need to study up on my Mexican history! Across the road from the park and UNAM campus is a railway museum with numerous rusted-out rail cars standing, half obscured, in tall weeds. At least one of them reminds me exactly of the train in some old half-forgotten photo with Pancho Villa or some other revolutionaries. I couldn't come up with the photo to refresh my memory in a quick online search. But it makes me want to visit the museum and find out more about where these relics came from.

I like our neighborhood.

What is Articulo 123 and who is Hector Victoria Aguilar?

Rental survey - results so far

2011-10-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

So I promised to report the results of my rental survey and then things got busy and I got distracted.

I wanted to know: What do you need to make a place an attractive one for potential renters?

Here is what I've learned from the 13 responses so far.

They included 5 renters, three potential renters and 4 homeowners (and one "other").

There wasn't a clear picture of the average length of rental. A few people rented for less than a month, a couple for more than six months, but most didn't specify. Perhaps I didn't format that question very well.

The most common size of household for Merida renters is two people (7 out of 10 responses).

Number of bedrooms required: 9 responses, all said 2 bedrooms required.

Number of bathrooms required: 8 responses, 4 wanted one bathroom, 4 said two bathrooms.

Got pets? 11 responses. 5 no, 6 yes.

Essential features:

Top responses:
Furnished -82 per cent want their place fully furnished, 91 per cent with a fully equipped kitchen.
Pool -73 per cent require a pool.
Fans vs. a/c -82 per cent require fans (I think that's low) but only 64 per cent insist on air conditioning.
Internet - 73 per cent want internet via cable or telco, only 18 per cent say a broadband USB connection is sufficient.
Cleaning service - 55 per cent want cleaning twice a month or more frequently, compared to 18 per cent favoring once-a-month cleaning.
TV - 55 per cent want a television, and 45 per cent want cable channels.

Low priorities:
Unfurnished rentals : 9 per cent (1 response)
Phone: 9 per cent (1) want cell phone, 18 per cent (3) want a land line.
Green features: only 9 per cent (1) thinks features such as solar water heat are important.
Garage: only 18 per cent (2) require one.

Rent budgets run from under $400 a month to $1320. I will do a bit more work to compare what package of features people expect, and get, at the different price points. I'll write about that in a future post, and share some of the comments I received (avoiding detail that would identify the renter or owners).

I will leave the survey open for more responses.

What do you think? Does this seem to represent the rental picture in Merida or is it a skewed sample because of its small size?

It is enlightening to me to see what people want and need. Also, it supports Tom's longstanding view that we should go ahead and build that pool.

El Huracan

2011-10-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Many street corners around Mérida display name plates like this one just a few blocks from our house. They are reproductions of the ones created long ago to help people get around at a time when many didn't read or even speak Spanish.

This seemed like an especially appropriate image for this week, with Hurricane Rina bearing down on the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. Mérida is not directly in its path but it could get a lot of rain and wind, as it did during last week's "tropical depression".

The communities on the Caribbean coast could be in for much worse than that.

Update Oct. 28: It didn't even rain in Merida.

Precautions were taken, including evacuation of Cozumel. My neighbor Ricardo's family are there, he said they were among the storm refugees, comfortably ensconced in a hotel with their cats.

After a couple of days of losing steam,
Rina was downgraded to another "tropical depression" on the coast.

Getting things done

2011-10-23T20:43:00.000-07:00

Insta-kitchen from Soriana (except the essential French press)

I thought this would be a vacation vacation, not as much of a rush-around-and-get-things-done vacation. I sincerely intended to carry out the foot doctor's prescription to walk barefoot in warm sand. And call everyone I was hoping to see. Instead, it has been busy with errands and chores although I have had some nice visits with friends.

The house is feeling homey and very liveable. You still would call it "lightly furnished", but that's a refreshing contrast to our Victoria clutter. There are places to sit, and dishes to eat on, utensils and pots and a few pictures on the wall - thanks to Alfredo for that.

Lucio and his assistants cleared the weedy, overgrown patio and back of the property which someone has mistaken for a free dump.

Already, only a few days left and still lots to do, and some choices to make about what won't get done until the next trip.

Do something that scares you...

2011-10-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

The city feels damp. The afternoon threatens rain. So many small creatures are about: ants of all sizes, and when I opened up my mailbox the only thing inside was a surprised gecko. Two more geckos clamber around the walls in the sala tonight.

The rainy season sprouted a new crop of weeds in the patio. Blue morning glories climb the wall, tall grasses are setting seed, there are tiny daisy-like flowers and something with a seed pod that looks a bit like a green grape. Several branches of the sour orange tree are bent to the ground, weighed down with fruit and fresh growth. Surprise, the snake plant and henequen, gifts from friends, didn't die of neglect but are thriving, still in a pot, in the shade of the orange.

The back of the property has also grown weeds, along with substantial deposits of the neighbors' trash. Pipes, wood, prunings of palm and other trees. Not very neighborly, but I guess we'll clear it out and see if future dumping can be politely discouraged.

Now for settling in. After a day with the fans running, the house feels less dank, and now it's filled with the fragrance of lilies - a lovely housewarming surprise.

Dragged the bike out of the unfinished guest bedroom where I stashed it in March, and cleaned it up with dish soap and a damp cloth. It was filthy, and seemed to grow an extra coat of grime in the summer heat. The key for the bike lock was rusted almost beyond recognition. The tires were flat of course, but a neighborhood tire-repair guy refilled them for free.

The bike made it easy to get to the Oaxaca festival. It was a couple of kilometres away, set up in the Parque de los Americas in the Garcia Gineres neighborhood. All the treasures of Oaxaca were represented there: the park was lined with vendors' stands selling everything from woven shawls and beautifully embroidered clothes, to the region's gorgeous black and green pottery. There might have been music and dancing before I got there.

The food tent was hopping. I got in line for a tamale and some of that famous Oaxacan hot chocolate, but couldn't help noticing the fried chapulines. Grasshoppers. I had heard about this dish, but still, it was a little surprising to see a big platter of them at a public event.

A young fellow behind me was telling his novia he was getting the chapulines - hoping to impress with bravery, I think.I asked a server if they were popular - yes, she said, did I want a taste? I told her I was too afraid to try them, but la novia behind me said she'd had them before, and liked them, and her boyfriend took a sample. So I swallowed my fear and took a few from the spoonful the server proffered.

They actually tasted pretty good.

So now I figure I'm ready for the apocalypse, or the post-global warming world, when bugs are all we have left to eat.

Brought the tamale home and put it in the fridge. For later, I figured. But I'm too intimidated to turn on the new range that was installed back in March and hasn't even been turned on yet. It has a funny button to ignite the gas burners, at least I think that's what it's for. And is there any potential problem with a tank of gas that's been sitting on the roof untouched all summer long?

I'll face that fear tomorrow.

Foodie paradise, here I come

2011-10-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

This sounds good:

Haven't been to any of these swank places yet. Nothing against fine dining - it would be a treat to check out a few of them.
At a more modest price point, I can vouch for the panuchos at our corner market, and at the nighttime food stands beside the San Sebastian church. And the pibil on the days that it's on the menu at our nearby cocina economica, Las Palapas.

Seeking your opinion

2011-10-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

(leduardo/flickr)

Just one week to go.

For months the next trip to Mérida seemed unbearably far in the future and now it seems impossibly near. I can almost feel the tropical air and the energy of the streets on the short drive home - home! - from the airport. I'm imagining what the house will look and feel like with the finishing touches that were done since our last visit. Hot water. Window coverings. Chairs. Lighting. A kitchen sink with the drain connected to the plumbing. Mosquito screens.

I'm really looking forward to some shopping for the things that will make the place comfortable and fully functional. First, though, I need to get better information about what other potential guests and residents will want and need.

The reality is that it will be a while before we get to live out our little fantasy of spending much of the year in Mérida (I know I mention this far too often - me quejo mucho). In the meantime it seems sensible and smart to make it available to others for vacation or long term. An empty house just doesn't seem right, in so many ways. We're hoping friends and family will come, but not everyone is into a 12-hour trip to a hot place without a beach on the doorstep. Go figure.

So, rental. I was a landlord for the past six years in Victoria and it's fairly straightforward. Advertise a nice home in a good location at a decent price and you get mobbed with about 75 applicants. There is little available and what is, is expensive. The hardest part is choosing one of many fine candidates (and some not so fine) and then saying no to the others.

In Mérida it's clearly different. Lots of empty places. Prices all over the place. Unfamiliar rules. Different currencies - will that be USD or pesos? The challenge of long-distance rental management. I see lots of lovely places listed for (what seem to me) high prices and some that look like ruins rented for very little. But I'm not sure about the priorities of the type of potential tenants I hope to attract: people looking for a reasonably priced longer term stay, perhaps while they renovate or try out life in Merida or just settle in for awhile. I'm not sure whether such people actually exist. They might be as mythical as the $10 a day wages for skilled tradespeople that some real estate agents touted as little as a couple of years ago.

To me this is all a learning experience, so I figured it would be fun and educational to take a survey and try to get a clearer picture of the rental market, before I go shopping for household items or do any serious advertising.

So I created a survey. I hope you'll help by sharing any info you have and passing it along to anyone else who might be interested.

Your input will be appreciated and I'll be sure to share the results.

Rental Survey

Tuesday nights, en español

2011-09-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

Find more photos like this on Se Habla Espanol

At work I'm listening to Mexican public radio - something historical. Trying to write a script for the morning show, trying to follow the conversation on the show that's on the air. Multitasking is especially ineffective when you're trying to follow two audio streams at once. The Mexican podcast is suffering the most from my divided attention. I've decided to just let the language wash over me, and not worry about comprehension for now.

Several bloggers have posted recently about learning and speaking Spanish (including Moving to Mérida, Yucatango, Imagine Mérida, An Alaskan in Yucatán ). Lots of great tips and resources. My own efforts to grasp the language have been on and off. It's high on the nice-to-do list, but not yet one of the must-dos, while work and family obligations limit the time we can spend away.

My Spanish skills lie somewhere in the territory between beginner and intermediate. I often have the unfortunate experience of starting a conversation with a local person in Mérida, and getting a long, fast and to me, mostly incomprehensible reply. I recognize a lot of the words but can't put them together fast enough. Many of the verb conjugations and articles and expressions are unfamiliar. I feel foolish and my face starts to freeze into an embarassed grin. Times like that I wonder if I'll ever get much better at this language thing.

Back when we first got our place, I went with our property manager to meet the next door neighbor. She was graciously describing the nearby conveniences, shops and transit and such. I guess I was looking increasingly befuddled. The neighbor turned to Maggie and asked, with what I thought was a hint of incredulity: "She doesn't speak Spanish?" Maggie kindly replied that I knew bastante, enough. I wish it were so.

Sometimes I feel like it is coming to me. Comprehension begins to emerge from the fog of words and phrases. Other times I totally suck at it, and feel like my language skills are heading in reverse; that I am un-learning.

Lately I've been meeting other Spanish-language enthusiasts Tuesday nights at a local café in Victoria. Se Habla Español has been meeting for years. It started as a handful of people playing Scrabble in Spanish in someone's apartment, and grew.

Now, on a typical night 20 or more people at all levels of proficiency turn out for two hours of conversation en español. You just show up, buy a coffee or whatever, and contribute a dollar to cover the group's modest costs (principally running the website and organizing occasional parties). It was a pleasant surprise to discover friends, and friends of friends, and parents of our kids' friends, among the regular group. Everyone has a different reason for coming. One friend is an artist who sometimes works in Spain in the winters. Another, a doctor who volunteers with a project to provide health care to poor communities in Honduras. One has a novia in Colombia. Several have spent months or years traveling or living in Latin America. Some participants are native Spanish speakers from Mexico or elsewhere.

At first when I went it seemed like after an hour of concentration my brain started to hurt. Now two hours doesn't feel too overwhelming. I discovered it helps to bring index cards with a couple of verb tense conjugations I'm trying to learn, for quick reference. Increasingly, I'm experiencing that wonderful, elusive feeling that I'm following whole conversations, not fading in and out of range like a bad radio signal. Could this be real progress? We'll see, next month.

The blog of others

2011-09-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

At the 2010 Latin American Bloggers Conference

Do you ever have a spell when everything you write seems like crap? I've been going through one of those lately.

Maybe I'm too preoccupied with other deadlines, or it might be harder to feel connected and current when I've been away from Mérida for several months. Whatever the reason, my blogging efforts these days usually fall flat. The words don't seem right. My thoughts feel precious or obvious or dull. It's the same when I try to comment on other people's blog posts. Type, re-read, reconsider, delete.

Fortunately other people are still writing and posting much more interesting stuff than anything going through my head. A while ago, John and Alan pointed out some engaging newer blogs I hadn't seen before. It made me realize I had some catching up to do.

¡Qué sorpresa! people keep coming to Mérida and the Yucatán from places all over the U.S. and Canada and who knows where else.

Just when some things begin to feel familiar, and certain milestones pass in our own Mérida adventure, these newer arrivals are seeing the place with fresh eyes and different perspectives. There's some great writing and illuminating information. I'm enjoying these new voices so much I don't feel such a terrible need to fill space with my own ramblings for now.

Here are several great recent additions to my regular reading list:
Imagine Mérida
Casa del Gato Azul
My Mérida Life
Mérida - Are we there yet?
Yucatango

I'm always eager to hear about new ones - let me know what I'm missing!

Fittingly, I learned yesterday that the date`s been set for the upcoming Latin American Bloggers Conference. It will be in Mérida November 5th. The conference was a real highlight for me last year. It was wonderful to meet many of the people who had inspired and (perhaps unknowingly) encouraged me to take the big leap a couple of years ago and start to put down roots in this magical place. I`ve been looking forward to reconnecting and possibly meeting some new bloggers, getting some new ideas and maybe even curing the old writer`s block.

Sadly I`ll miss the conference this year. Leaving town October 28th because that`s when the cheap fares ran out. But I`ll be thinking of the blogging friends who made me feel like less of a stranger in our future home and have been so supportive with their suggestions and kind words. Oh well, next time!

Chocolate museum

2011-09-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Mayan glyph for cacao

When I learned that the ancient Mayan city of Tikul was once ruled by Lord Cacao, and that one of the deities, Ek Chuah, was the God of Cacao, I knew the Yucatán was going to be my kind of place.

I've read that cacao pods were used as currency here. So puzzled me that it seemed so difficult to find good chocolate in Merida. There's a little shop near the Plaza Grande where you can buy processed cocoa and small bags of dark and milk chocolate molded in the shape of little corn cobs. It's nice for gifts to take home but not exactly the fix for that mid-afternoon craving.

People mentioned a larger fine chocolate maker in the suburbs, and I even got an address, but could not figure out a way to get there without a car or spending most of a day getting lost on unfamiliar buses.

I could find no evidence of modern cacao cultivation on the peninsula, only some scant and vague historic references. I was a little disappointed to conclude it would be necessary someday to travel to Tabasco state and the Ruta del Cacao to experience my favorite food in its natural habitat. Blogger Madeline Weeks wrote a great account of doing just that.

Then in Yucatan Today I came across the story of a new museum of cacao opening on the Ruta Puuc, south of Mérida, beyond Uxmal. It appears to be created by the owner of the hard-to-reach Belgian chocolate maker in Colonia Pensiones. The museum is located on a cacao plantation.

We're really just getting started exploring around the Yucatan peninsula. It's going to be a little easier now that we have a livable home base in Mérida, and the busy-work of real-estate transactions and renovations are more or less done for now. A visit to a Yucatán cacao plantation is definitely going to be up there on my list of things to see and do, although probably not for the coming trip next month.

P.S. As I've been dithering with this post over the past while, Valerie, who operates the terrific Pickled Onion restaurant in Santa Elena near Uxmal, posted an item about the museum with much more info than mine. Thanks, Valerie!

Old Mérida

2011-09-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

I often wonder what it was like back in the days before the henequen industry collapsed and Mérida was left more or less forgotten and crumbling for decades. Yesterday a colleague flagged an amazing resource on Flickr called The Commons as a source of neat historic B&W images with no copyright restrictions. So I immediately queried "Merida" to see what showed up.

I was captivated by these images from an 1899 expedition. Aside from the unpaved streets and the absence of cars and converted commercial storefronts, the streetscape looks a lot like today.

Maybe someone recognizes the locations in these photos?

You can see the full collection of images from the Allison V. Armour Expedition on The Commons. The photo locations aren't all that well-described, so it can be hard to tell if they're from Mérida or some other Yucatán site, or somewhere in Central America. In fact it's possible even a couple of these might be from a different Yucatan city or town.

Looking down street, a few people. Two-story buildings with small balconies, signs painted, "cademia" [verify the rest]. 1899.

Name of Expedition: Allison V. Armour Expedition
Participants: Charles F. Millspaugh, Edward P. Allen, Edward S. Isham Jr.,Jordan L. Mott Jr.
Expedition Start Date: December 21, 1898
Expedition End Date: March 11, 1899
Purpose and Aims: Plant collecting and photography for Botany in the Bermuda, Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Yucatan.
Vessel Name: Utowana (Yacht, Sailboat)
Location: Central America, Mexico, Yucatan, Merida

Street. 1899.

Name of Expedition: Allison V. Armour ExpeditionParticipants: Charles F. Millspaugh, Edward P. Allen, Edward S. Isham Jr.,Jordan L. Mott Jr.Expedition Start Date: December 21, 1898Expedition End Date: March 11, 1899Purpose and Aims: Plant collecting and photography for Botany in the Bermuda, Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Yucatan.Vessel Name: Utowana (Yacht, Sailboat)Location: Central America, Mexico, Yucatan

Street, people, buildings, horse drawn carriage, church at end of street with several bells. 1899.

Cathedral. 1899.

Truth, rumors and mosquito screens

2011-08-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

Mosquito sculpture in Komara, Manitoba. Photo by James Sapara/Flickr

Mosquiteras were installed this week to keep out the moscos. Window screens for the mosquitoes, that is. Their Spanish nicknames are so charming, aren't they?

My first couple of trips to Mérida I was fooled. We didn't encounter any at all. Tom read something about mosquitoes but I thought it was a vicious rumor. It was the dry season, and I didn't know that made any difference.

I am from Manitoba, Winnipeg to be specific, and I still sorely miss some things about that place, decades after moving away. Wonderful aunts and uncles and cousins, the skyline, the way fields of flax in bloom look just like water. Summers on the farm and at Delta Beach (you might have seen it in recent coverage of the Manitoba floods). I miss the openness of prairie people. I do not miss the cold winters. Perhaps in reaction to it, my adult life has been a migration to progressively warmer climes. I thought I left the mosquitoes back on the prairies as well.

By the time I discovered the truth about mosquitoes in Mérida I was too far along for it to be a deal-breaker. Perhaps it's kind of like discovering too late that your novia is a chronic snorer (sorry, Tom).

Mosquitoes in Mérida aren't big like the ones in Manitoba (see photo). I'm not sure they can possibly be as numerous, though some fellow bloggers certainly have stories. They can carry disease, and in Merida the concern has been about dengue fever.

The government works hard to prevent it. City employees hunt down sources of stagnant water at homes and businesses, pouring chemicals into drains. Dengue cases in Mérida are fairly rare, but it's a reality. I know one person who had it, long ago. It is also known as breakbone fever, apparently because that's what it feels like. If you get it repeatedly, the possibility increases of getting the haemorrhagic form, which can be fatal. (Check official sources such as the WHO or CDC for reliable information; I'm just repeating what I've picked up along the way).

Life is risk. We have our insect-borne diseases in Canada as well. But it seemed important to minimize the risk to ourselves and our guests, as well as avoiding the discomfort of getting itchy bites all over. I figure the screens and one of those electric swatters that the street vendors sell on the traffic medians should pretty well cover it. We still lack some basic things like a full set of dishes to eat on, but with the mosquiteras installed, I feel like our place is finally fit for company.

Shakira drops in

2011-07-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

The blinds for our front windows are now installed, after several months of bare windows, and they do look nice in the pictures our architect Victor sent. It's one of those small details that preoccupy my mind beyond any real importance. When you're a worrier like me, there's always some small thing to stress about, such as the long-distance logistics of getting some chairs paid for and delivered, or getting water for a few parched plants in the back patio.

Still, it's a big relief. The house now seems more finished, and much less exposed.

Now our neighborhood is about to get a whole different kind of exposure. After months of publicity and preparations, Saturday is the big outdoor concert by Shakira. Up to 150,000 people are expected to attend. It's free, sponsored by some local business people, though you have to get tickets.

I'm not too familiar with Shakira's music, but she's a huge star, especially in Latin America. She did the 2010 official World Cup theme song, Waka Waka (This time for Africa), perhaps the pinnacle of fame for any star.

It's clear that this is a big deal for Mérida:

The free concert takes place in the old railway yards just a few blocks from our house. Shakira's impending visit has prompted some major improvements on that site, known as "La Plancha". The name apparently translates as "the Iron", though I think it means "the flats" rather than a reference to iron rails.

News stories in local media, such as this one in La Revista, describe the rehab of the railyards. The area was abandoned, overgrown, strewn with garbage. When workers started on the work they found a seriously injured man, near death, in an empty building on the site. Another story on the Sipse site says they removed 200 rail cars and 220 tons of trash in the cleanup. Here's an earlier Yucatan Times story in English. Victor says people are starting to use the new public space and it's a real improvement in the area.

The city's mayor describes the La Plancha project as part of an overall urban renewal plan for central Mérida. The Columbian superstar herself seems to be getting a lot of the credit for the transformation. It's her image on the billboard proclaiming the La Plancha renewal project, in silhouette, bent over a microphone, whipping her hair. So, thanks Shakira! I'm glad our windows are decent for your visit.

Parque Mejorada

2011-07-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

View Larger Map

I got to know this area better over many internet-deprived days during the last few visits to Mérida. I'd sit on the slatted wooden benches until my butt got sore, or until the laptop ran out of power; whichever came first.

I grew to like this park, in many ways, better than the busy Parque Grande about half a dozen blocks to the west. No one pestered me relentlessly to buy inferior hammocks, or tested pick-up lines while I tried to work ("Hey that's a really small computer...where you from?") No aggressive panhandling, which I experienced in Parque Santa Ana. It seems in those parks if you sit around too long you attract uninvited attention, like mosquitoes.

I found myself hanging out more and more in Parque Mejorada. A smaller park with fairly busy streets on two sides, but otherwise peaceful. As an added attraction it's pretty close to our house.

On my first few visits I felt like Mejorada didn't have much going on. Perhaps that's because there are no sidewalk restaurants like the ones surrounding Parque Grande, or market food stands as in Santa Ana. It's also not a location for any of the regular public concerts.

Over time I got around to exploring beyond some of the striking facades. I followed the sound of music to find a school with a band practicing in interior courtyard of one old building. Another day I ducked out of the afternoon heat into the museum of popular art. It was holding a spectacular exhibit of work related to Day of the Dead. On earlier visits we toured the Museum of Yucatecan Song, which is dedicated to the icons and history of the indelible Yucatecan music that you hear in the public concerts and on the radio. I have yet to explore the school of architecture which stands next to the cathedral, or the ancient cathedral which is the source of much street activity. Of course the famous Las Almendras restaurant with its Yucatecan cuisine faces the park as well. One day I was able to peek into the expansive green spaces of the Centro Cultural del Nino Yucateco, which lies behind the imposing walls across from the southeast corner of the square.

I took a bunch of pictures of what I found behind some of the grand facades, but in my current state of disorganization can't seem to find most of them. Here are a few from the Museo de Arte Popular and the music school.

I also found this link with info about the park and a few of the places around it. I'm looking forward to discovering more about the neighborhood now that the initial busy-work of renovations is done.

if (have_pool())...

2011-06-04T17:20:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since my last post. Instead of blogging, for the past few weeks, many hours disappeared into my latest course at the local college. The objective has been to learn a new language. Not Spanish, but PHP, a computer language for building websites.

Two nights a week, after work, I sat in a classroom trying to get my head around strings like this:

if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
   $sql = "INSERT INTO entries (cat_id, dateposted, subject, body) VALUES (" . $_POST['cat'] . ", NOW(), '" . $_POST['subject'] . "', '" . $_POST['body'] . "');";
   mysql_query($sql);
   header("LOCATION: " . $config_basedir);
} else {
   require("header.php");

Can't say I understand it yet, even now that the course is finished.

I now know what a statement like the one above is supposed to do, but I couldn't tell you if there's punctuation out of place or why it's arranged the way it is. If you took away my textbook and asked me to write something like that from scratch, I would probably put my head down on the desk in defeat.

The reason I took the course is I've realized I need to understand PHP to do what I want to do with websites. It can also make it practical to hand the site over to people who are even less technical than me, so they can add and update stuff easily.

Spanish is much easier and more fun to learn. But learning to work with PHP is part of the long-term plan.

The plan is to get to spend lots of time in Merida before we're too decrepit to enjoy it much. I love the idea of being able to work wherever we are. This is not so easy to arrange with my day job. I sort of have to be there. The boss would notice if I stopped showing up at the morning story meetings.

Back when I started meeting people in Merida and the nearby beach towns, it became clear that a lot of Canadians and Americans work online for employers located north of the border. Some are web designers or programmers or other types of technical people. Some are more the writer/editor types who handle online content. These include the people who provide comment-monitoring services for my own employer, which publishes the top news website in Canada, among other media things. I realized these smart people in the Yucatan have it figured out: They can sit by the beach or the pool and get paid for their work, while suckers like me toil in the cold and damp, thousands of kilometres away.

So this is what I hope to do:
1. Keep practicing PHP until it starts to make sense.
2. Get a pool.
3. Sit by pool working on web stuff that might include complicated strings of PHP.

Quite possibly none of these things will come to pass, although I'd guess the pool is going to happen sooner or later. No matter, it's interesting to try and pleasant to daydream.

The great writer Malcolm Gladwell, in The Outliers, calculates that it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours of experience for a person to master a complex skill. That sounds okay. There's no hurry. I'm not quitting my day job.

Casa Azul

2011-05-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

The pale green paint was flaking off the facade by the time interior renovations were underway. At the back, the walls had been patched after the drainage pipes were buried in the wall. I thought it would be hard to pick a new color from all the incredible hues that are splashed on walls all over Merida.

A few nice shades were tested on the front wall.

But then I came across this grand house in the Santa Ana neighborhood. I found this shade of aqua blue completely electrifying.

It happened to be the work of our architects at Estilo - so Victor knew exactly what color it was.

Here it is on our (much less grand) facade and back walls.

Like it?

Mexico's Mennonites and Irma Voth

2011-04-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

Since my first trip to Mexico in the early 1980s I've been fascinated by the Mennonites. I knew many migrated from the Canadian prairies, where Mennonites continue to have a strong presence. It was thrilling to encounter one in Merida for the first time a few years ago, a tall blond man in overalls selling cheese from table to table in the Alameda restaurant. For some reason I assumed he'd speak English and would know stories about life in Canada - perhaps I felt a connection between their history and my own farming relatives who settled in Manitoba. But no, he was from Campeche state, period; there were no stories of Canadian or any other foreign roots. He was puzzled by my questions. The cheese was excellent, though.

I've seen Mexican Mennonites occasionally since then. Most recently in a group at a building supply store in the Mejorada neighborhood: the men dressed in formal black overalls, the women covered in their long dark printed dresses. First time I'd seen Mennonite women in town. A small boy, maybe aged three or four, perched on a crate in his wee black overalls, white shirt and hat. I started to go for my camera, then hesitated, realizing that taking a photo might violate their cultural and religious rules.

So I was excited to discover Canadian writer Miriam Toews' new novel, Irma Voth, about a young Mennonite woman and her family in Mexico. Toews is of Mennonite background herself, and happened upon the subject matter after she was inveigled to play the role of a Mennonite wife in the art film, Stellet Licht (Silent Light), by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas.

I don't know how closely Irma Voth reflects the Mennonite experience in Mexico, or even Chihuahua state where it is mostly set. There are narcos and violence, and a deep, oppressive unhappiness. I loved the book anyway. The story line includes the making of a film involving the Mennonites and a foreign actress. Beyond the drama, it gives a view into the sensibility of this tribe who, as the fictional Irma says in the book, "live like ghosts", and "move all around the world in colonies looking for freedom and isolation and peace and opportunities to sell cheese."

Here's an article from the Globe and Mail if you'd like to read more about Toews and Irma Voth . Now I can't wait to see the film, Stellet Licht, if I can track it down.

Changes in the 'hood

2011-04-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

Our house wasn't the only thing undergoing a transformation in our neighborhood in the time between my visits.

This time, right away, I noticed new paint colors on some of the houses on our block. One end of the block had been anchored by two empty storefronts for at least the year and a half that I had been haunting the area. Now one of those
storefronts was occupied by a sharp new Dunosusa grocery/drygoods store, a nice complement to all the fresh produce and meat available at the Chem Bech market on the next block. The other storefront, while still empty, was freshly painted and looking much nicer - who knows what could be there by the time we return?

Other changes were less obvious but hinted at a changing mood or sensibility in the area. I went to the tendejon at the other end of the street to get water and cokes for the workers at our house. The shop owner is very friendly. On my first visit he informed me that there were many Canadian paysanos in the neighborhood, to my great surprise. I thought our area was a bit beyond the encroachment zone, where one charming neighborhood is so populated with American and Canadian expats it's sometimes referred to as "Gringo Gulch".

Dunosusa: Your full range of votive candles

This time, with my change for the drinks, the tendejon owner surprised me with a sales pitch: Did I want to buy his building? He listed off the features, opened the door to show me the living space in behind the shop area, divulged the asking price. I wasn't sure what to say, as I already have a house and wasn't thinking of going into the corner-store business. I told him I'd certainly let people know about the property. Then I left with my purchases and lingering questions about the exchange. Was he feeling pressured by the well-stocked new Dunosusa at the other end of the block? Is there a sense of a land rush in the neighborhood after a couple of (I was told) very slow years in the local real estate market? Or do random foreigners get these kinds of offers all the time?

My curiosity intensified a couple of days later at the local lavanderia. After I dropped off my clothes, out of the blue, the operator's husband approached me with his card and started to tell me how he could find me beach property at very good prices. Now I admit I am a bit of a real-estate weenie. Endlessly fascinated with the market, the prices, the opportunities, the hidden potential of even the sorriest wreck of a place. I've enjoyed buying and renovating a few places over the years, and would have done more if money wasn't such darned hard stuff to get. But I've never been approached repeatedly by total strangers who assumed I was "in the market".

I wonder what it means.

Dunosusa: I don't know what these are but I think you eat them.

Early retirement

2011-04-07T23:03:00.000-07:00

This old bike has been my trusty steed and daily transportation for the better part of the last two decades. Got it second-hand from a bike-mechanic friend. It's the best bike I ever owned, but also the only one that was never stolen. I am sure that's because it's so ugly and usually also could use a bit of cleaning. That, and a good lock.

When I rented a house in Merida, before we bought our own, there was a bike available for guests and I took it out once or twice a day, exploring neighborhoods, checking out the street vibes after dark, pushing beyond the places my feet could take me. Getting lost on a bike isn't so bad because it doesn't take long to get un-lost.

With no plans to get a car, I wanted a bike in Merida to get around. The ones I saw in stores seemed big and heavy. My old bike is light, responsive and so familiar after all these years that it feels like an extension of myself. When the mechanics told me it might be getting too old to find replacement parts, I figured it had earned a good retirement home.

So I had it dissembled and packed in a shipping box for the trip to Merida. Cost $30 for the box and packing, around $50 more, I think, to get it on the plane. Once in Merida, I humped it down to the local BiciMaya store and they charged me 80 pesos (about $6.60) to put it back together.

Cycling in Merida is something that seems best approached with some caution. The streets are narrow and uneven, traffic is packed in, and drivers can be somewhat aggressive. I've been told the licensing process for drivers is not what you'd call rigorous. The tabloid papers frequently feature gory accident pictures.

Still, you've got to appreciate a city that closes its main north/south artery to traffic every Sunday and turns it into a dedicated bike route. When I got my wheels put back together and started riding, I began to notice the other cyclists. No one else wears a helmet; all seem to be workers or elderly men.

After I got the bike back to the house I decided to head to the nearby mall for household supplies. Arriving there, the parking lot seemed to have nowhere to lock up. Then I saw a cluster of bikes near the main doors. Getting closer, I realized they were unlocked, with a man keeping watch over them. A bike valet. This bike was retiring in style.

At many parking lots around Merida you see similar parking helpers and minders, a sort of unofficial and often unwanted service. They who wave a red rag and direct drivers into their parking spots, then expect a propino for keeping watch while you shop or whatever. I had no idea a similar informal economy existed around bike-minding, but I was happy to leave it with my valet and accept a little wooden token with a number so I could claim it back.

When I returned, laden with pillows and a curtain rod, it was a bit of a comic scene trying to jam everything onto the bike rack. I discovered the rack was missing a spring and suddenly stuff was all over the pavement. Maybe it wasn't put back together quite right after the flight. But we made it back through the zig-zag neighborhood streets, me no doubt looking like a gringa nut, all laden with pillows and other bulky items, weaving around on the old bike.

The next day I forswore the beast-of-burden routine, but took a city map and made an excursion to an obscure (to me) location in a semi-distant neighborhood on a furniture scouting mission. Felt a sense of accomplishment actually finding it, and making it back. On the way I discovered a sign advertising a public cenote not far from our house, something to check out another time, and something I would not have seen taking the main road.

It's going to take a bit of fine-tuning to get the bike and the routes sorted out. But even now, back in Victoria, it's comforting to think of my familiar friend leaning against the wall, ready for adventure.

Renovation progress

2011-03-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

It was a whirlwind trip. So much to do, not enough time. But a lot did get done. I can't claim much of the credit. My role was easy, mostly buying stuff, waiting for deliveries and making a few fun decisions. Others did all the heavy lifting of tiling and painting and thoroughly cleaning the house of construction dust, dirt and debris. Now, back in Victoria, I realize I forgot to take pictures of all the rooms. Here are some of what we've got.

First night, second time around

2011-03-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

Monday was my first sleepover in our house since before the renovations started back in late October. During the day, the workers finished relaying the tile floor in the sala, installed lights and shower fittings, and a very impressive cleaning crew spent a full day stripping away layers of ancient grime and recent construction debris and dust - which got them about halfway through the job.

A few deliveries came: a bed, a fridge and stove. Found a wooden table and a charmingly weathered metal rocking chair at an open-air furniture place suggested by Paul.

After the workers left and I had the place to myself, I spent a lot of time wandering from room to room. Seeing how the angles and placement of lights and door frames and other elements lined up so precisely. Trying out the different lights: the salvaged Art Deco pendant, the stone cylinders in the kitchen, the torch sconces in the studio. Noticing how the wall colour (called pavo - "turkey") changed as the sun went down and the artificial lighting took over.

It's essentially the same house but it felt completely different. The neighborhood sounds seemed comforting, not strange or alarming like they did the first night we stayed in the long-vacant house back in the fall. Earlier, Ricardo, a neighbor who has lived across the street for 40 years, waved me over to chat about all the activity around the house, and our plans, and his story. The woman who operates the Lavanderia Don Quixote came to pick up lunch at the cocina economica while I was having mine at one of the tables and wished me "buen provecha" (bon appetit).

It feels a lot like home.

I can haz internet!

2011-03-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

I confess: The only deity I pray to is the internet, and lately it has been a vengeful God.

My computer away from home is a cheap netbook, bought about a year and a half ago, already ancient. A balky electrical connection (faulty cord? worn-out battery?) gives it the delightful tendency to suddenly shut down without warning, even when it's plugged in to the wall.

But the biggest problem has been its increasing tendency to refuse to connect to wifi. No amount of coaxing and tweaking of settings would work this time around. As a result I've been discovering the online limitations of the Android phone I have borrowed from our son. Let's just say I wouldn't want to write a long blog post on it unless I was maybe trapped in an elevator or something (I was, for a short time yesterday, and I wasn't even tempted).

Along with the frustration of all that couldn't be done this past week without an internet-connected computer, I've been fretting and dithering about internet service for our house here in Merida. We want it ready to plug and play for ourselves and guests, whenever we show up.

The range of options from the leading internet providers were disappointing. We don't want a land line or cable TV, but Telmex and Cablemas both require customers to buy their bundle of services along with internet. This privilege costs about $50 a month, year-round, whether you're using it for 12 months or two. On the Yolisto forum people have praised AITel, a smaller internet provider, which apparently has a plan for seasonal residents. You can shut down your service when you're away, and only pay for the periods when it's turned on. I tried to see if we could get AITel but it's not available in our neighborhood, or at least that's what I think I was told in a somewhat unsuccessful attempt at a telephone conversation in Spanish with an AITel rep.

After coming to the conclusion that we were kind of hooped, I happened to encounter a couple of great young employees at stores in Centro who helped me out. I was wandering through the Technology Mall, an interesting conglomeration of shops that seem to sell mostly accessories for myriad devices, when one fellow asked what I was looking for.

Xavier Rosado

I don't know how I got started on my lament about thwarted internet efforts, but he told me the solution was to get Banda Ancha. I'd heard the term but associated it with that poor Indonesian city that was obliterated by a tsunami a few years ago. Xavier Rosado explained where it could be found, how it could be recharged to use when you need it, how it didn't require a 3-year contract. This wasn't even a product he sold in his booth. He walked me around the mall to ask other shopkeepers about where to get it. I began my search for this wonderful object.

Banda Ancha is the same kind of USB stick that North of the Border phone/internet providers offer, but I hadn't been tempted to get it before. We already have internet in Victoria, and the bills are shockingly high, so who needs to add on another expensive frill? But as a standalone, pay as you go, maybe, I hope, reliable internet connection, it seems like it will be a bargain at its $60 (CDN) purchase price plus a little over $15 for a week or $40 a month, only when you need it.

It wasn't easy to find Telcel's Banda Ancha pay-as-you-go product. It is not what you would call heavily marketed. I wonder why? At several small Telcel shops I was told they didn't have it, or didn't even know what it was. A couple of others said it was only available on an 18-month contract. But I finally found mine at the Elektra store at the corner of C. 56 and C. 61, thanks to another super-helpful young guy named Dany Alexis who explained everything very carefully and wrote down the numbers for registering the device and getting some free air time.

It threw me for a loop when Dany Alexis explained that I needed to register with a CURP which is apparently some kind of national identification number. I thought I might have to borrow one from a friend with a residency document. But later, while deleting messages from my Merida cell phone, I discovered I had already been assigned a CURP number with that earlier purchase. (Cue The Prisoner catchphrase: "I am not a number...")

So after several hours of trial and error, it's working! I feel like I've been rescued from a desert island. Albeit a desert island with great food, friends, and no end of interesting things to do.

I realize this story might not resonate for those who are not addicted to, or at least hugely dependent on the internet; or who are not trying to figure out how to make things work in a strange country.

But I guess it's my Sunday sermon, so I should think of a moral or two. How about these: Perhaps we don't have to be prisoner to the cable and telco's cruel efforts to force us to pay for their unwanted services. And, there are a lot of really nice and helpful people in this city, and I would be lost without them. Amen.

Carnaval in Merida

2011-03-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

Merida Carnaval - photo by Tom

Yikes, is it really that long since the last post? So much for resolutions. Lots to write about but there's been so much going on and such limited screen time these days.

I've been back in Merida for a week already. Tom is here too on a last-minute booking. He saw the house for the first time. Likes it. Yes, I am relieved.

Soon I hope to catch up on writing. In the meantime, I've heard that photos can do the work of a lot of words.

Also links to other people's words, such as this one to Hammockman Paul's thoughtful musings on what Carnaval means in Merida.

Tom's photo - girl at Carnaval

Warm thoughts and cool plants

2011-02-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

Temperatures plunged back below zero overnight in Victoria. It seemed like a good time to scroll back through the images from November in Merida. I swear that just daydreaming about the place makes it easier to get through the winter here.

Meeting Juanita in person was a highlight of the fall trip. We initially connected through a remarkable series of coincidences. Like us, she and husband Jan lived in Victoria before making the move to Merida. Their names came up while I was researching my recent article about Victorians making their homes in Mexico. That same day Juanita happened upon this blog and sent me a note. Things came together and we had a great chat over Skype. Her words stuck with me long after our conversation. I completely identified with her memories of layering up against the grey chill of Victoria winters. I admired their courage, letting go of the familiar life they had built here, and starting over in a new country.

When we got together, Juanita invited me to join her on a short jaunt to the charming village of Cholul, just beyond the city's northern edge. We made a stop at a vivero, or plant nursery. The plant selection is a nothing like the nurseries in Canada. One plant's leaves were so enormous that Juanita looked like a pixie standing next to it.

I had been anticipating but also slightly dreading my first visit to one of these roadside tropical plant emporiums. I have been a slightly obsessed amateur gardener for years, always collecting new and strange things, with diversions into succulents and evergreens and groundcovers, grasses and bamboos. I've tried native plant gardening, xeriscaping, zonal denial, edible landscaping, gardening on pavement. Each spring I'd line up early outside the local "plantaholics" sales with friends, feeling the dizzy rush of adrenaline and craving as the gates opened.

In the past couple of years, in a concession to time constraints and sore joints, most of those plants were dug up and given away. Surprisingly, I haven't really missed them. I'm forgetting their Latin names. Househunting in Merida, I deliberately looked for a smallish lot to keep the garden maintenance to a minimum. I was thinking of an expanse of gravel and maybe a bougainvilla/bugambilia and one or two other tough specimens.

Our side trip to the vivero definitely shows this will be a hard resolution to keep.Juanita pointed out a particularly prized variety of palm in one of the crowded displays - and I immediately found myself wanting it, needing it.

The Big Indulgence

2011-01-29T08:29:00.000-08:00

The plan was to do what friend Debbie calls a "light renovation": Update wiring and plumbing, paint, replace lights and fans, and keep the existing kitchen and bathroom pretty much as-is. It has stayed more or less within that description, with a number of changes that made sense to do now rather than later, such as removing a non-original wall to create a front sala out of an unusable bedroom, raising the arch and re-laying the pasta floors in a couple of rooms.

But it became quickly obvious the existing bathroom, while functional, couldn't just be cleaned up and kept in service for a couple more years. The bathoon reno is the one indulgence in this first spate of renovations. I am used to living in less than pristine surroundings (see "Fallingdowne turns 100") but it was truly revolting. I love using locally sourced materials in a home and love the Yucatan's plentiful limestone in all its forms. Georgina suggested covering the bathroom walls in the stuff, and so we've now got the white ("Crema Maya") tiles on the walls and red ("Ticul") stone on the floors. It's amazing to see it in place in these latest photos from our architect, Victor.

More reno pictures

2011-01-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

These were taken last month, but haven't had a chance to post until now. Last I heard we were waiting for the plumbing to be done so the tile-setters could come in. Already the date of the next trip is approaching and I'm wondering if most of the work can be completed by then. I'm hoping for a functioning bathroom and kitchen and rooms that are ready for furnishings. I know the roof and other stuff will still need to be done before the rains start and I can't quite remember when that occurs.

Hard to believe it's almost a year already since the purchase of the house was completed. I'm glad we haven't been in a rush to get all the work done, but I am looking forward to seeing this first phase of renovations done.

Opening for the new bathroom window

Arch is raised, front room is bright now, not dank

Shower area with nicho ready for tiling

Electrical and a/c circuits in studio

The windmills of my mind

2011-01-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

From the latest comments, I see I'm not the only one with a thing for windmills. Here's a photo of the ones I saw at the Yucatan state fair in November. It's an artless picture but I wanted to get the phone number in case I ever want to get one for aforementioned irrigation system. These are on a much more modest scale than the ones that dominated the skyline in old images of the city.

I can't see them without thinking of that ubiquitous ear worm that won the 1969 Oscar for best song, The Windmills of Your Mind. Not so sure I'd want to sit in the patio watching the windmill blades turning, with these spooky lyrics running through my head:

(from "The Thomas Crown Affair")
Music by Michel Legrand
Lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman
Round,
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel,
Never ending on beginning,
On an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain,
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple
Spinning silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!
Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half-forgotten dream
Like the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple
Spinning silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!
Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly?
Was it something that I said?
Lovers walk along a shore
And leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway
or the fragment of a song,
half-remembered names and faces
but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair?
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!

Old Merida

2011-01-16T00:54:00.000-08:00

The house I rented in La Ermita a year ago had lots of good books for hot afternoons in the hammock under a creaking fan. One great one was Ronald Wright's Time Among the Maya. Many stories about the ways and places in which the Mayan World thrived, or faded, or went underground, in Belize and Guatemala and the Yucatan Peninsula.
An image from the book that has nothing at all to do with Mayan civilization stuck in my mind. It was from Wright's description of Merida in the 1970s, a sleepy city with windmills planted on every property to draw water up from the household wells.

I've long been fascinated by metal windmills, loved to see them in the dry hills of Nebraska slowly sucking water up from the vast Ogalala aquifer to fill the livestock tanks. I often imagine it would be great to hook one up in our patio to irrigate the plants from the old well, wherever it is. I coveted one of the ones on display at the state fair in November.
The other day this image turned up in my Google alerts. The image that's been in my mind since reading Wright's description. Tom surprised me this week by propping the postcard up on my keyboard after buying it on eBay. I wonder how many people remember the city looking this way?

It's not the end of the world but you can see it from here

2011-01-09T14:44:00.000-08:00

Image from "Unraveling the Chicxulub Case" in Geotimes

La Princesa is watching television, of course. An animated recreation of a 11.1-magnitude earthquake is busy toppling forests in British Columbia and killing the dinosaurs there. It is the result of the shockwave from the meteor that hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago.
I tell her the impact was very close to our Merida home. I tell her you can see the outline of the crater where the town of Chicxulub now stands. Some clever people have even dubbed the spot "the end of the world." La Princesa is clearly impressed. "That is very cool," she tells me.
It is deeply gratifying to find something about our Yucatan initiative that makes the grade with La Princesa. She swears she will never visit us there.
She says Mexico gives her a headache. Too hot, too many bugs. The first and so far only time we took her there, at age 14, she gazed out the bus window at the streetscapes of weathered colonial facades on the way in to the city and proclaimed: "But.. it's.. so.. ugly." She loved the night scenes, the music, the placid dogs, the ruins (though we were crazy to go to Uxmal in the middle of the day). She loved Coke in glass bottles. Homemade corn ice cream from a cart in Santa Lucia square. It's not enough to sway her position, though.
La Princesa is 17 this month and full of her own dreams and plans for the world that beckons beyond high school. Itching already to have a place of her own. Bristling under the oppressive yoke of parents with their irritating questions and advice and monitoring. The parents have a few more years of wage slavery before they can throw off their own yoke and fritter away the winter months in Merida (though the plan is for frequent, shorter stays until then).

Image from "The day the dinosaurs died" in Progreso Hoy

So if she doesn't want to visit us, it's not the end of the world. But perhaps someday we'll be able to entice her with the promise of a short bus ride to that very place.

Fallingdowne turns 100

2011-01-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

This morning I realized our rambling, run-down old Victoria house is now officially a century old. On days like this, it really feels it, as I'm writing in my fingerless gloves, down vest, wool cardigan and blanket.
In summer, to me at least, the place has a certain charming, beach-house kind of feel, even though it's a half-dozen long blocks from the beach and we never go there anymore now that the kids are grown. In wintertime, its charms are more elusive.
I sometimes think about the commonalities between this house and our Merida casa-in-progress. I'm not quite sure how old the Merida house is, though the 12-foot ceilings, thick mamposteria walls, old pasta-tile floors and iron beams suggest it's also early-ish 19th century.
In Merida, most of the original flourishes (aside from some pasta floors and a couple of doors) were stripped out in an earlier renovation.
Same with the Victoria house. It has the original door and window frames and a few leaded glass windows. The century-old fir floors are worn out; they've been sanded down one too many times so that they split and pop where the traffic is heaviest or the floors are warped. I won't get started on the kitchen and bathrooms.
In our Victoria home the plumbing and the electrical are a dysfunctional mix of original and new. So were the works in the Merida house, but that is already being remedied.
Within a couple of months the main part of the Merida house will be updated and pretty and ready for long lazy days involving hammocks and fresh orange juice.
After all these years Fallingdowne is still waiting for its makeover.

Biblioteca

2010-12-31T21:22:00.000-08:00

Meant to write more here the past few weeks but the role of Nurse Mommy to La Princesa has been all-consuming until the last few days. She's doing well and needing less attention. So with the cold weather (-4C) in Victoria this week, I find the time and the motivation to get back to the sultry heat of the Yucatan, in my mind at least.

What I remember from my first experience in Merida was a feeling like being inside a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. The tropical feeling, the sense of time slowing to a standstill in the heat. The horse-drawn calesas certainly added to the atmosphere. That timeless sense is harder to find now, almost 30 years since my first visit, in the city's centro, now full of persistent hawkers of tourist wares. But I found it in abundance when I stepped into the public library.

The library wasn't exactly easy to find. The signage isn't very prominent, and after it was first pointed out to me on a previous trip I couldn't seem to find it again.

To enter this library was like stepping back in time - most modern libraries don't have card catalogues anymore. The "silence" sign is a throwback to an outdated concept of libraries as well. Contrary to the stereotype, librarians don't go around shushing the patrons anymore. It was certainly quiet in the library on this evening, with a handful of students bent over their laptops at the tables.

In a small room at the back of the library I found something you probably won't find in any other library in the world. The "Seccion Yucateca" is dedicated solely to Yucatan authors and topics. Librarian Ana Cana works in the Yucatecan section and graciously allowed me to take her photo.

The section includes clipping books compiled by librarians on key Yucatan issues and events. Hurricanes, artists, any kind of local issue. These pre-internet clipping books are a labour of love. They take a lot of time to compile but for anyone researching one of these topics they replace impossibly long hours paging through fragile old newspapers or deteriorating microfilm reels. (Do they even have those? How do they hold up in the heat and humidity, I wonder?)

I am looking forward to spending hours in this place in the near future, improving my Spanish reading skills and learning more about local history and culture.

As I'm tinkering with this post for the 14th time (or so) before publishing it, I see that "el Gabo" himself, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is coming to Merida for a couple of days, starting January 10th. I wonder whether the place also reminds him of his own novels?

It gets worse before it gets better

2010-12-05T20:50:00.000-08:00

More scenes of destruction. A narrow corridor is opened up to enlarge the bathroom. A new wall will separate it from the guest bedroom in back which will get its own bathroom, though not right away.

Coming from a temperate rainforest climate, I'm a little iffy about punching holes in the roof for wiring, but I'm assured this will not leak, once patched, and the conduit for the wiring will withstand the furnace outside.

The hot water tank has a leak and needs to be replaced. So we're going to take the opportunity to switch to a solar hot water system. Now trying to assess the options and requirements (do we need a hydropneumatic pump to increase water pressure? What kind of anti-scale system will treat the hard water so sarro doesn't build up in the heater and elsewhere?) Water softening technologies seem to be a matter of great debate online - I wonder what others have found to be effective?

The wiring conduit will run along the roof - hope this works!

The walls are for tall closets in the bedroom

Plugging the door opening in dining room

The bathroom was so hideous, this seems like an improvement

City buses

2010-12-04T20:21:00.000-08:00

The driver's area of one is covered in stickers in marijuana leaf shapes. Others have images and metal plaques of la Virgen de Guadelupe and other religious icons. On one night ride, the driver's girlfriend, I think, draped herself over his shoulders and presented him with a large greeting card to read as he drove. Maybe it was his birthday?
Modern highway buses in Mexico, at least the first-class ones, are clean and comfortable as any north of the border bus. The ride from Cancun has movies and they give you a (nonalcoholic) drink when you board. But the city buses in Merida are a different thing. They appear to be operated by numerous private companies, each with different colours and models of vehicle. Many of them seem to have broken axles or other worn-out parts that grind or clank horribly at sharp turns. Despite this, they roar down the roads at frightening speeds if they get a clear stretch, and sometimes seem to be gunning for the parked car up ahead, but then they swerve just in time. The printed bus schedule is indecipherable to me, so I just try to slowly figure out by trial and error which bus takes me where, and how it returns. They are cheap though - 6 pesos or about 50 cents - and plentiful and it seems they will stop almost anywhere if you flag them down. Usually.

Scenes of destruction

2010-12-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

11/30/2010 I hadn't heard from Merida in a few days so I figured things weren't moving too fast. Not so. Victor sent an update today. Walls are coming down, walls are going up. It makes me very happy to see rubble everywhere.

bedroom + entry hall - wall = new sala

the other side of the new sala

tiles from former bedroom will be relaid

this room didn't get any natural light before

pointless extra door from garage is removed

The view from the roof

2010-12-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

New stationary gas tank and cracked roof.

Doug checks the "tinaco", the essential rooftop water tank

Maggie is elegant in any setting.

Tuesday was a day of meeting tradespeople, discussing work and estimates and checking out the roof. There's nothing like a visit to the roof to give a different perspective on a place.

Neighbors/Vecinos: Bob and Diane

2010-11-30T09:01:00.000-08:00

11/10/2010 The morning after our first night in the damp, noisy, smelly home, I found a handwritten note tucked into our front gate. It was from Diane and Bob, who had recognized our house from the blog posts and pictures. In fact they even viewed the house when it was languishing on the market. Their house is just about two blocks away from ours.
We dropped by to say hello to and were greeted by this friendly couple from New York. They have transformed their compact house on a narrow lot into a jewel with polished black concrete surfaces, high ceilings and abundant light. Familiar Yucatan and Mexican elements are used in surprising and delightful ways. They call it their Merida brownstone, because it has a lot in common with their brownstone in Brooklyn.
Our visit was cut a bit short because half a dozen tradespeople were due to show up at our house to give estimates. But it was wonderful to connect with our gracious neighbors and it made me feel a little less like a stranger in town. Brother Doug really enjoyed the visit too. He is able to recognize the potential in a building that would appear to most as a run-down old rock pile - his house in Manitoba used to be one - but seeing what Bob and Diane have achieved, he says he now really understands what we're trying to do.
I didn't take pictures of the interior of Bob and Diane's house because we were too busy enjoying their company to get around to asking how they would feel about that. But it was a highlight of the trip to meet them.

Merida moments: banking problems and getting a phone

2010-11-29T09:00:00.000-08:00

11/10/2010 Much of my first full day in Merida (Doug's third) was taken up with getting a local cell phone (me) and dealing with banking problems (Doug). Doug spent much time on payphones with banking reps who couldn't find a reason why the city's bank machines wouldn't process his cash withdrawal. (The problem magically disappeared the next day.)

Somehow (embarrassing admission) I have never had my own cellphone before, though I borrow other family members' phones as needed. I figured this made me less tethered, freer, and there was one less bill to pay. My new Merida cell phone will be for local calls and texts. I plan to leave it at the house, so it can also be used by anyone else who is staying there. It seems to be something people do here, where a land line can take a long long time to get. The phone was only about $30, and while calls are fairly expensive for the first year, the rate drops significantly after that.
It took a long time to get the new phone to work. I am trying to become more of a technical person but remain clueless about some of the most basic things. I had to take it back to the young people behind the counter at the Coppel department store where we bought it. There, much discussion, fiddling, and conversation with someone on the other line ensued. Finally it was working. But it only spoke Spanish. Not the people on the line, but the prompts and instructions. Tuesday I received a prompt; I thought it was about turning up the volume of the ringer, but when I pressed "si" it started a game of Spaceball, whatever that is.

After a couple of days I've managed to change the phone to English and now am constantly checking for messages, adding new contacts, texting like a teenager (only much slower). It already seems to be becoming a comforting extension of of my very being.

Shadows on the wall

2010-11-28T08:02:00.000-08:00

Returned to Victoria and Fallingdowne this week, with lots of unposted blog scribblings due to time and connectivity challenges during Merida stay. So I hope you'll indulge me as I do a bit of catch-up.

11/13/2010 Tom suggested staying in a hotel instead of the house, which does make an awful lot of sense. Chairs and internet are objects of great longing these days. There seemed to be a point to be made about occupying the place. I think the point has been made, but I still stay after brother Doug has gone, not sure whether it is inertia or sheer cussedness. There's not much to see in the house these days - two hammocks, and a lot of tiny biting ants that swarm any food item that is left out for more than a few minutes. But there are these cool shadows on the kitchen wall in the morning.

Street dogs: no se tocarlo

2010-11-15T18:34:00.000-08:00

On previous trips I never saw them. Okay, maybe once. I saw a city worker carry a sick-looking bassett-hound type out of the Plaza Grande and deposit him in the back of a pick-up truck. I guessed the dog was on his way to a quick euthanization.
I thought it must be an exaggeration (or my own mistranslation) when I read in the local paper that there are thousands of abandoned dogs on the streets of Merida. But in the past few days I've been seeing them in my neighborhood. A brindle-coated one. A border-collie type, very dirty, that followed me most of my last block home last night.
Tonight this little one approached along the sidewalk on the busy side of Parque Mejorada ("mi oficina"). A tattered piece of what might once have been a leash dangled from his collar. Dirty, hungry, skittish. I feared he would run into traffic so I called him and he approached. He reminded me of our Mickey. I couldn't help it: I scratched his poor ears and he promptly curled up at my feet. (I couldn't get him to look up for a picture; he startled at the camera flash.)
Then a religious procession started near the end of the block across from the cathedral. When he heard fireworks he panicked and took off across the park.
Not long after that I noticed my hands, arms and elbows were getting very itchy. When I realized the dog probably had something to do with it I quickly packed up the netbook and headed for the nearest pharmacy to buy a bath-sized bottle of that sterlizing hand stuff. Doused my hands, arms, neck (which I had scratched), then went into a restaurant bathroom and furtively soaped my hands and arms up to the shoulders. Feeling better now, but pretty stupid. What did I expect from petting a street dog?
Quite a few of the Americans and Canadians living here have taken up the cause of rescuing and seeking adoptive homes for these poor creatures. My friend Debbie works with one such group, YAPA . I have figured that as a non-resident (for the foreseeable) I didn't have to think much about the plight of Merida's abandoned or mistreated animals but at the very least I need to find out what useful thing I can do when I come across them, beyond sharing their mites, or whatever it was.
No se tocarlo means "don't touch them," I think. In Spanish today I was learning about direct and indirect pronouns. It's kind of difficult to get my head around the rules so it might not be right, but I'm supposed to practice.

My office/mi oficina

2010-11-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

View from mi oficina, Parque Mejorada

If you've been anywhere near me for the past week you've heard me complain (quijarse - a new verb I learned) about the torture of staying in a house without internet or easy access to coffee. It's my own fault of course for being so stubborn about staying in our house with nothing except a few lights and fans, plumbing that kind of works and two hammocks. Internet cafes exist but I've been opting for the public squares where Merida's government has installed free wifi. (I wonder why our wealthy cities north of the 49th parallel haven't done it yet.) Despite the thoughtful provision of service, it has not been working all that well for me. It was hard to fit in trips to the squares during last week's busy schedule. Night falls hard at 6 o'clock so it's a little difficult to see the screen after that. And power is a challenge. This year-old netbook has about an hour of battery juice, and though there are a few electrical outlets around the squares, they don't always work. Unfortunately you don't find that out until the computer shuts down suddenly.

So this blogger has been mostly unplugged this week. But I think I'm getting it figured out.

(Slight) Fright Night

2010-11-13T08:12:00.000-08:00

Brother Doug - our first guest!

2010/11/07
Here we are again. Came in on the flight from Houston this time. I've been trying out all the travel options for getting here and back. A plane full of young teenaged girls apparently returning from a Justin Bieber concert, clutching stuffed toys and copies of the 16-year-old Canadian's insipid new biography.
Brother Doug arrived a couple of days earlier, catching the bus from Cancun. First time in Merida, first time in Mexico. My first guest. He spent a couple of nights getting eaten by mosquitoes in a nice hotel before I arrived. Sunday night was the first night staying over in the house for both of us.
Last trip I rented a room elsewhere because I didn't know if the electricity and plumbing worked, and a proper lock was needed on the front entrance gate. I wasn't sure if the house was habitable, but by the time I left it definitely seemed to be so. But Sunday night we both had doubts about whether it was fit for even the most rudimentary kind of habitation.
The house was damp and sour-smelling. This was in part because the plumbing for the kitchen sink was leaking. We had water all over the floor (again). I'll be glad when that plumbing's replaced. The dampness was probably also due to the heavy rains seeping through the roof that needs repair. It hasn't had the chance to dry out with the house all closed up. Cracks showed where I hadn't noticed them before. All the rooms seemed smaller.
Tired, jangled, having pissed off the airport taxi driver by asking him to drive an extra 10 blocks, everything seemed wrong. I couldn't sleep. Every sound was frightening. What were the neighbors' dogs barking at all night? It was one of those occasional what-the-hell-have-I done kind of moments.
One good thing: there were no mosquitos in our house the first night we were here. I guess they figured out there hadn't been a meal in the place for going on two years. It didn't take them long to notice fresh prey. In the morning we opened the windows and back door to air and dry out the house. Immediately they followed our carbon-dioxide vapour trails inside. Later, whenever we disturbed any of our papers or clothes, they rose in little clouds from their hiding spots.
Monday morning started better, with the shower water in the hideous bathroom nicely heated by the new stationary gas tank, and tasty, cheap panuchos and fresh juice at the market stands down the street. Some challenges regarding internet and bank machines commanded much of the day's attention. But when we got home the house felt different, dry and fresher.
Tonight (after an inaugural trip to the new, nearby mall for some basics like towels and anti-mosquito artillery) we just sat around on the bare floor, talking reading, eating cheese and crackers and learning how to do things on computers when you don't have internet. And everything seemed just fine with this place.

Mi casa mexicana

2010-11-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

Published in Victoria Boulevard magazine, November/December 2010:
by Deborah Wilson

It can start with a vacation.
The city of Merida was well off the beaten track when I first saw it in the early 1980s. A sense of torpor and graceful decay pervaded all. Horse-drawn calesas clip-clopped along empty streets. An old man slowly mopped tiles under the grand arches of our ancient hotel.
A quarter-century later, returning for a family vacation, Merida had changed. Public squares thrummed at night with live music and dance. Colonnaded buildings and private homes had been restored to their original grandeur.
Odd details stick in your mind: The grace of an elderly couple dancing to music in the square; a particular shade of blue on the walls; the riotous noise of birds in the trees at dusk. Back home, you search the online real estate listings and lurk on forums where expatriates share tips about scorpions and septic systems. You realize you can buy a house in a nice neighborhood for as little as the price of a kitchen renovation here at home.
That's how I ended up earlier this year holding the keys to our own, slightly dilapidated, century-old casa mexicana. Along the way I learned that a lot of Canadians and Americans are doing the same thing. Some are also from Victoria.

A million Americans live in Mexico. Canada does not keep tabs on emigrants, but a recent study by the Asia Pacific Foundation estimated more than 5,000 Canadians have moved permanently below the Rio Grande. Many more Canadians are snowbirds, spending winters in in the south and heading home for the summers. (Canadians who stay out of the country more than six months risk losing their provincial health-care coverage.)
Around the time I was bumping around Mexico in the 80s, Evelyn Butler discovered La Manzanilla. She was looking for a winter vacation spot with more culture and less development than she encountered on holidays in Hawaii. She found it a short drive south of Puerta Vallarta on the west coast, in a small fishing village with a wide unspoiled beach. Every year after, she'd return, renting a room for five dollars per night in the only hotel in town. Meanwhile, at home in Victoria, she eventually became publisher of Boulevard. After 16 years of visiting La Manzanilla, Evelyn decided it was time to purchase her own bit of paradise. On the final day of her vacation, she climbed into a pickup truck to look at a lot with the owner.
"We were going into the jungle down this rut track and I thought, 'Oh, my God, Where are we going?' " The owner hit the brakes at a corner and jumped out of the truck with a machete. Without explanation, he started hacking fiercely at the undergrowth, before inviting Evelyn to inspect the property. She promptly agreed to purchase the lot for $7,000, racing to a nearby town with a bank machine to withdraw the $400 deposit.
Ten years after her purchase, her pretty house with stone walls, tile floors and a terra-cotta roof stands on a steep lot surrounded by palms, fruit trees and exotic flowering vines. Where there was untamed jungle a few years ago, now mansions climb the hills behind her house.

Evelyn Butler photo- La Manzanilla

Some of those new homes were built by another Victorian, Michael Cullin.
Aside from a childhood glimpse of Tijuana, Michael had never been to Mexico before being asked eight years ago to design a house for another Victoria couple in La Manzanilla. Michael understood building in the tropics, though, having lived in Barbados. He knew the need for shade and cross-ventilation, resistance to hurricanes and imperviousness to rainy-season downpours. He designed the house for his first Victoria clients, then several more houses in the fishing village, including one for his sister and one for himself.
In 2005, a road trip led to the lakeside town of Patzcuaro, high in the mountains of central Mexico. He was enchanted by the wide, shady central square, the historic buildings painted a vibrant red and white, and the evening scent of pinewood fires. On a later visit, he stayed at a 19th-century adobe villa near the square. Its original details were gone, replaced with glue-chip marble floors and concrete columns. When he learned it was for sale, he bought it in collaboration with another Victoria couple, Ross and Joanne Kipp.
Back home, Michael clicks through photos of the villa. In tribute to his hometown the inn is named Villa Victoria (VEE-ya vik-tor-E-ah). It's now a highly-rated bed and breakfast, restored to its original magnificence and filled with art and antiques, as well as the extraordinary works of local loomers, ironsmiths, and wood and stone carvers. He's opened a store in Patzcuaro, selling home furnishings and art of his own design, rendered by local artisans he's come to know. Eventually, Michael wants to live in Mexico for nine months a year.

Michael Cullin photo - Villa Victoria, Patzcuaro

While Michael and Evelyn divide their time between two lands, Juanita Stein and her husband, Jan Zak, made the big leap. They cashed out of Victoria and made a permanent move to Mexico.
They bought a 2,500-square-foot house in a working-class neighborhood, not far from the lively Plaza Grande in Merida, a city of about one million on the Yucatan peninsula. It cost less than $50,000. They also bought a car, furniture and appliances with proceeds from selling their Victoria house. Jan retired from his architecture practice and set to work renovating the house — scraping, rewiring, replumbing and repainting every inch. Juanita took a job teaching English to private school students. Then, a job came open as editor for an English magazine, Yucatan Today. The day we spoke, the couple planned to drive to the nearby beach town of Progreso to sample the cuisine at a restaurant for the next edition.
The days of $5 hotel rooms are long gone, but most Canadians still find the cost of living to be much lower. Property, construction and renovations can be a fraction of the cost north of the border. The restoration of Michael Cullin's Patzcuaro villa cost about $200,000. In Victoria, he says, it would cost $1.2 million to complete the same work.

Juanita Stein and Jan Zak's living/dining room in Merida

Juanita says one reason they chose Merida is because housing prices were more affordable than other better-known Mexican destinations. Food and most utilities are cheap, though electricity and imported electronics cost as much or more than in Canada. "We simply could not have afforded to retire in the same standard in Canada," Juanita says. "If we wanted to retire in Canada we would be paying a mortgage for the rest of our lives." Instead, they have saved enough money to buy a piece of land on the Gulf Coast, where they plan to build a beachfront getaway.
Merida is hot and humid, at times sweltering. Temperatures top 40C for a few weeks in late spring before the rains begin. Juanita will take too hot over too cold. Her year-round wardrobe in Merida consists of sleeveless tops and light khakis, flip-flops and sandals. She might tie a light shawl to her purse just in case she needs it on cooler evenings.
Juanita says for her first two years in Merida she had a recurring dream that they had never left Victoria, never found a Yucatan home, never escaped the grey chill.
Some buyers do come to wish it had never happened. Evelyn says she sees people who come on vacation and buy on impulse. A year or so later, paradise has lost its lustre, and they may find it hard to sell, especially a million-dollar-plus property. "The biggest mistake they make is they really didn't understand the culture. You're going to become part of the culture, part of the country." I notice that Evelyn and Juanita and Michael talk a lot about the Mexicans who are their friends and neighbors, contractors and collaborators. They emphasize the importance of speaking Spanish (Note to self: more lessons!)
I'm encouraged by the happiness of those who followed their dreams to Mexico. At times I wondered if I was making a terrible mistake, house-hunting on my own in unfamiliar neighborhoods. I fretted that my house would flood from the rains while no one was watching over it, or that unscrupulous people would overcharge for bad renovations. (Ripoffs are an occasional thread on the online expatriate forums). None of this has happened — so far, touch wood.
It's getting cool in the afternoon shade on Evelyn's Victoria deck and she pulls a soft cotton shawl from Patzcuaro around her shoulders. I try to pay close attention to her helpful advice: Spray for scorpions every couple of months and cover the drains to keep the cockroaches out. Don't invest more than you can afford to risk. In Mexico, there are no guarantees. Don't expect everything to go according to plan. Don't be ostentatious. Most importantly, "know it's going to be different. Be respectful. Just be really respectful."

Article: At home in Mexico

2010-10-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

I am excited that my article is out this morning in the latest issue of Victoria's Boulevard magazine. If you're interested you can read it online . The website navigation's a bit cumbersome but you can find "At home in Mexico" on page 34. I'll also post the whole story shortly, either here or on my website.
I'm very grateful to the people who shared their stories with me while I was researching the story, including Juanita Stein, the editor of Yucatan Today in Merida, as well as Michael Cullin and Evelyn Butler.
Like all stories, a lot of great material gets left on the cutting-room floor, but their stories and observations have really stuck with me and I hope to write more about them soon.

Almost there!

2010-10-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

It's exactly one year since I put in an offer on the green house hidden behind a huge tree. In a week I'll be back and I think we're just about ready to get those renovations underway. Lots has happened since my previous rather glum observations on progress (or lack of it). Plans are done. We have some bids for different parts of the work and expect a couple more in the next few days. Permits are in the works and our architect estimated they'd be done within days. It sounds like at least some of the work can start right away once we make our decisions on who's doing what. So far it looks like the first stage of renovations might just be do-able within my very modest budget. I hope to have the original part of the house rewired, replumbed, with repaired walls as needed (and one wall removed), painted, polished, and fitted with new fans and lighting. Also, renovation of the single existing bathroom...will the money stretch far enough to cover the walls in limestone?
In past renovations of other houses I've done at least a bit of the grunt work, sometimes a lot: demolition, drywall, plastering, painting, landscaping. Mostly stuff that doesn't involve complex math or precision cuts.
This time I don't expect I'll be much use on the jobsite. I figure I've got time to take some Spanish lessons, so I will perhaps be able to comprehend at least a bit more of the neighbors' conversation.

Terrific story about moving to Merida

2010-10-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering why people keep coming to this too-hot, partly crumbling, hard-to-get-to place in a country with a highly publicized drug war (in other parts), Beryl Gorbman captures it well in this Wall Street Journal story.
I find myself hoping it brings lots more people here, and also hoping it doesn't.

Going to the bloggers' conference

2010-10-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

For the past couple of years the voices of bloggers have provided information, entertainment, encouragement and sometimes words of caution in our, well mostly my, pursuit of the Merida dream. They share household budgets, renovation stories, experiences with festivals and food, heat and occasional cold, bugs, floods, crime (and its relative infrequency). They talk about fabulous cultural events and occasional culture clashes, learning the language and becoming part of the community. To me they made everything seem possible and somewhat familiar.
I've never even met any of them. So I'm looking forward to attending the Latin American Bloggers' Conference in Merida Nov. 12-14. At first I wasn't sure if I qualified as a Latin American blogger. After all we're not living there yet, and won't be more than vacation-time residents for quite some time, from the looks of things. But they're a welcoming bunch so I'm very pleased to get to go. If you have a chance to read these bloggers (linked from the conference website or just over there on the right on this blog) be forewarned. You might catch the sickness that makes semi-sensible people go off in search of real estate in charming, out-of-the-way, at-times hellishly hot places.
A couple of recent blog discoveries (one's a rediscovery) have been delightful: I recommend the recent posts about heat in An Alaskan in Yucatan and Yucatan Yenta (see Yenta's hilarious entry under "Merida, the schvitzing capitol of the world").
Soon I will be schvitzing along with them.

In The Yucatan: Neighborhoods: La Ermita de Santa Isabel

2010-10-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a video about the charming Ermita de Santa Isabel neighborhood where I stayed last year. When I rented a little house near the square over the internets, I had very little information about the neighborhood. I was a little bit anxious about staying in an unfamiliar area outside the tourist zone, but I loved it. Isn't it pretty?

First frost

2010-10-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

First frost on the roofs in Victoria this morning. In three weeks I'll be on a plane to the tropics. I'll escape two weeks of my least-favourite month in Victoria. November is usually so dark and rainy; it seems like all the light has gone out of the world.

Not much progress on the renovation front, at least not that I can see. I received an estimate for roof repair and waterproofing that is about a quarter of my entire renovation budget for this year, and several times the price paid by other people I heard from. Who knows, maybe it's the world's best waterproofing job, or the world's worst roof. I haven't had time yet to explore these questions, and hurricane season is over in a couple of weeks, so there might be time to get the answers before plunging into that job.
Our friends Ted and Kathryn joked about us buying "a house made out of computer drawings" and I admit I spend more time mooning over the mock-ups of the rooms than the "before" pictures. So it's going to be a bit of a rude shock for me when I get back to Merida and the very primitive accomodations awaiting me: missing light fixtures, peeled paint, no furniture (I'm bringing a hammock), no kitchen appliances. Oh yeah, worst of all, no wifi. Urban camping, I guess you could call it. Or squatting in our own house.
I had hoped by now the electrical work, at least, would be done, but it will happen when it happens.
It shouldn't be such a terrible hardship (except for the wifi). The market and food kiosks are a block away, and a block away there's also a pretty restaurant where I had great shrimp cocktail one afternoon, and they urged me to try their breakfasts next time. There's also a highly recommended comida economica right around the corner. At least I hope it's still there. It will be my vacation from cooking. And there are lots of places to use the internet.
So for Kathryn and Ted, and a reality check for myself, here are some more "before" and computer-simulated "after" pix:

This is now the living room

It will become the dining room

main bedroom looking towards study


main bedroom- after

ugly bathroom

who is the dude in our new shower?

Freshening up

2010-10-10T16:36:00.000-07:00

Should be cleaning the house in preparation for (Canadian) Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, but instead I've been fixing up the blog. It started because I wanted to use an image of the pasta tiles from the front room of our house as a background picture for the page. The old blog template didn't seem to want to accommodate that sort of customization, so I ended up finding a new one. Then I figured the picture of the mystery building in my neighborhood, which I'm using under the blog title, deserved a bit of photoshop lipstick. The fiddling around just continued from there.
My blog-improvement project, like the Thanksgiving housecleaning, does have a reason. I'm anticipating I might have some new visitors in the next few weeks, as I am about to come out as a member of the hordes who are buying into the Mexican Dream. Victoria's Boulevard magazine is publishing in their November/December issue my story about local people (ourselves included) buying, building and renovating homes down Mexico way. Among the current and former Victorians featured in the story, I was pleased to "meet" (via skype) Yucatan Today editor Juanita Stein and her husband Jan Zak, who cashed in their chips in Victoria and moved to Merida about five years ago.
There's never enough space in print to share all the great details and anecdotes, so I hope to say more in future blog posts about what I learned from Juanita and the others who I met in the course of writing this article. One thing really sticks in my mind, though, and eases my mind when I wake up some nights thinking I've taken a foolish risk with this Merida thing: they are all so happy they did this.

Readers have questions...

2010-10-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

Some friends checked out this blog recently and had a few questions that made me realize I should fill in some of the details about our wild Yucatan house-buying adventure. Such as: where is it, and what's with the computer people in the images?
Jo-Ann wanted to know which house we actually bought, out of the many I viewed and posted about here last year.

Here it is, the morning after we massacred the overgrown ficus tree in front, in March. The leaves have grown back since then but it needs another pruning to give it a decent shape and keep the branches out of the overhead wires.

Our casa is about a dozen blocks east of the Plaza Grande where everyone goes for concerts and dancing and big events. It's in a residential neighborhood called Chem Bech, which is the name of the market about a block away whose vendors sell everything from fresh fish and fruit to toilet paper. I can't find too much information about Chem Bech online but, judging from the mural on the front wall of the building, it appears that it might have been the historic site of a Mayan market of some sort. I'll research this and get back to you on it.

Here's what the back of the house looks like now

Here's the post-reno concept, courtesy estilo arquitectura

Counting the days

2010-10-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

Suddenly I'm just a few weeks away from returning to Merida.
It's exciting and anxious-making. I should have a list of things to do and things to bring. When I try to write one my mind goes blank. It's probably because I'm not sure what state the house will be in by the time I get there Nov. 7th.
Lots has happened in recent weeks, but the house is still unsullied by renovation rubble. Some recent progress, on paper:

We have a fideicomiso - the documents confirming our ownership through a bank trust. It is now in the hands of the architect's office.
The architect is apparently preparing to apply for renovation permits, now that they have show proof of our ownership of the place.
Plans for the reno are nearly complete, I think. One of the most thrilling parts is a plan for perfect little casita, a tiny building with its own bathroom and interior garden, in the narrow extra dogleg of the property that had looked like a useless strip of land.
I'm waiting for estimates of costs for the first phase of the reno, which will be a basic upgrade to the original part of the house, and, if it's within the budget, a redo of the existing bathroom. The pool, the guest bedroom and second bathroom, the casita, the big kitchen renovation, will all have to wait. That's okay with me, though Tom is of the view that we should do everything in the reno plans all at once.

"Then it was deathly quiet"

2010-09-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

25 years ago today, at 7:19 a.m., an 8.1-magnitude earthquake shook Mexico City. The seven-minute tremor caused an estimated 10,000 deaths and left at least 250,000 homeless.
I had just begun work that week for the English-language Mexico City News.
In memory of that day and the thousands of lives lost in the earthquake, here is my account published a few days after the quake, in the daily Vancouver Sun.

A collapsed school

Special to the Sun

Mexico City -- When the pitching finally stopped in the fourth floor apartment, when the building stopped cracking and shaking, the sounds of screams and breaking glass subsided.

We stumbled to a window to look outside, just in time to see a nearby apartment building slowly tilt and then topple from the skyline.

Across the street the facade had fallen from another building, exposing the rooms inside like a doll-house.

On the radio, the announcer instructed: “Maintain absolute calm. The worst is over. Don’t got to work, don’t go to school.”

But in the battered streets, calm was an impossibility.

In the ruins, volunteers began scrambling through the rubble minutes after the last shudders of the quake had faded, as clouds of dust still hung in the air.

When the quake first hit last Thursday, I half-woke in confusion and thought my bed had broken. Then there was another violent shake and suddenly I was awake.

The earthquake lasted seven minutes. Dishes fell from shelves, walls cracked noisily, and the building lurched far enough over that it seemed certain to crash down. Then it righted itself as the earth buckled again.

There was the sound of crashing and screams. And then it was deathly quiet.

The three of us in the apartment — Warren O’Briain of Victoria, Ellen Saenger of Abbotsford and myself, all journalists with the Mexico City News — were safe and unharmed.

Heading out into the neighborhood, we found buildings collapsed or damaged on every block.

We wandered through the streets, and tried to call home on payphones that didn’t function.

The devastation around us was beyond comprehension.

We watched rescue workers search through the jumble of concrete and steel that had once been a building, calling for silence when one thought he heard a survivor’s voice.

The quake cut a swath through the heart of the city. Hospital buildings collapsed; downtown hotels, government buildings, press offices, banks and schools were destroyed. The stock exchange was badly damaged. All around were the sights and sounds and smells of disaster: crowds running in fear at the discovery of leaking gas lines at the huge Multifamiliar Juarez housing complex. The smell of gas in the streets. Women sobbing on strangers’ shoulders. Medical attendants on the street dressing wounds. A teenaged girl standing at a street corner across from her collapsed home, pleading for help from passers-by. Hospital staff dressed in their scrubs, atop a pancaked hospital, pulling at broken concrete with bare hands.

At the central medical complex, nurses and interns joined rescue workers searching for survivors in the devastated nurses’ residence at Juarez hospital. The maternity wing had also collapsed, killing as yet uncounted mothers and babies.

Workers formed bucket brigades to douse fires that have flared periodically since the Thursday morning quake.

“There are still many people alive in there,” said Dr. Juan Aguilar Rodriguez, the hospital director.

“There are groups of 10, 15, 20 people who were in different parts of the tower and they are asking for help.”

He said it was possible that among those trapped were about 30 medical students who were attending a class.

Aguilar Rodriguez estimated there were 800 to 900 people in the hospital when the earthquake struck at 7:20 a.m. Thursday.

“It was a time in which there were many people because there was a shift change, some people were coming in and others hadn’t left yet,” he said, and 350 of the hospital’s 680 beds were occupied.

Others in the building included doctors, nurses, social workers and maintenance and cleaning crews, he said.

By Saturday morning, 32 bodies and 140 injured had been removed from the wreckage, but it was not known how many others might have been able to escape before the building collapsed.

Aguilar Rodriguez said the known dead included the chiefs of surgery, intensive care, equipment and maternity services.

“They all died at their posts,” he said. “We have lost very valuable, capable people.”

Hundreds of people crowded outside the structure, seeking news of relatives who had been in the building.

Rescuers around the city were still combing the wreckage for survivors as the second quake struck Friday.

Weakened buildings fell into the street near the downtown newspaper offices where we work. And for the second time, hundreds were trapped in the subway.

After the second quake, throngs of people fled from buildings in the centre of the city to pitch tents in central parks. They huddled with sheets wrapped around their shoulders, a few salvaged possessions piled beside them. When the parks filled, they huddled on street corners and later, on traffic medians.

To navigate the streets at night, vehicles zig-zag between burning pots of pitch that mark the narrow passage through roads clogged with rubble.

The streets today are still jammed with trucks and buses and mini-vans converted to emergency vehicles.

On some streets, amid the rubble, hang gay decorations — reminders of the 175th anniversary of Mexico’s Independence Day, the Sunday before the quake. The vast square in front of the National Palace that was packed with people for independence celebrations is now filled with army trucks.

In the collapsed seven-story apartment near the building where I was staying, we were told only the ground floor residents escaped. During the weekend, rescuers continued to comb the rubble, finding the dead and hoping still for the living.

Fairs and fair weather

2010-09-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

Did I mention I bought my tickets to Merida for November?
A priority was to schedule this trip around the 3rd annual Latin American Bloggers Conference. When I first heard about this conference last year it was a revelation that bloggers could actually meet in meatspace. How quaint! I didn't know if I was eligible to join the confab. Could I be considered a Latin American blogger while still living full-time "NOB"? Lucky for me, the answer is yes.
I'm looking forward to meeting many of the bloggers from Merida and elsewhere who have guided and inspired (incited?) me in our own adventure in Mexican real estate. Also some tips on how to do this blog thing. At least I'm no longer posting pictures facing sideways. Who knows what else I can learn?
Of course the conference is just over the weekend of Nov. 12-14 and so there will be time to get house-related things done. I am fervently hoping we'll have plans and permits and people actually working on the renovation by then, but we'll see.
Meanwhile there is also much to explore in and around Merida, just for fun and fascination. The XXXVI Feria Yucatan Xmatkuil, for instance. There are many smaller fairs in the towns and villages where locals display the distinctive arts and products of their area, such as stone carving or leatherwork or hammocks. But what Canadian wouldn't make the time to visit a big state fair where the highlight last year was the "Snow Zone" where people can slide and make snowmen with real snow?

Fantasy and reality

2010-09-02T23:21:00.000-07:00

Some good things are happening:
- The lawyer says he now has the documents we need so the architect can apply for permits.
- The latest money transfer arrived safely in the new Monex account (after the last one vanished between my bank and HSBC in Merida.)
- I'm booked to return to Merida in November (escaping the darkest, dreariest month in Victoria).
- Our architect sent new plans for a perfect little casita at the end of the useless, overgrown dogleg of land at the back of our property.
- Our property manager said the heavy rains had not flooded the house in our absence.

Some not-good things are also happening:
- I had a worry about the roof in all this rain and asked Maggie if we could check it to see how the waterproofing was holding up. Bad news. Lots of cracks and even a spot where water is pooling. Also signs of excess humidity and water permeating inside.
- An ominous crack in a newer interior wall.
The house (in the pictures Maggie sent) is definitely looking worse than it did in the spring, and the severely pruned ficus has grown back a new crop of leaves but is definitely muy feo. After months of looking at the dreamy architects' images of perfect rooms filled with perfect fake people, it is quite a reality check.
The pictures of the casita make me feel much happier than the pictures of the cracks and the water on the roof. Unfortunately the casita is one of those nice-to-have things that is destined to remain a fantasy for a long time to come. The reality is roof and masonry repairs that I wasn't planning for. I'm hoping they can wait until the rain stops and the renovations are finally underway.

Zombies and scorpions

2010-08-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

Finally got to Vancouver this weekend for a long-planned lunch with Georgina. We met on the flight back to B.C. from Merida last November. I had just put an offer on what would become our place. She's owned her home since 2006.
We've exchanged emails and photos since then but it was great to get together and compare notes and experiences, hear tips and suggestions. I learned what to do when a huge scorpion shows up in the bedroom (drench it with a spray can of "Home Defense"). Her house is beautiful and simple, with original and salvaged character details and simple features like crushed white gravel in the courtyard instead of high-maintenance grass. It's an inspiration for the way I'd love our house to look and feel.
Afterwards my bus was delayed by zombies. I didn't realize there was a zombie walk underway on Robson Street . They smeared fake blood all over the bus windows. So funny and charming. Sometimes I miss living in this city.

Hablando un poco

2010-08-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

On the bright side, I finally got the details of a long-running Spanish conversation group here in Victoria and summoned the nerve to show up. I figured I'd just drop by the cafe where it meets, buy a coffee and check it out from a distance. But I recognized the parent of one of our kids' friends in the group, and went over to chat, and it was all so friendly and interesting I ended up staying and meeting a bunch of nice people. It was great to hear Spanish spoken so far from Mexico. I yakked away but felt a bit embarrassed by my mangling of the language. I only really know verbs in the present tense and I often fumble and stumble and use the wrong words for things, like vecino (neighbor) instead of vecindad (neighborhood). But I'm keen to have a chance to practise and improve, and The Victoria Conversational Spanish Group provides some more motivation to improve.

The money thing

2010-08-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't think sending money from Canada to Mexico would be too difficult. We buy stuff online. I've got a paypal account. Almost all my bills at home are paid automatically, straight out of the bank account, so I barely even think about them.
By contrast I'm finding that transferring money to Mexico is old-fashioned, fairly expensive and a bit unpredictable.
I thought I had it figured out. After a bit of back and forth to sort out the accounts and clave numbers and swift numbers and such, payments were successfully sent to the people who are holding the fort for us in Merida. Then one payment seemed to get lost between the Canadian credit union and the Mexican bank branch. We're trying to trace what happened to that transfer (cost of trace: $35CDN). Fortunately the lost transfer wasn't for a lot of money, so it feels a bit like an experiment. Meanwhile I'm trying to set up a new payment to a different account through a different bank, and once again the information I have doesn't seem to match what the bank needs. An account number has 17 digits and it should have 18. It isn't clear if the address field is supposed to contain the address of the Mexican bank or the person who is the final recipient. So I must track down the info, and trek back to the bank if I can find a time when it's open and I'm not at work, and spend another half hour or so standing there, trying to sort it all out with a bank teller. I hope this gets easier because it takes a lot of time.
The bank transfers cost $15 to $30 (dollars, not pesos) depending on the bank and the amount of the transfer, which seems like a lot to send a fairly modest sum. On the other hand, the bank's labour costs for processing each of these transfers would also be pretty steep.
I wonder if anyone else has found a better way to do this? I'd be interested in hearing about it.

On Mexican time and Victoria weather

2010-08-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Last evening we could see our breath at a friend's backyard barbecue. In August! It's been that kind of "summer" here in Victoria. Never really warm; generally pretty cold. The thought of having a place to escape to in Merida somehow gives me insulation against the chill. I can go there in my mind and remember the heat and I just don't feel as cold.
Meanwhile, progress towards actual physical work on the Merida house is affected by a familiar delay: paperwork. Our lawyer has not yet received the fideicomiso and catastral documents which are needed by the architect, presumably to prove ownership and apply for building permits. It has been more than four months since the purchase of the house was completed. I was surprised when the lawyer told me this was a normal period of time. In total I've spent eight months waiting for paperwork and bureaucratic processes, since it also took about four months to get a new survey and other documents needed to complete the purchase back in March.
If this was happening in Victoria I'd be pretty frantic by now. That's because if we'd bought a "cheap" fixer-upper in Victoria it would have cost about 10x as much, and the interest costs on a mortgage would be killing us while it sat empty. For a little while I was prodding the lawyer for updates on progress every week like clockwork, but I was clearly not actually helping anything from here, 3,000 miles away, and really just being a pest to the three people actually doing the work of obtaining the papers. So now, I just wait.
I believe the heat and the slower pace of Merida life is teaching me to relax and slow down, and I'm actually enjoying letting go of my compulsive busy-ness. Our friend Morley once suggested my tombstone might read "She got a lot done." Maybe we'll get to rewrite that, in time.

Who has seen the fideicomiso?

2010-07-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

The weeks go by here punctuated by plans and pictures. We joke about the identity of the strangers who appear in the mock-up images of our future renovated house. Who's the glamorous woman in stilettos in our bedroom? Who's the guy in the red trunks in the shower? They are a lot like the Sims characters our daughter used to create, only their backstory is more of a mystery.
Meanwhile other messages from Merida contain tantalizing references to it being "time for the beach." I read somewhere that things slow down in the next month and many offices close down. I was obviously, typically, over-optimistic in my earlier anticipation that actual renovations would be well underway before the end of the summer, but it doesn't really seem to matter at all. I'm usually rush-rush, but maybe I'm experiencing mananafication, without even being anywhere near the Yucatan. I think that's part of the reason for this whole project, so it seems to be working.
Except...the architect now needs paperwork to move to the next stage. Presumably for construction approvals. I know, I should know the details. They need the fideicomiso (for the uninitiated, this is the document for the bank trust which holds title to the property). They also need a "cedula catastral "and "croquis catastral". These are words I never encountered in my previous Spanish classes and I keep going back to Google Translate to try to figure out exactly what a cadastre or catastre is, in this context. Some kind of ownership/land description certificate?
Whatever the translation, I clearly don't have them. I know the fideicomiso wasn't ready yet, last time I was in Merida to pick up the keys to the house and start getting it into shape, pre-renovation. I didn't really mind. I wasn't sure what to do with it. The one my realtor showed me was a huge binder full of pages. Am I supposed to keep it with me in Canada, or should our property manager keep it? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing to leave in an empty house. It seemed safer with the lawyer or the realtor until I figured this out. Still, I had some of those anxious feelings, kind of like the dreams you have about forgetting your baby in the mall.
Anyway, I check on the location of the fideicomiso and other mystery documents, and it seems the lawyer hasn't received them yet. It's nearly 4 months after the sale closed, and he says it normally takes 3-4 months for the fideicomiso to arrive. I guess we'll see if it shows up soon, or perhaps we'll have some delays while the city shuts down for beach time.

Resurfacing

2010-07-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

I feel about two tons lighter today. Submitted the final project for my web foundations course, and will give a brief presentation tonight. It was a bit of a late night, partly because I finally read the details of the assignment and saw that I needed to create at least one photo gallery. I wasn't really planning one, so I had to scramble a bit but it was fun to play with the architect's "vistas" for make an aspirational web page for our house, which I've provisionally named Casa Verde . I know. Very original. No, there isn't a pool, yet, but it will happen.
Anyway now I will return emails (If you've sent one recently, sorry, I haven't been ignoring you), pull weeds in the garden, shave the dog, fix the car, catch up on other people's blog posts I've missed, and eat something that isn't from a take-out place or from the frozen foods aisle. What have I missed?

Pretty pictures

2010-06-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

Even though I haven't posted much lately I've been busy with Merida-related stuff. Writing a magazine article about people from our city (Victoria) buying, building and renovating homes in Mexico. Working on a website to advertise the house for rentals. And every week or so dreamy pictures show up in my inbox from Victor Cruz at Estilo Yucatan. It is way too much fun to moon over the plans and visualizations of our eventual renovation. I am oddly amused by the way our proposed sala is populated with attractive young people. We must get some of those too. By total coincidence, a couple of them even look like our real kids (though not the ones in this image). This front room is created by taking down the doorless wall that separates the entrance hall from the dark and dingy front bedroom. That bedroom was only accessible from the middle bedroom, and it was obviously created in an earlier renovation that chopped up a big front room. I'm more of a rustic than a modern type, but it's neat to see this treatment, and I like the floor lighting, even though I was thinking of unobtrusive sconces. What do you think?

Architectural daydreaming

2010-05-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

We are far away from Merida these days but I am frequently roaming the spaces in our empty house in my mind. It is made easy by the emailed architectural plans that Victor Cruz from Estilo has been sending for our comments. Yes, we decided to get an architect's help rather than my usual approach of drawing up basic plans on my own, with the inevitable mistakes and miscalculations. I have to say I am thrilled that we did this. The solutions and options Victor proposes are things we would never have come up with on our own. Even so, his proposals are in keeping with my ~~cheapskate~~ minimalist approach to renovations. I've been sharing the drawings here and there, getting feedback, and basically having a great old time inhabiting these imaginary spaces. In one proposal, a wall is opened between the entrance hall and the dark, dingy front bedroom to create a new living room. The add-on bedroom at the back gets two pairs of doors that open onto the patio and the future pool. There's a charming kitchen island. Both plans have drawbacks (mostly to do with bathroom access), but they're beautiful.
Meanwhile, a persistent worry about the house has been largely relieved with the onset of the rains, because the house didn't flood. I am a bit of a worrier, and I kept thinking that the back patio, which is two steps up from the main house and covered in concrete, could be a problem. But the roof drainage seems to be working fine.

Google Streetview - yes!

2010-04-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, I should be doing homework, or paying bills, or cleaning the house. But I just had to do some exploring around our new neighborhood now that Google Streetview is online for Merida. I counted the blocks to the new Sendero Mall, which Debbie and Lexy showed me several months ago during a quick scan of local amenities. 11 blocks, not bad. I know the bus to the mall stops very close to our house. It should satisfy many Gringo cravings with its big Soiriana food emporium. There's a Parisina fabric store, and I know they had bolts of inexpensive linen, which could be just the thing to cover the big windows in the front of the house. And apparently a great taco place. More local sights to come in future posts.

Here comes everybody

2010-04-22T23:13:00.000-07:00

Yolisto flags a new story about the government of Mexico's dream of luring millions of U.S. citizens to retire south of the border, from The Miami Herald: "Mexico's big hope: get 5 million U.S. retirees"

Mayan message

2010-04-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

Graffiti on a wall in Merida, Calle 51 near the corner of 52. Haven't seen anything like this here before. Beautiful, but do you wonder about what stirs under the polite surface of a culture with such long experience of plunder, enslavement and subjugation? Ronald Wright's Time among the Maya was a great, although dated, exploration of the Mayan world and its modern context. Still, I am keen to learn more.

The "new" Merida Initiative

2010-04-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

Do you think someone liked my blog's name?
http://www.internationalliving.com/Publications/il-news/04-09-Yucatan-Retirement-Paradise
I guess I should take it as a compliment. Interestingly the article, in part, seems to sum up our general plan: "Their focus now is on smaller residential properties with long-term value in places that have a sense of community and an active social life...They want lower-cost properties in desirable locations that they can use now for vacation homes and rental income. They want them to be good quality and low maintenance, preferably with on-site rental management. And they want to be able to retire comfortably in these properties when the time comes..."

...April 11 On further thought, there are a number of things in the article that don't actually reflect our checklist, such as on-site rental management...and the article refers to calculations of "'QTR'… Quality Time Remaining", which sounds awfully cold and actuarial, especially in reference to people who are a long way from conventional retirement age...

Manana myth

2010-04-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

Back in Victoria with a notebook full of experiences from my first few days getting down to work on the long to-do list for our new Merida house. Although I must credit others for doing most of the work. A lot got done!

On Sunday I picked up the house keys and met property manager Maggie Cardena. She is effiicient! On Monday the huge tree that hid the house was hacked back to a manageable (though temporarily leafless) size. A shiny new deadbolt lock on the gate replaced the puny padlock and chain, we'd met the neighbors and the tax/water and electrical accounts were getting sorted out. All thanks to Maggie.

El Arbol, before and after: I knew there was a house under there somewhere!

Did I mention we have electricity? I had assumed the account was shut down, but on Maggie's suggestion I tried the main breaker (duh!), and instantly we had lights and fans. Funny how a bit of electricity can be all it takes to make a house seem quite liveable.

I was surprised and impressed by how efficiently things got done. Julio and his assistant worked strenuously all day at the big fig tree with just a machete and an axe. No power tools. I guess gas is more expensive than labour. Before the cutting began, we had to find someone to move two pickup trucks that were parked under the shade of the tree. So Maggie and Julio marched down to the market a block away (I tagged along, feeling like a bit of a goof) and they asked around to find the owner. They found him - and he wasn't too happy about losing his shady spot, but probably better than having his camionetas dented by large falling branches.

For my part I managed to get the floors more or less washed, though I don't know if I will ever get the hang of the Mexican squeegee method.

Surprises

2010-03-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

What do you think happens if you put the stopper in the kitchen sink when the tap has a drip, then leave the place unattended for a few weeks, or maybe months? Yep, I had some squeegeeing to do after I picked up the key and got inside the gate at our new Merida house for the first time this morning. Doesn't seem like the tiles are damaged from the flooding, but we'll see how it looks after I purchase some cleaning supplies and get down to work on it tomorrow. Score one for tile floors. Back home this would have caused thousands of dollars of damage to carpets, wood floors, subflooring and whatever was below.
Anyway, things improved after that. Neighbors introduced themselves on their way past. Maggie came by with information on getting the big tree cut back and new locks, and helped sort through the mysteries of the status of the electrical and water accounts, and the property taxes, and how much cleaning and maintenance is needed on a house that's soon to be covered in construction dust. It's good to know there are straightforward answers to these types of challenges.
After that, several hours of reading and lazing around, avoiding the afternoon heat (I think I'm finally getting the hang of this) and an evening stroll to take in the scene in the Plaza Grande: great live music, the street full of people dancing in the languid tropical way, old men elegant in crisp white guayabera shirts and dress pants, lots of kids, everyone appearing to be enjoying themselves and each other's company, and the obligatory cheese-filled Marquesita, my new favourite street snack.
Not a bad way to live, I think.

Made it to Merida in record time (for us)

2010-03-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

So it took 12 hours from boarding in Victoria to arriving at the Merida ADO bus depot today. Not bad, though pretty tiring. I wanted to see how hard it is to get here without an overnight layover in some city where you don't really want to be, like Mexico City or Cancun. It is definitely worth it to just get right off the plane and on the bus, though I will need to figure out the airport-to-bus-depot shuttle scheme a bit better. In one of those funny coincidences I shared the combi ride with a couple who also happened to be from Vancouver Island; a lovely nurse and a veterinarian who have spent the last week exploring Mayan ruins and other Yucatan sights.
In Centro tonight the streets are busy with people walking around and looking relaxed. There's subdued jazz and pleasant chatter drifting over from a restaurant behind the Hotel del Peregrino where I'm staying. A nice vibe to come back to.

We have a house. Now what?

2010-03-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

Got the email while sitting in my evening class, saying the purchase of our Merida house is completed. Lucky I'd paid for the house insurance the day before.

What we've got is a cool, though slightly dilapidated, colonial house in a fascinating city in the tropics, for the price of a proper kitchen renovation here in Victoria (which we still need, unfortunately). I know there are a lot of expenses yet to come, but so far the arrangement agrees with my bargain-hunting, thrift-store-shopping, curb-scavenging soul.
Here at home it's the time of pink snow. The peach and plum tree blossoms are falling and drifting at the curb and along the sidewalks. I wonder what the season will be like in the Yucatan - according to the dialogue on Yolisto it sounds like the weather has been fairly unpredictable and weird. It's been so busy here, there hasn't been much time for arranging useful things to do while I'm in Merida next week, but at least I'll have a set of keys and the ability to come and go. Maybe I'll buy a bottle of vinegar and spend a whole day cleaning the mineral deposits off the kitchen taps, or hack back the 10-foot tall weeds in the back. Or just hang a hammock and read.

Almost there

2010-03-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

That's what our realtor says: We're almost there. Friday is the tentative closing day for the purchase of our house. In less than three weeks I'll be there, a short trip, to do....something or other. Get the electricity turned on? Arrange for someone to manage the property in our absence? Get some help with renovation plans? Try to refrain from buying anything to put in the house that isn't a light fixture or a fan? I see school's out the week I'm there. Will anything be open during Semana Santa (which appears to be dos semanas in practice)?
It all seems surreal, and there's little time to plan because it's a hectic time here at home with work and classes and kids' trips and complications from dental surgery (our daughter's, not mine).
Here in Victoria it's suddenly cold, after weeks of balmy weather that seemed to coax everything into brilliant bloom. On Sunday it rained, making the chartreuse new growth and billows of pink plum blossoms and heather look especially luminous against the watery grey background. It's not the time of year when you think I've got to get out of here. But I'm still looking forward to getting back to Merida for a few days at least.
It is 25 years since we first set out to make a home in Mexico. It was a plan that didn't hold together long. The 1985 earthquake in Mexico City was more than a jolt of harsh reality. Everything after it was, for me, overlaid with a sense of threat. Even without the complications of a natural disaster, we had moved with no real sense of what it would be like to live in Mexico, or any foreign country. There was a young person's lack of realism about the challenges. I wanted to be a foreign correspondent in Latin America like The Globe and Mail's Oakland Ross. Not quite the same thing as writing about the peso exchange rates for a 22,000-circulation ex-pat rag in Mexico City, for the equivalent of $7USD a day. We were snowbacks, working on a tourist visa.
It's different this time.We're better informed and more realistic, thanks to bloggers and friends and fabulous online resources. Others have blazed the path and shared their learning. I think we're ready?

Putting our money where my mouth is

2010-03-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

Feeling light-headed today. Could be because I went to the credit union and transferred a sum about the size of a very small down payment on a Victoria house, to pay in full the cost of our Merida casita. I'm told the sale could be finalized by the end of the week.

Our house in Merida - officially (sort of)

2010-02-07T20:55:00.000-08:00

We have a house, or a contract to buy one, anyway. A "promesa de compraventa" is signed and "earnest money" has changed hands. Now, we're told, the contract is ironclad and awaits paperwork, including the creation of a bank trust to hold the title, known as a fideicomiso. Three or four weeks and it will be ours. Yikes! What have I done? Pardon the jitters, I'm sure they'll pass.
It is hard to believe it's real. For four months since I was last in Merida and made an offer on this house, we've waited for a technical issue with the deed to be sorted out. We were advised not to sign a contract of purchase before the issue was settled. So the house could have been purchased by someone else in the meantime if they put forward a better offer (though they would have had the same problem.)
In the meantime, other cute houses were listed and sold, the Canadian dollar rose and fell against the USD (the preferred currency of foreign real estate purchase in Mexico), and I tried not to think too far ahead.
Now the list-making begins: How do we hook up utilities (or do we even want to do that before the renovations are underway)? How do we arrange for work to be done on the house while we are here in Canada? I know many people hire an architect (something that is not common for lower-end renos in Canada) but is an architect necessary for a basic upgrade that doesn't move walls or add to a building? Is it advisable to arrange for a property manager before the house is ready to be lived in?
Can I get there in a month or so to arrange to get work underway, or should I wait? Do tradespeople continue working through the scorchingest months or is there a break in the action during the late spring/summer?

I think the first thing I'd like to do is some extreme pruning on the giant ficus tree in front of the house. It is getting into the overhead wires. Does anyone have recommendations for a careful tree-pruner? Do I need any kind of permit or approval from the power company to get this done?
This is a whole new chapter and I've got a lot to learn.

Remembering an earthquake

2010-01-21T15:48:00.000-08:00

The earthquake in Haiti sent me back in my mind to Mexico City, during and after the 8.1 magnitude earthquake on September 19, 1985. Earthquakes do that to me, and I expect to everyone who's been through a very serious one. I dug out my old earthquake photos from the boxes under the spare bed.
It was the worst thing I'd ever experienced, the closest I've come to a near-death experience. The fear was inescapable - aftershocks, real or imagined, shattered my sleep every night and I'd wake up already running toward the nearest doorway. I could see the same fear in the eyes of nearly everyone else in that vast city, especially when the subway stopped and the tunnel went dark, or the lights started swinging in a restaurant.

Looking at the photos now, it's easy to see how the damage in Haiti is so many times worse than even the Mexico City quake. For millions of people there is nowhere to escape from the destruction, no corner of safety.
It's strange how it's only now, seeing the earthquake in Haiti, that I finally connect the dots of my long-ago experience. For several anxious days (for friends and family) my Canadian friends and I were listed as missing. We'd called the Canadian Consulate to report that we were alive and well, but unknown to us the message wasn't passed on. I was busy covering the disaster for the Mexico City News, unaware that we were "among the missing." Those asked to look for me didn't seem to notice my byline, published in the paper each day.
I remember attending with my notebook at a soccer stadium in the city, turned into a makeshift morgue. Gruesome lists posted locations and details of the unidentified bodies and body parts that had been recovered. The Canadian consul was there too, carrying out the grim task of looking for dead Canadians. I remember interviewing him. Only now do I realize that my own name was probably on the list of people he was looking for in that open-air morgue.
Lucky me, I was not injured, lost no friends, relatives, or even personal property in the 1985 earthquake. There's no comparison to the thousands of people who died then. There's no comparison to the unidentified thousands who lost their lives, and the horrific situation that continues for the survivors in Haiti. But I think that for anyone who's been through such a disaster, you never see the world the same way again.

Show me a sign

2010-01-09T23:01:00.000-08:00

I'm continually enthralled by the signs of Mexico. They are quaint, bizarre, funny, strange, beautiful. Sometimes they provide a flash of insight into the culture behind the facades, both the stone-and-mortar and the human ones.

I snapped some pictures of some signs that awed or puzzled me on the latest trip and here are a few of them. The plaque with la Virgen was nailed to the front door of a house in Merida. I don't know what to make of the "Watch out for U.S. Immigrants" sign. And the door painted with the iconic symbol of Mexico's unofficial national beverage had such an incredible hue and patina I couldn't resist taking a shot despite my, um, not too positive feelings about the Coca Cola Company.

Do you have pictures of notable signos in the Yucatan (or elsewhere in Mexico)that you wouldn't mind sharing on this blog? Please send them along. I'll see if I can rustle up a good prize for the most awesome/funny/baffling sign.

Waiting and daydreaming

2009-12-27T22:32:00.000-08:00

It has been nearly two months since my offer was accepted on "our" house, but we're still in limbo without even a signed promesa de venta. A new survey had to be done and then wind its way through the land registry, and somewhere along the way I'm told a problem was found with the new survey so yet another was required. Now everything is shut down for the holidays so who knows when we'll get through this step and start making progress again towards actually purchasing the place. Back here in Victoria it is pretty cold. Hard frost on the roofs and roads and cars in the mornings. Images of the Yucatan help take the edge off the cold, though. Before my trip in October I looked for photos of the Ermita de Santa Isabel neighborhood where I was going to stay and couldn't find much, so I tried to take some to post myself. It's very pretty, with the buildings painted pastel colours and the cobbled streets. The overhead wires are relaid underground and the park next to the cathedral has free wifi - in the evenings it's full of children and adults sitting on benches with their laptops open. It's one of perhaps a dozen or so parks around the city with free wifi - most are far from the tourist zone and probably in neighborhoods where many people might not have the money for internet service in their homes. On Sunday morning the street from the cathedral to the broad Paseo Montejo are open to bicycle traffic only - very peaceful.
Anyway, here are some photos from around "La Ermita" to keep you warm.

Great shots

2009-12-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

The more I fart around trying to capture what I see with my little point-and-shoot camera, the more I appreciate the work of people who really know how to take great photos. These web albums of gorgeous shots of Merida, surrounding towns and other cities in Mexico popped up in my Google alerts yesterday and I felt I had to share them. They really capture the beauty of the place: Mexico-Yucatan 1, Mexico-Yucatan 2, Mexico-Colonial Heartland, Chuburna Puerto

The Daily Show goes to Merida

2009-12-02T15:55:00.000-08:00

A very funny report from The Daily Show's correspondent, whose recent visit to Merida was all the buzz when I was there. I even met one person who was interviewed! If you're in Canada, check out this link. In the U.S. try http://www.thedailyshow.com/. It's the second clip from the November 30th show.

Fine dining in Merida

2009-11-30T05:25:00.000-08:00

The food in Merida and the Yucatan is widely praised, though not everyone's a convert. I heard enough dissing of the inferior tortillas (not soft like those in MexicoCity) and predominance of turkey in nearly everything. I guess you have to choose for yourself. Here's the NYT's Mark Bittman on Yucatan cuisine.

While U wait

2009-11-22T22:18:00.000-08:00

On Friday I heard the survey has been done on our possible house. Which means, I think, still more waiting for information to be distilled intro a report. Estimated time for completion was three weeks, but at least it's in progress.
Meanwhile I find myself wandering through the local Pier 1 and daydreaming about furnishing the house we don't yet own. Merida has a Pier 1 inside the Sears store, and it has some of the same inventory as the Victoria outlet, so I tell myself I'm being practical. In reality, though, we're a long way from having a place to even hang a hammock.
Temperatures have cooled 10-20 degrees fahrenheit since I left and it has rained a lot. I think about the step down from the back garden into the dining room and worry about whether flooding is a possibility. I know, probably not. I'm probably confusing it with Vancouver Island, and Duncan, where salmon were spawning in the street this past week.

Es complicado

2009-11-15T12:17:00.000-08:00

Back from the library laden with inspiration. Hacienda Style, The Homeowner's Guide to Renewable Energy, Mexican Contemporary (design), Pool Ideas, and a four-CD set of spanish language lessons:
"A second chance"..."una segunda oportunidad"..."Enjoy yourself"..."Que lo pases bien"..."He got fired"..."lo dispidieron"..."May I go now?"..."Me puedo ir ya?"
Did we buy a house in Merida? I think so..."creo que si." It's complicated. "Earnest money", a down payment, is waiting to be paid out of a U.S. account. The lawyer was drawing up a contract. But there's a hitch. There's a three-metre discrepancy between the property boundaries on the deed and the survey. So a new survey needs to be made. Maybe someone else could come in and put another offer on the house in the meantime. I guess that's a risk we have to take.

Feeding the fantasy of a home in Merida

2009-11-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a chance to share photos of the house tour last week (just last week?) in Merida. Here are some of the fantasy homes that feed the appetite of gringos like me. We become fixated on finding an abandoned ruin to turn into our own version of the dream casa.
House Hunters International apparently has the same effect. Just yesterday I read a thread on Yolisto.com in which people were talking about what lured them to Merida and the Yucatan. I think about half a dozen said it was the HHI TV show and its Merida episode a couple of years ago.
Anyway, here are some house tour pictures
(Feb. 7/10 I finally got around to changing the title of this post because I had been warned that the original was likely to get caught in spam filters, as it compared real estate photos to certain illicit forms of adult entertainment.)

Was I dreaming?

2009-11-04T14:42:00.000-08:00

Three days back at home and at work and the past two weeks of heat and amazing sounds and scenes and making new friends and checking out potential houses seems somehow surreal.

Last night at my house

2009-10-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

On the street outside the house last night I heard drumming and a low, haunting sound. I opened the front door and saw this.
You don't have to go far to see some amazing sights here.

"This is Yucatan"

2009-10-30T17:59:00.000-07:00

I realize I haven't said much about the attractions of Merida and the Yucatan. In reality I haven't been able to visit the surrounding towns and ruins this time around because of all the house-hunting busy-ness. However, someone has posted a YouTube video which gives a good, if somewhat idealized, picture of what is so irresistible about this place. It's a bit light on the dirt and noise and heat of the city, the smells and the delays and frustrations, but hey, it's a promotional piece.
Here in La Ermita tonight the main street is closed to traffic and people have set up Hanal Pichan altars outside the church and all the way down the street as far as my house. I took a few pictures though the afternoon light was challenging with my cheapo camera. It is very moving to see the photos of old folks and dads and teenagers and babies propped up on the tables amid food and flowers. A stage is set up by the park. I wonder what the performance will be tonight?
This spot is a parade of beautiful and unexpected scenes. Last night I looked out my door and a man was coming around the corner on a horse. Not driving one of the calesas - the buggies with the undersized ponies that serve the tourist trade. But a full-sized horse, with just a regular looking guy on top, in the middle of a big city. I wonder if he keeps it in one of those huge yards that extend way back from the street. You can't tell where they are, behind the high facades and walls of the houses here.

Day of the Dead

2009-10-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

Day of the Dead displays and preparations are visible everywhere in Merida these days. Last night, cycling to dinner, I could see through open doors and windows the altars set up in the front rooms of houses, with balloons and/or flowers and favourite objects and food arranged for the deceased family members. (Often there's a halloween display in another corner.) Today there was an elaborate display and performance at the Casa de Las Artesanias in Centro Merida. In this city you see women in the traditional Mayan clothing everywhere doing everyday things, but it was stunning to see so many gathered for this event, dressed in the most elaborate huipiles, performing and sitting by their Day of the Dead altars. Here are some photos. The Mayan version of the celebration is called Hanal Pichan which means "meal with the dead." Some of the altars are very elaborate.

Some are very simple.

Pasta time!

2009-10-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

Fans of Merida's colonial architecture have a mania about pasta floor tiles. Frequently in the real estate listings you'll see photo after photo of the floors, with maybe a shot of the wooden vigas on the ceiling and not much else. These tiles are made by pouring different colours of cement pasta, or paste, into a mold which is then allowed to set. They can last hundreds of years. Here is a small selection of pasta floor patterns I've been walking on over the past couple of weeks. It's hard to keep the feet out of the picture.

Second look in Mejorada/Chen Bech

2009-10-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

Last time I mistakenly called this neighborhood Chuminopolis. That's further east. Here are interior pictures. I really like this one.

A second look in Santiago

2009-10-27T17:58:00.000-07:00

Went to see the colonial house with the vigas for a second time today. I'm back and forth on the pros and cons of this house. It's in the best location in terms of being close walking distance to all the main attractions: the Zocalo/Plaza Grande, Santiago square, markets, shopping, Paseo de Montejo (the wide avenue modeled on the Champs Elysees), all the music and cultural hot spots. It's even close to the Merida English Language Library. Most of the houses in this area are way out of my price range. However the street is busy with cars and buses - at times. When we were there today for more than an hour it seemed very quiet. Even when vehicles went by they didn't seem loud. In the back of the house and in the courtyard and garden it was particularly peaceful. So it's back on the list, I think. This location is "in the zone" as Lexy's friend Debbie says. It would definitely be attractive to people looking for a central place to rent. But for us, staying long-term?

Chuminopolis and Day of the Dead

2009-10-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

Much pounding of hot pavement today, trying to find the perfect Day of the Dead gift for the daughter. Can't seem to find the funky Mexican folk art store that we went to before. But did get a chance to take a tour of the unfamiliar neighborhood around one prospective house. It's described variously as Mejorada, Chen-Bech and Chuminopolis. Whatever, it seems quite nice. Here are lots of pix