Steel and Mud (1)

There is now something physical to show for all the pesos leaving my bank account on a daily basis. The steel for the footings, along with pre-assembled columns and the beams associated with the foundation, were all placed and wired together by Friday afternoon, and the concrete footings were poured on Saturday morning. Lencho and crew work very hard and things happen fast. Sunday is a day off though. The expectation is that the block work for the walls below the first floor slab will be in this next week -- walls that will define the bodega and cistern and also rise from the footings to support the walls and all else above.

As for the money, it is now a daily routine to go to the bank machine and get another 5000 pesos, (about $380 US or $470 Canadian) to pay for more materials, more labor, our rent, and the neccesities of life such as cerveza and comida (beer and food). Somedays I need 10,000 pesos so Liz has been advancing me a bit of cash, since I managed to lose one of my bank cards on the way down and can only get the limit of 5,000 a day from my one remaining card. So with living expenses our time here is costing about $450 (US) a day, which is not a particularly outlandish vacation-for-two daily budget, and at the end of the 2-month vacation there will be half a house to keep as a souvenir of the trip. But then we never have taken a $450-a-day vacation for two months.

The photos above are of the covered and uncovered (with concrete) footings from roughly the same spot on Saturday and Friday afternoons. Fortunately the freak winter rainstorm we had on friday night did not collapse any of the trenches. I feel fortunate that the soil is a mix of enough sand to drain and enough finer grains to hold a shape, with also enough rocks from fist- to refrigerator-size to make life interesting. These rocks are hopefully destined to become a retaining wall at the lower end of the top lot.

With the walls sort-of defined by the columns and footings, it's become clear that it is indeed a small building. I keep reminding myself that one does a lot of living outdoors in this climate and there is a lot of outdoors, plus the terrace (1st floor) , deck (2nd) and almost-open palapa (3rd) in addition to the enclosed spaces. We also enclosed the area under the east-side stairwell for a possible laundry (you only need a washer and a closeline here, and you just plain need to wear and wash a lot less clothing). Besides that we added a bit of deck aroiund on the south, accessed from the west deck on the 2nd floor, and extrended the terrace on the first floor around to the east to access the stairway to the 2nd level. There is now a stairway on the NW rising from the parking level under the terrace up to the terrace with a switchback, and a few steps will have to be added to access the east door from the street. I am going to have to draw up a new version of the building in my home-architect software to help us all visualize it.

The weather has beed a little less clear than most years but no less warm. it is about 83F days and 72F in the mornings. One cannot complain.

Thanksgiving Day (US, anyway)

We are settling into life in Puerto again; it's a pretty good life. We get up with the varied sounds of wild birds, crowing roosters, crashing waves, barking dogs, and tortilla-selling drivers with bad speakers blaring catchy jingles as they creep around the neighborhood, with all these sounds and more coming in the open large windows. The morning low temperatures are in the low 70s, about 8 degrees (F) warmer than our Port Hope house will get before April or so. Luckily the construction crew next door doesn't start beating on chisels until a bit later.

I ran a little yesterday, barefoot on the beach, and again today, 3K or so on the roads up above Derek's, but haven't settled on a course or regime yet. Breakfast has been cereal with copius fruit (papaya, bananas, pineapple), sometimes a bun or roll, juice for me and coffee for Liz. We need some more milk today so she can make yogurt by setting the warmed, innoculated thermos of milk in the sun by the pool for the day.

The afternoons require a trip to the beach. We acquired a beach umbrella this year so the shade/sun controversy of years past is settled; to each their own. So far we've been going to the beach at the point, nearest both Derek's place and my hole in the dirt, but we will no doubt be seeing Cariizalillo, Coral, Bacocho,
and Angelito sometime soon, and probably taking trips to the South and east to Mazunte, Puerto Angel, HuatulcO, and others. So far we've been going out or up for dinner, but that will change too.

Part of the reason we've been out a lot the last couple days is that Dan Wadosky, a friend from Oregon, flew in on Tuesday afternoon so we were out with him the last two nights. He's in the Olas Altas, one of the nicer Zicatela hotels, for another night, but we spent come time yesterday looking around for other options for his stay which will be through January 5 or so, before he has to go do taxes for 4 months. Dan's survived a cancer bout the last few years so it's good to see him back pretty much up to speed. He might join one or both of us on some local adventures and maybe a trip to Oaxaca city later.

The hole in the ground at Casa Den was mostly excavated by a backhoe in a few hours Tuesday afternoon, with the new plan to move the house up the hill a meter and excavate more below for a lower-level bodega, cistern, and parking slab. The even-lower septic tank below will be excavated later. In one place a large rock proved immovable by backhoe. Wednesday two workers started measuring and shaping the bottom of the trenches for the eventual footings, and started chipping away at the unmoved boulders with picks and a pry bar. Fortunately the main rock is of fairly crumbly material, sort of a poorly constituted granitic rock, so it will be moved, though I'm glad it's not me swinging a pick in the afternoon sun. I can't afford to work for myself here with the local wage rates. The word is that they plan to start pouring foundation components next Tuesday, mas or menos (give or take). It's not clear how much I can do to help, we have a sort-of fixed price bid from Lencho so I can pretty much do nothing if I like, but will want to be invloved as we get closer to final surfaces, fixtures, etc.

This evening we'll be having another Thanksgiving. We had one in Minnesota in October when we were visiting, and onother the next week for Canadian Thanksgiving at home. Now we have the 'American' version, approximately, in Mexico, upstairs at Derek & Christine's. We will have to get by without the fall chill or snowball fights. We hope everyone up north is having a nice relaxing Thanksgiving (or Thursday as they call it it Canada), and the US folk still have a few dollars to drop on the big specials tomorrow to help stimulate the global economy.

Contact Information

Contact information for Dennis & Liz

By email:

djlandwehr@yahoo.com
energyanswer@gmail.com
liz@lizparkinson.com

by telephone:

Magic Jack: 320-209-8960 (Minnesota number)

Home (leave message, we'll try to check them) 905-885-7091

Dennis's Mexican Cell from US or Canada: 011-52-954-118-9667

By Skype:

djlandwehr

We have pretty good internet access here at Derek's apartment from the internet cafe on the highway down below. That might be interrupted from Dec 20 to Jan 5 when we move out of here for the peak season. We check our personal email pretty much every day, usually several times. Also through the internet here we have Skype going and a Magic Jack phone which I think is now working. We should be able to get messages on that number even if you can't reach us. We will try to check messages on our home phone periodically but don't count on that for anything time-critical. For have-to-reach-us stuff, you can call the Mexico cell which will cost us each by the minute but should be working about all the time. Skype to Skype is free, and it's free for
us to call out on Magic Jack to the US or Canada so those methods are better for unhurried conversation.

Money Pit Opens

Puerto Escondido. Oaxaca, November 24, 2008

There's a hole in the dirt in southern Mexico with my name on it. Construction 'started' today (actually Lencho the contractor has been assembling rebar for beams and columns for a few days, back at his shop) with a lot of measuring and thinking and plan-changing in the morning, and the backhoe arriving in the afternoon to move dirt and rocks around. But let's take up where we left off.

Sunday, Derek, (Architect, landlord, all around good man) and I went over to the site and started to mark off the planned position of the house and compare it to the reality on the ground. I had insisted on putting the upper corner of the house 3 meters below the boundary fence to allow parking out of sight above the house, though he had recommended building up as far as possible. He finally got me to understand his idea: the parking could be below the house, both in the sense of further down the hill but also down below a slab!

Also, Sunday, we made our first visit to the new Super-Che (Chedraui) market we saw being build downtown last year. Puerto now has an actual supermarket, where you can go most anytime and buy bread or milk or t-shirts or lots of other stuff. This is a new thing here, as the former market couldn't seem to keep even staples in stock. We loaded up on things to fill our empty fridge. We got settled in and started getting things like internet and communications going. My new HP Vista computer wouldn't connect at first (now it finally will, hence the blog posts). The Sun went down beautifully, and we took the Tompkins clan out for Tlayudas (Oaxacan specialty, sort of a crisp burrito).

I pondered the building changes overnight. Monday morning we met Lencho (the builder) and figured out a new, improved plan (I have to wonder how many times I will be writing that phrase.) By extending the excavation for the footings a bit, pouring a parking slab at footing level (about 2.2M below the level of the first floor) and making a deck instead of a patio outside the north side of the 1st floor, we solved several problems.

First, the house can move up the lot a bit (only 1 meter it turned out). Secondly, we created room below the first floor where we could economically and conveniently create a 'basement' (open on one side) bodega (storage room) and also room for the water tank. Thirdly, we could locate the 'fosa septica' below the parking slab (reusing that bit of concrete). The terrain drops off faster than I had thought, and the height of the footings (from the bottom, 1 meter below grade at the lowest point, to the level of the first-floor slab), turns out to be over 2 meters. The first floor slab actually is to be about 3 meters above the original grade, which lifts even that level enough to get a decent sea view, over the neighbors not-so-lovely house. All this will cost more than the original quote, but less extra than the separate outbuilding previously contemplated for the cistern and bodega.

All this was figured out by 10 AM and we were to reconvene at noon when the backhoe showed up. We got the word he was there after 2 PM, and by the time we got over there he was well underway, hauling granite plus other, less-sturdy rocks, and somewhat sandy soil out of a growing hole in the corner of the lot. That went on for the next hours. He seemed mostly done by the time I left at 3:45. We'll see in the morning. It's pretty much a committment at this point. Maybe the building permit will even come soon.

Why did we move the house only 1 meter? We could have gone up 2M but this is Mexico and not everything is perfect. Surveying is a case in point. The 'Acta de Posesion' document that defines the property says it is 44.4 meters along one (10-Meter wide) street, and 20 Meters wide. Measurements on the ground don't really support the drawing. The 15M lot above mine, and the 10 M street above that, both need to fit in the 24M below the fenceline above (if that fenceline is "right".) Also the building has to be 1M back from the line if you want any windows on that side, so it seemed the best course to give up a meter, though Lench and Derek agree that if the Acta doesn't match the reality, too bad for the Acta. If the neighbor's 15 meters shrink to 14, that's his problem, not mine. Later we measured the whole east edge and got 46.5 meters so maybe I get a meter of slop on both ends. Whatever.

After leaving the site I went to load a cooler and have a quick swim at rhe Point beach with Liz and watch the sunset. Lovely as ever, with surfers, kids, and some dolfins (or maybe sailfish) leaping far out to sea. We got a grilled chicken for dinner and are calling it a day.

Cd Victoria to Puerto Escondido

Saturday, November 22. Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico

So we made it! Again there are road stories, naturally. We left off in Ciudad Victoria on 'the rack', the bed with no apparent mattress. After the uncomfortable night with little noticed actual sleep, we hit the road a bit late again. After looking at the map decided to take the inland route through Ciudad Mantes, Ciudad Valles, and on to Pachuca all on varius grades of windy mountain roads, rather than drive the 'extra' 40 kM to Tampico and take the coast road. We've taken most of these roads before, and enjoyed the views and crazy curves, so south it was, Thursday morning, on Highway 85. The route was slow and curvy as expected, but relatively free of topes and problems. At a small town called Tamazunchale, we chose to leave Highway 85 to catch 'a shortcut' over to Highway 105 at Huejutla de Reyes, and save a few kM going south to Pachutla. The shortcut turned out to be badly paved, twisty, as expected, with lots of topes so it seemed maybe not such a good idea, but we were comitted by then. We made the turn at Heujutla, a bit concerned we might not make Pachuca by night, but with no other real options. Going continued slow for a couple hours, until we came to a line of cars and trucks stopped on the entry to a small town. I still don't know which one.

Eventually Liz and Sophie went to see what was the delay. It was a strike/demonstration of some sort, a couple trucks across the road at a critical point with no alternate route, and a bunch of guys having a rally. She came back with Sophie and we sat. And Sat. About 5:15 I went down to see if I could learn anything. Two cops were there from the other direction but were doing nothing. I asked what was the issue and one pointed to a sign on a sheet draped over the blocking truck. I memorized key words to translate back at the car, which came out to be something like "Our Demand: Respect for the Agreement". This didn't seem to answer my question, for all we know it's a sign they keep around for whatever occasion. In any case, a few minutes later (coincidentally, to be sure) people started running up the hill toward their vehicles and it was clear that, whatever it was, was over. At this point there are vehicles in both lanes on both sides of the roadblock so things take a while to sort out, and the net effect is that the last two hours of daylight have gone and we are in the MOFN (middle of nowhere), as night and rain start to fall, on a twisted mountain road populated with pissed-off, reckless, long-delayed drivers. It wasn't too bad being the car following a tractor-trailer rig through the (now) fog and rain in the now pitch dark on a bad curvy mountain road. But then he pulled over to sleep and I had to lead the 8 or ten drivers behind for a while. It was like playing a video game with really lousy graphics as I had to drive with less and less information until I was just hoping to glimpse one of the roadside reflectors or the (sometimes) painted stripes on the center or edges of the road to tell me which way we were currently curving. Finally I glimpsed a place to turn off, and did, leaving some other fool to lead the pack. I became the last car of a samller group, and we never saw the new leaders again, so either they made it or drive off a cliff without a trace.

Eventually we came to the largest dot on that part of the good map, Zacualtipan, and not finding any highway hotels we headed downtown. We saw a hotel sign or two, but not the actual hotels, until on the way back down to the highway spotted one, and checked in for 300 pesos, parked the car and resumed breathing. The two flights of glossy marble stairs up were wet with condensation but we didn't fall and brain ourselves on the steps and settled into a cold hotel room, happy to be alive. What a day. 12 hours in the car and about 320 miles.

Friday worked out amazingly better. We got another late-ish start but the road immediately got straighter and faster (not to mention day-lit and visible). Now that we could see more than 10 meters we noticed we were heading into and out of a deep canyon, w1th amazing views. The road got better and we were in Pachuca ahead of "schedule". We discussed various options at that point but it appeared the possibility of getting to Oaxaca that night was back on the table, and we went for it. The roads and navigation from Pachuca to Cuidad Sahagan to Apizaco to Tlaxcala all went without a hitch on progressively better highways until we were cruising down the toll highway from Puebla to Oaxaca, and arriving in time to actually see the art exhibits there. Several times recently we had managed to get there to late or on the wrong day so this was a bonus. We toured the Contemporary Art Museum, the print institute, the steets, had a drink at the zocalo (square) and dinner a few blocks away. Sophie was napping in the car till we got there and drove out of town to a roadside hotel a few miles along the way to Puerto Escondido. That made three nights (all three nights) in Mexico where we each night failed to follow the first rule of local driving...don't do it at night. Our luck held out.

Saturday started well and we were headed to Puerto. 131 over the Sierra Madre del Sur was in rougher shape than last year, but passable enough for us. We stopped for breakfast, finally, at a place in Sola De Vega, where we had been well served before, but were somewhat disappointed at the current state of cleanliness. Breakfast doesn't seem to have made us sick yet, though. We pressed on to Puerto Escondido for a mid-afternoon arrival. By now we've unloaded the non-tool stuff, moved into our poolside apartment at Derek & Christine Tompkins place, and had a nice fish dinner upstairs with them and a bit of beer and wine. all around a good start to our time in the warm winter sun here.

Port Hope to Ciudad Victoria, Tamaliupas

Wednesday, November 19, 9:00 PM, Ciudad Victoria, Mexico

That's enough to show that we made it over two-thirds of the way. There's a story or two, naturally. We went to a dinner party Saturday night, groggily finished preparations and packing on Sunday, and drove to Melville's house to spend the night with him (Liz's octogenarian dad). That was nice but after a fitful few hours of attempted sleep we got up about 4:00 AM and hit the highway by 4:30. All was fine through Toronto but we had snow falling from about Milton to London and it became quite slow. As day broke it got better and faster, and we were waiting at the Ambassador bridge by 8:00 or so. The US border staff was kind, the low fuel light was lenient and we made it to cheap US gas ($22 a tank-full!) with fumes to spare.

The route I've been complaining about from the bridge to Interstate 75 south is finally getting fixed, meaning it was more than the usual detour to find the highway but we made it, and were leaving Detroit at full speed as rush-hour traffic built in the other direction. With cruise control, good US highways, NPR radio, and cheap fuel we motivated pretty hard through Michigan and Ohio and into Kentucky as planned. Evening fell by Nashville or so but we pressed on to Memphis, and messed around a while trying to find the Memphis Airport La Quinta which is not on Airway drive. A good dinner seemed in order but was not to be; an extended search of the local commerce turned up nothing mutually acceptable (meaning Liz wouldn't eat greasy slop) so we returned defeated to the hotel and she ordered a Dominos medium pizza, which for $19 turned out to be about $25 a pound. It was soon gone and we tried again to sleep (it should be mentioned that two of us slept a lot in car (counting Sophie) but Den did all the driving, about 1020 miles on Monday. The room had highway noise and only Sophie slept well.

Our start Tuesday was about 3 hours later as we got going about 7:30 after free waffles, etc., at the hotel. Arkansas went by too slow, but uneventfully, and Texas began; the weather sunny and bright. After a fill-up, we considered an alternate non-freeway route south, but abandoned that plan after a few stoplights. On down Interstates 30, 435, 35E and 35, Texas gets progressively less interesting and just too long. We blew by the planned stop in Kyle, Texas, just past Austin, and changed our reservation to Corpus Christi where we arrived at about 8:30. We had slightly better luck at Big Red's sports bar with 50 visible TVs, a burger and such, and went back to the LA Quinta for a marginally better night's sleep. 1900+ miles from home at this point.

Corpus Cristie is only a couple hours from the far tip of Texas where we cross the Rio Grande, but we slept an additional hour, and did various commercial errands in Texas before crossing the bridge a little after noon, confident that all our paperwork was in order. Indeed we had our tourist visa papaerwork done in a few minutes and went on to get the car in. Not so fast. While my car is legally plated in Ontario through 2009, and had the plate stickers to prove it, it seems I had been negligent in that I had failed to place the matching little sticker on the ownership papers last September, and this is just TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. Pleading, photos of the plate, nothing was going to change his mind. But there was an easy solution....just go back across the bridge to the Texas Vehicle department, and get a Texas temporary permit and come back with that: ten minutes, he says.

Yeah, right. It was half an hour just getting across the bridge and back through US customs. My Texas receipt ($25) was stamped 2:30 pm and my shiny new Mexican car permit came through 20 minutes later (400 pesos, about US$30). But whatever, we're good to go, if hours late. We navigated Matamoros OK and were looking at the "Ciudad Victoria 300 KM" sign, past the paperwork checkpoint in another half hour. The road (101) to Victoria is mostly smooth, fast, and tope-free (speed bumps). With a few minor annoyances drive was fine, as the sun finally got out of my eyes and some nice streaks of magenta crossed the SW sky. It got darker than we would choose to see from a car in Mexico but we got here and found this sleazy and basic 200 peso highway hotel, and a servicable restaurant at the corner. After we got inside we both recognized it from an earlier trip and it was again decent, with a Bistek Ranchero, a Pollo dinner, and two beer for 200 pesos with tip. With the US dollar up to 13 pesos, it was easily a better deal than Dominos or Big Red's.

The car, overloaded as it is, has been cruising along just fine, with the recently replaces junkyard motor and distributer. We got 30 MPG or so the first couple tanks, increasing to 37 or so the last one. The only problem so far is that the left headlight connector needs a nudge to get going, which is a bit inconvenient as night falls on a no-shoulder Mexican highway. I might even have to fix it. Somehow. The trunk is stuffed full, the back seat is filled maybe 20 inches deep (makes a nice platform for Sophie), and a small cartop-carrier bag is mounted on the trunk with camp chairs, snorkel gear, and beach toys. Someone unzipped it a few inches last night but was apparently unimpressed with the contents, as nothing was taken. Tonight I backed in to the garage provided here so it should be safe. It's a reasonable good strategy to drive a few thousand dollars of computers and electronics and tools and personal stuff around Mexico in a 13-year old economy car; nobody thinks much to mess with it. It puzzles me that some people think they are more secure in an expensive new SUV, when it's plainly the opposite. Who would you choose to kidnap or rob?

Enough for now. Having wasted the extra hours in Matamoros, we had to divert from the coast road to come to C.Vic. today as we would not have made it the extra distance to Tampico. Now we need to decide whether to go the long way to Tampico or stay inland on crazy curvy mountain roads toward Pachuca, around Mexico City, and on to Oaxaca. That's probably what we'll do. After dinner I bought the only beer available a the highway store, a 940 mL Corona. The laptop battery has outlasted the beer so it's time to climb on the rack (no joke-you can feel the springs through the sheets) and see if I can sleep better in the third country in four nights. Four if you count Texas.

Contact stuff

In addition to tis blog there will be some photos put up at:

http://s411.photobucket.com/albums/pp194/djlandwehr/Mexico%202008-9/

I've put a few up already.

While we're in Mexico this year we are hoping to be in touch both by email and also using a 'magic jack' internet phone system. The number is from Minnesota...

320-209-8960

so it costs the same to call as any call to that area code for you. We can call out on it to anywhere in the US or Canada for free. We'll see how well it works. You should be able to leave voice messages there when it isn't on or working.

Liz's email is

Liz@lizparkinson.com

and Lizparkinson.com is where to see her work.

The Lot

Here's a Google Earth image of the property. It was apparently taken a couple years ago as there's at least one building not shown. The lot is 10 blocks up from the beach, each short block being 40 meters wide with a 10m road allotment between blocks. The top corner (SE) is at about 117' in elevation while the lower corner is about 103 ft. On Google earth or Maps, you can look at it pretty well. Zoom in on 15 deg 49' 54" N and 97 deg, 2' 24.6" W with Google earth and you can see the local terrain and the view of the pacific

There's a slapped-together local family's place next door, and a Mexico City family's vacation place across the street, which is fairly new higher-end across the street to the east. That street is quite steep and unpaved (like them all), and will need work to make it drivable to the lower lots someday. The road to the South is in pretty good shape, and is the main route to the beach for a number of places further east and south. The road below on the north is not at all usable, though maybe some day it will be, as it lines up nicely with the road out to the highway to the east and with the road up from the beach below. Not on the Google image is a odd home to the SE across the street, which is a group of fiberglass pods, suspended together up one story on steel columns. People call it "Space Camp".

The property is mostly empty, with a lot of goat droppings from the former use. There's electricity on the bottom of the lot and water in the street, such as it is. (The water is pumped straight out of the river and runs a few hours a few times a week, so you need your own reservoir and pump.)
The taxes are low, and the title is in my Mexican lawyer's name. There's views to the ocean, at least from a story or two up, and to the mountains to the north and east. There are a bunch of nicer 'gringo' places to the south and east. Someday it will be wonderful, right?



.

Welcome to Casa Den

Hi,

We're moving on to new technology for our Mexico trip log this year. We'll see how this goes.
This year there's a new wrinkle, as you probably know: building a vacation home in Puerto Escondido, on one of the three small lots I bought last winter, on the east side of PE, 500 meters up from the point (La Punta) that marks the end of Zicatela, the main surfer beach which is about 2 1/2 miles (4 kM) long. The black rectangle on this partial map of PE mark the lots, 20 M wide x 15 M deep each.

Here's the trip plan for 2008-9. Liz, Sophie and I will leave Port Hope in an overloaded 1996 Nissan Sentra sedan with 159,000 miles and a recently-changed engine, on Sunday, November 17, to spent our last northern night at Melville's home in Pickering. We'll leave early Monday morning in possible snow showers and be on our way. I think we'll take the Windsor-Detroit-Cincinnati-Nashville route to Memphis, where I have a free room reserved at the La Quinta. I have a pile of La Quinta credit points from my time in Texas last spring. It's about a 15 hour drive, 1010 miles, so if we get going by 5:00 am we should be there at 8 PM of we can average 70 MPH on smooth, fast, free US Interstates. We'll pass through Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennesee, (and not quite Indiana, across the Ohio river).

From Memphis we cross Arkansas, Texas, Texas, and Texas. Our second night is planned for the La Quinta in Kyle, Tx, 700 miles down the road, a bit past Austin. If we get a good start and feel like continuing, we could stay at LQ's in Corpus Christi or even Brownsville instead. So if all goes well, we'll enter Mexico sometime Wednesday, and start driving shorter days. I have yet to choose a route through Mexico. I like the gulf coast route but have read that it is in pretty bad shape this year so it might be a good time to go inland.