The Long, Quick Drive Home

In preparation for the trip home, I took the car up to the north part of town to a tire dealer Derek uses, for a cheap wheel alignment and oil change early in the week. I tried to make it known I wanted them to inspect everything, but they didn't seem to want my phone number to call if something came up. When we called them to confirm it was ready at the end of the day, I had Derek drop me off and found that they had decided it needed new front struts, new tie rod and ends, and the cost had gone from about 400 pesos to 3500. This was a bit shocking, but OK (imagine, wearing out the front end after only thousands of miles of overloading and abuse!) and I got in to drive home.

The loud clunk greeting every bump seemed not quite right, however, so I pulled it back in to the shop. With the hood up you could easily see the new strut assembly clanging up and down an inch or so when the spring was compressed. From below it was obvious that the outer CV boots were fully split open on each side. With a little luck (Gordon from Ottawa was there too) and patience, I got their attention to these problems. I suspect they used replacement strut assemblies from a common Tsuru (the 1994-era Sentras still built and sold new in Mexico) rather than the right part. They would have it all ready in the morning. Gordon was able to drop me off near Derek's. In the morning they had the right struts (at least ones that didn't clunk, and were a different color), new boots on, and we were ready to roll. Maybe they even changed the oil. It didn't look too dirty.

With great sorrow we woke up Friday the 16th to a pile of belongings and an empty car down below. A dozen or two trips later, all was packed in the Sentruck, which looked full to the inexperienced eye, while I knew there were a couple hundred pounds staying behind that somehow had fit in or on the car for the trip down. There were hugs all around from Derek, Christine, Heather (4), and Dylan (20 Months) and it was time to hit the cinnamon roll bakery and the road.

There had been a short item on the Tomzap Puerto Escondido Visitor's comment's page about a planned strike closing the coast highway Friday morning; we noted that but we were going north, not east. We took good old Highway 131 toward Oaxaca. We were almost to the junction (after 4+ hours of two mountain ranges, hundreds of curves, dozens of topes, and less than 200 kM) when we got to the first roadblock. Grr. This we didn't need. Fortunately, we were in the valley now, and there are other roads! A yellow road from the last town connected to the Oaxaca highway, so off we went to find it; I thought I had seen the junction. We didn't find that junction, but headed out of a little town in about the right direction anyway. It was a bit of an adventure going up and down the dirt to ford the dry creek where the bridge was out, and some more dealing with the detours where the new highway was being built, but we teamed up with a small car from Mexico City (DF - District Federal- plates) and soon we were on a road to Oaxaca.

Not so fast. As we reached a main intersection on the outskirts, dozens of taxis were stopped, blocking all access to Oaxaca. Another demonstration. Just let me out of here! Whatever you are protesting. it's not our fault! We and the DF family and some others pressed along a arterial street that seemed to circumnavigate Oaxaca, hoping to get to the tollway, where we hoped they couldn't hold a strike. We made it to the highway, a few kM before the toll starts, and met another roadblock. The impromptu detour this time went north of the highway along some parallel back streets and back to the road. Another blockage. This time we all went behind the row of commercial buildings (pic above) fronting the highway on dirt alleys, through one corn field, through another dry creek, and back on. Finally a clear road. The time we planned to spend in Oaxaca at the market or art museo was wasted, but we were still on track to jet over to Tehuacan for the night and we did so without incident. Sophie was easy to smuggle into the tryst motel after we grabbed a bit of dinner and a few beers.

Saturday, the strikes were over (or behind us) so we got back on the tollway to Puebla. Two trips ago we had been disappointed to find that the nice new autopista highway up from Poza Rica towards Orizaba was on the map but not yet open. Surely by now....but no. Still we, the trucks, the busses, everyone else, still were stuck on the old road with its twists, turns, topes, towns, and all. Actually it wasn't terrible except for the four heavy flatbed trucks with construction equipment that we all had to pass somehow. We crawled on back to sea level and committed to skip Poza and Tuxpan and head straight for Tampico. The coast road wasn't too bad, though again too crowded with trucks and busses. The graceful big bridge for Tampico came into sight.

We have had varying luck with accommodations and navigation in Tampico over the years. This time we knew to take the bypass towards the airport and head out of town, hoping for a good lodging choice in Alta Mira, just beyond. As we got there on confusing highways, we saw food but no motels. Suddenly the highway was doing a u-turn back to town with no other choice. There was a good-looking auto hotel! We checked it out a bit and decided to go back for food and return. We found a right turn shortcut back to the grocery plaza, did our shopping, and headed back to the motel. Turns out you can't get there from here. The road we came in on had no apparent access to the road the motel is on, and we eventually had to return to the grocery, and re-loop the whole town to get back to the motel. The chicken was not do hot and the beer not so cold, but the day was done, and over two-thirds of Mexico in the rear-view mirror, or it would if we could face the right way.

Sunday morning, with the help of daylight, we found the tricky way to get turned around and headed north on the coast highway. The roads up north get faster, straighter, and better, so there were no particular problems getting up to Matamoros and the Texas border by the afternoon.

Somehow we lost the way to the bridge we usually take, though, so we found ourselves again trying to figure out the border geography on the fly. It's no problem to find the bridge -- that's well marked -- but we know from hard experience that we need to cancel our tourist visas and car permit before leaving the country. We stopped by the big building on the way toward the bridge and found the office on foot. There is a few-hundred peso fee for the tourist (FMT) visa, which we always had to pay at a bank before. This year, two different banks in Puerto had refused our money, and this being Sunday, we weren't sure we could do this, but went in anyway. No problemo! there was a 540 peso fee (for two) but they could take our money right there. Why didn't they take it when we went the other way in November? A continuing mystery. Much stress would have been avoided.

We canceled the FMTs and the car permit, after bringing it around the building for the record-holding "Bored, Lazy, and Disgruntled Border Official Champion, 2009", and got in line for the Rio Grande bridge, US customs, and Texas, three increasingly undesired destinations. The line was slow, but the border agent agreeable, and we entered Texas again wondering how much cocaine we could have had in the trunk with a couple of immigrants. The good US highways got us up to 75 MPH and headed north after crossing Mexico in a record-tying 3 days.

Cell coverage is spotty in rural Texas, though, and we couldn't connect to La Quinta long enough to book a free room for the night. We drove instead to the La Quinta outside of Corpus Christi, where we had spent our last night in the US on the way south, mostly to use their internet connection to reserve a room elsewhere, though it was by now getting past dark. It wound up being too easy to stay put, and we booked a free room right there, though we had to do it from their guest computer. It was a pretty good room, and with their pet-friendly policy we took Sophie right in, though fast enough that she wasn't noticed. We tried to go out for Italian, but they were closed so we wound up back at the same noisy sports bar as in November, this time with an NFL playoff game on the 70 or 80 TVs, at full volume. The burger was OK if you don't count the noise.

Now it was just a fast-highway road trip home across America. But not a bad time to be in America -- Barack Obama would be the President before we got to Canada. Monday we got up pretty early. The free breakfast gear at La Quinta was pretty much all powerless so a bowl of cereal and cold bagel had to do. There would be a real breakfast later. Looking at the map overnight, it became clear that our usual route, through San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, was longer than the southern route via Houston. Normally it is still worth taking just to avoid Houston, where I've hated to drive, but it had been a few years since we tried it. We would get there in mid-day so it might be OK.

Actually it was amazingly uncrowded on the Houston free ring road (not even the tollway!) so my thinking on Texas routes may need to be reconsidered. Especially because the Houston route has trees. Lots of them! At least compared to the Dallas route through endless flat miles of brush. Most of the way it isn't quite a freeway yet, so there is some delay, but overall it was the better choice, at least this time. Texas rolled on past and Arkansas began in late afternoon. Our goal was Memphis, or at least West Memphis, Arkansas, and the strip of cheap motels there. The Super-8 room looked OK except for the noise of the heater/cooler by the window. I turned it off to find to my horror that the real noise was outside the window, where a refrigerated 18-wheel truck was going to idle all night. When the dog is smuggled, it's hard to force a room change, so earplugs were needed, and the rest was less than great.

Tuesday was the big day for America. I was trying to figure out how to see the big swearing-in and speech without spending too much driving time -- we were only 1000 miles from home -- one very long day, even for a driving fool. Looking at the weather map, the storm that had passed through Michigan and Ohio Monday was headed southeast and into Kentucky and Tennesee for Tuesday (and freezing the party in DC). It suddenly made sense to head north first and east later -- at least Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan have snowplows, and I'm not sure that's the case further south. I-55 went past the Super-8 (actually backtracking a bit on I-40) so north we went, again without a usable free motel breakfast. The inauguration news repeated through the morning and we finally stopped for breakfast about 10:00 in southern Illinois, after some miles in Arkansas and Missouri -- we had made it to Obama country. From there we could see a Wal-mart, and still needing a oil change (I think) we implemented a plan to be at Wal-mart, with dozens of TVs, for the big moment. Well, they have the TVs, but they also have the Wal-mart TV channel, and nothing else. I commandeered one older-style set, and managed to get it to search for broadcast stations and find some, but without the remote I couldn't tune them in. The staff couldn't help (or wouldn't). It's not like they were busy, as the place was absolutely dead -- everyone in America was at home watching the moment on TV or at work watching on their computer. They finished the oil change at 11:05 CST, I rounded up Liz with bit of shopping, and we quickly paid so we could get back to NPR. Thanks to the delay in DC, we missed only the flubbed oath and the first moments of the speech, but we caught those in replay later (and selected bits over and over the rest of the day).

It is not the point of this blog, and covered everywhere else, but I have to say it was the greatest day of my adult life to be an American. The historic significance of the moment in our sad racial history was wonderful in itself, but combined with the abrupt end of the worst 8 years in my experience of my country, and the amazing popularity of our new leader, it was incredible. The problems are huge, the opportunity great.

Happy, oiled, and fed, we were still a long way from the nearest free bed in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. The freeway number changed to 57 and then 70 and then 69 as Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan went by, the ground getting whiter, the heater setting higher, and the hour later. We messed up trying to find the last gas station in Michigan but got to the bridge to Canada by about 11:00 PM. Now it was just an easy cruise down the 402 & 401, right? A snow squall west of London had us worried we might not make it after all but it cleared up eventually and our Wendy's dinner and coke kept me going through sleeping Toronto and into Mel Parkinson's driveway about 1:30 AM.

Five long days from Puerto Escondido, and from 80 degree days to 0 degree nights. I have to say it will always remain a puzzle to me how so many smart, wonderful people wound up so far up this round planet of ours. Now I'm thinking, in the spirit of NAFTA, maybe we could arrange to trade, say, Manitoba, for a big chunk of Oaxaca and Chiapas that are currently underutilized.

The new, improved construction plan

of

With the floor poured on Wednesday, we had Thursday to settle some affairs, decide what things we could leave in Puerto (Derek offered some temporary storage room, and to haul stuff over to my Bodega when it is ready and lockable), and to get everything else ready to load into the car. We decided to take the Tompkins, and Rosa Maria and Alejandro out to a nice dinner to celebrate the progress on the casa. I dropped the car off for a 40-peso all-over cleaning, and we met at Charlie's Bar on Zicatela for a very good just-after-sunset meal. It was good to forge a bit more of a relationship with Rosa Maria (my lawyer) and Alejandro who has been, and will be, essential to getting utilities established at the house. They are both great people with a lot on the ball and good spirits. I wish my Spanish was anywhere near as good as their English.

After dinner we picked up the shiny new 1996 Sentra, and headed back to Casa Amarillo (Derek & Christine's) for a last night at 'home'. Waking up at there, listening to the waves, the tortilla-selling jingles, and the birds, has become our morning of choice. One of our jokes is that Casa Den just has to rent for enough that we can afford to stay at their house.

Much of the affair-settling we had to do on Thursday had to do with a decision made the week before -- work wouldn't stop for the year when we left. When we were tossing around the idea of using colored stucco, it became clear that it is unworkable to use color below, then continue building above with regular gray concrete, as the drips from above will stain the work below. That reopened the discussion of how much to build this year, and a request to Lencho for a bid on finishing all the 'obra negra' (the concrete beams, columns, stairs, block walls), and the same question to Alvaro for the electrical and plumbing. There is a little savings from not doing the stucco on the first floor and bodega, and more from not doing the windows or doors this year, so in the end we decided to go for it. What's another US$12,000 or so, at the start of a great depression?

Under Derek's supervision, work has continued, with walls going up, conduits and pipes in, and the third (last) floor to be poured about January 31. After that, the full south wall, the inside bath walls, and the half-walls on the other three sides have to go up for the third floor, with the appropriate plumbing, plus the concrete columns and beams that will hold up the eventual palapa (palm-thatched) roof. All that should be done by about mid-February if all goes well. The building will be less occupant-ready than had been planned (for the first floor) but overall will be much closer to fininshed, and ready, among other things, for landscaping or plantings. One hope is to be able to get the top level up to comfortable-camping sort of condition quickly next fall so we can live there while work progresses from there down

images above are of the progress made since we left (thanks for pics, Derek). You can see the stairs being built up the east wall to the second floor, and the second floor walls going in. Those stairs wind around the corner and will continue up the south side to the entry for the palapa level. We'll see how it goes from here, by long distance.

Second Floor Slab Pour

Again it's been too long, but we have valid excuses, for example now being 3000 miles away from Casa Den, home in Port hope, Ontario, Frozen Canada.

As Lencho, crew, and Alvaro worked away after that last post, it was unclear if they would get to the point of pouring the second floor slab before our anticipated departure of Wendesday, January 15. There hard work and two helpful errors made it happen. For one, we learned that January 15 was Thursday, and gained a day, and then learned that the new tennants at Derek & Christine's were going to be late so we could stay an extra day (As of Jan.22, they still haven't shown up so we could have stayed even longer!).

The pour went ahead on Wednesday. On Tuesday night things weren't ready...the forms weren't complete, the steel wasn't all in, the electrical boxes weren't all placed. Oh, and Derek and I increased the size of the deck again, wrapping it around the east side over the doorway to shelter that door, and to not have a beam prominently visible on the edge of the slab. But Wednesday morning a bigger-than-usual crew got to work and things got going quickly. All of the items above and more (hauling soil up to fill in the space between the lower and upper bathroom slabs, finishing touches on the big ramp needed for the guys to climb up with buckets of concrete) were completed and the pour started at about 1:30 in the partly-cloudy afternoon. A secondary group of about 10 guys came, with their modified 5-gallon buckets and flip-flops, about noon and had been waiting for their work to start.

Again it was the synchronized system of one crew loading cement, sand, gravel, and water into the little gas mixer, wheeling the barrel over to dump it on the ground (actually, a thin concrete slab, now) behind, and flipping it back over to start over. They were using half a 50-kilo (110 lb) bag of concrete, 2 buckets of sand, and three of rocks each time, so they needed to do that about 110 times for this (the largest) slab. Two others continuously shoveled the mix into buckets, three worked up top on the placement and troweling, etc., and the rest hauled buckets of mud up a steep ramp. There wasn't a shortage of water this time, so no reason for a break, and they had it all up there a little after 4:00 pm. One nice thing about using a crew instead of a truck is that Derek spotted two different problems with the steel placement that would have been much harder to get fixed if a tuck was waiting, costing by the minute.

Then it was Cabro time. We had made the decision to arrange with the neighbor lady to provide the crew a post-pour dinner, rather than bring a bunch of chickens this time, and when the option of goat instead of chicken came up, the crew was all for goat. I hope it wasn't one of the cuter ones. She and Pedro (and daughters) did a great job with rice, beans, tortillas, soup, and soda, and then Lencho and I each sprang for a case of beer. After the feast our masons went back up to finish trowelling the slab, and all was in good shape by sunset (now visible from slab-level).

Time flies. Liz too?

January 9, 2009

It’s been a busy week, on the jobsite and off, so it past time for an update. As I write the first floor walls are mostly up and the crew is working to set up the forms for the remaining beams (to hold up the ceiling and walls above). Soon they will start building the plywood forms for the big ceiling & deck pour, which looks like it might happen on Wednesday, the day we were supposed to drive north. It may be necessary to stay another day or two, or the option still exists to buy Liz a plane ticket home and for me to follow later with Sophie and the car.

I have now had a chance to climb up on what will be the 2nd floor level to see the view, and it looks great. One of the photos above is from about the second floor level looking SW, where the winter sunset will be. The other is from the pile of bricks next door, looking over at the crew forming up the beams, and beyond to Zicatela beach.

There has been a lot of deciding going on, with window heights, door locations, electrical and plumbing details, stairways, and walls all negotiable and negotiated. It is a challenge to try to stay a step or two ahead of the crew to hopefully minimize the amount of concrete that needs to be chipped away and poured twice for one reason or another. Luckily Alvaro is watching them along with Derek and I on our visits to try and assure the pipes and conduits go in before the concrete.

One issue has been the stairs that were being poured last time I wrote. The flight up from the parking level to the 1st floor has 5 steps up to a landing and six more up to the terrace. It is 11 steps for 220 cm of height so about 20 cm per step, but somehow they got the landing about 5 cm too high. They adjusted the step height for the upper steps to abut 19 cm to make them consistent, but then kept the 19 number for the lower steps too, leaving the bottom step about 27 cm up from the parking slab. This won’t work very well, so Derek is having Lencho chip off the offending steps and redo them to a consistent rise, though the lower ones will be taller steps than the upper ones.

Other changes included raising the window openings on one wall by one brick while lowering those on the next wall by a brick. Too bad Alvaro had already placed a switch box in the block that will be removed, but he has already chipped it out and reset it. It has taken much thought to (we hope) make sure the plumbing and electrical needs of the upper floors can be met without destroying any concrete below. The bathrooms need double ceilings, both concrete, with the space between needed for drain and supply pipes for the bath fixtures. There is also the plan to have some tubing on or in the slab on the south to preheat water before the water heater to save some gas. Derek and the builders don't want to put the tubing in the slab. Maybe I should just coil up a black garden hose on the walkway.

Besides all that there has been a social life. On Wednesday we took Dan to the Huatulco airport to fly back to Oregon, and picked up Angie, Derek, and Jeremy from Ontario, who had booked a two-week stay in the Crown Pacific All-Inclusive resort and then learned we were not far away. We had a great time snorkeling at Bhia San Augustin and eating with them at san Augustinillo along the way back to Puerto for just-after-sunset margaritas. We got them checked them in to the Terranova Hotel next door, and went to the Puerto Blues Festival opening night to see the music. The music was good but the sound crew was having problems (and that doesn't count the 5-minute break when all sound and lighting power was lost, apparently to a blown breaker or fuse. All that was great, with them insisting on buying everything.

We went to Dan’s café for breakfast, then showed off the Casa Den site for a while, got them bus tickets back, and had a drink at Los Tios before they had to get to the bus. At Tios they bought a hammock and paid for three mariachi songs, at which point an all-vendor alert seems to have gone out to blackberries and iphones all over the beach to get to Tios to sell to the loose-money gringos. Luckily we had to get to the bus before their pesos ran out.

Now we are trying to put another of my dreams into concrete: a house that doesn’t need paint. The plan is to mix sand, cement (white or maybe gray) and some powdered colorant together to tint the outer, fine stucco layer on the outside and maybe the inside of the casa. If we can get this color right and fairly consistent, the thought is that the color is embedded in the surface and it won’t ever need paint. Nice dream, eh? We will see; right now Liz is mixing some samples with various concentrations of color and both types of cement.

The truly sad thing is that time is getting short with our departure so imminent. There is no way all the work can be done before next Wednesday, so the choices become whether to leave more undone, send Liz away alone, or entrust more to Derek’s care. We will see. And write.

Plans?

Plans?

Construction has been progressing rapidly at Casa Den since the 1st floor slab got poured. The block walls rise, mostly in the right places and mostly to the right heights, leaving window and door openings, often right where they were intended to be. Alvaro is plumbing away, and placing conduit and boxes for later electrical uses. As of this morning, they were starting to set up the forms for the 1st floor columns and for the stairs from the parking level to the terrace which is a complicated bit of work. For stairs they first form in a reinforced-concrete slab angled at the appropriate pitch from the correct starting point, chipping a bit of wall away as needed to attach the stairway. Later they form the individual steps.

But speaking of plans, it seems overdue to show off some of those. This casa grew out of three root causes: 1) I bought the land last year, "as an investment", 2) I had that fairly lucrative wind job in Texas last year and rebuilt my savings account from the land purchase, and 3) I am apparently incapable of owning an empty piece of Mexico as an investment without starting to doodle around on some house plans. While still in Texas I went ahead and bought a consumer-level Home Design software package (Home Designer Suite 8.0) which is a bit addictive, with the ability to make plans, quickly visualize them in 3-d renderings, and modify them till you think you are happy.

Those plans are not detailed or professional enough to get a building permit, even in Mexico (though I bet the builder could do just fine with them) so I sent my ideas off to Derek (by internet) so he could produce real drawings (and fix a few of my flaws along the way). As detailed in earlier posts, realities on (and under) the ground have resulted in more changes, so I've gone back and put some of them in my original plans to create the ones shown here. I'll start at the bottom.

There is now a basement level, as discussed earlier. First ir was just going to be for the cistern and parking, then for the bodega, and eventually I blew the extra $400 (US) on adding the spare room too. The stairs shown here go up from the parking level to the terrace above and the entry to the 1st floor. They are actually against the wall but software sometimes has a hard time doing what it is told. The landing actually goes out a meter past the west wall and will have a few steps down to the yard on that side. The parking slab is accessed from the left (east) down a fairly steep slope from the street (and there has to be a rise at the street level to keep rainy season water flowing down the street and out of the yard.) The South wall of the cistern wound up crooked so the cistern is a little less big and the spare room a bt bigger. Not shown is another stairway which will climb from the parking level to the landing oitside the East 1st floor door, to allow upstairs tennants to access those levels without going through the 1st floor indoors. There might need to be a step or two outside the south door too.

The first floor is the biggest level, though now that it is mostly well above grade it has a little less outdoor living space immediatly accessible than the 2nd floor will, with its wrap-around deck. It works ouit to about 500 square feet. There are doors on the South and West, and a large door on the North where the view is best, and where the terrace is. (North is down in these plans). There is simply a small (3/4) bath, a simple L-shaped kitchen, and a closet which separates the kitchen from a bedroom/living room area on the east. The stairs to the 2nd level go up on the east (and curve around to the south for the rise to the top level). The sliding door shown in this view might turn into two french doors yet. We need to figure that out real soon. The north wall of the closet which is shown angled to match the north house wall here, wound up straight instead. This bothers Derek but not I or Liz. The south door is sort of a vestigal remainder from when the plan was to park above the house and enter there, and we've tossed around the idea of leaving it out, but it has survived so far.

The second floor won't be built this year, but the stairs up will be (along with the floor slab which is the ceiling of the 1st floor, and, for now, the roof.) The plumbing and electric conduits for up there must be thought through and run nowm though, and that kitchen relocsation was discussed earlier. I think the second floor might wind up being my favorite to hang out. It is 2 meters smaller on the west, with a large deck there overhanging the first floor and wrapping around to the south (1 meter wide) and north (2 meters). We plan (now) to put the kitchen on the south wall, which will be tight, but leaves all the 'view' walls open to see outside (well, except for the bathroom in the way on the SW which might have been a bit of a mistake). It is only about 400 square feet, but with the big deck and the better views to the west from higher up it should be airy and pleasant. With the bed where it is shown here, one could wake up to the beach view, backlit beyond the neighborhood. I want to interlace the deck slab on the south wall with plastic tubing to act as a solar collector to preheat the water heading to to water heater, possibly eliminating the need to burn gas to have a hot shower or wash dishes.

There are single-wide doors to the East and West, with the double-wide (possibly french) door to the deck on the North, and three (maybe I'll add another on the east) view windows.

The Palapa (3rd floor) level has no deck, but then it mostly has no walls either. Only the bath walls go up full height, with the rest of the space open to the views and breezes. We have three times lived in two different places here with this sort of open arrangement and it works great (upstairs, with less bugs, anyway. The plan (for now, this is at least a year away from even starting to exist), has the same basic foorprint of the 2nd floor, with the small bath in the SW, but since the entry would be on the south wall the kitchen will likely move to the L-shape shown here along the bath wall and the west wall. Where to cook, sleep, or eat are pretty arbitrary for now but the sunset view, especially, will be best from here. Not shown are the hammock placements (on this or on the other levels) but it is pretty easy to imagine a book and a cool beer up here at afternoon siesta time.

Coming from up north, it is hard to get some of the local building norms and ideas. For one, insulation is pretty unneeded, as it is never cold, and in the best seasons (winter, spring) never too hot either. You actually avoid windows and public spaces on the south to avoid the heat of the afternoon. Construction with reinforced concrete and block allows shapes and sizes to vary easily, so for example the windows are framed roughly, but the windo maker comes in an measures each and makes the window to fit. The workers think nothing of chipping away concrete that might have been poured yesterday but turns out to be a bit wrong...the phrase "set in concrete" doesn't mean much. Wood is avoided as vulnerable to termites and other insects. Without 4x8 sheets, 96" 2x4's and all that, walls can grow or shrink a foot or so taller without much trouble. (Everything is metric on the plans, but plumbing parts all still happen to be inch sizes, and rebar is tres-ocho (3/8) or media (1/2) inch rather than, say, 9 or 13 millimeters). I believe the building trades will never be dragged into the metric system.

Just to show off the 3d home design software, here's a exterior and interior rendering of the place as it look on my computer. You can walk through, look around, change things like colors and sizes and styles. It's soooo cool.

Exterior (from NE) I had planned to add another 3d image but I guess the limit is 5 pictures per post so that will have to wait till later.

Happy New Year / Feliz Ano Nuevo todos!

Life going on

Activities.

We are doing a few things beside checking daily on the building progress. We had to leave Derek's on Monday as new higher-paying tenants were due on the plane (3 PM). After the extended research in Oaxaca, Puerto Angel, Escondido, and elsewhere, with and without Dan, we wound up taking a cabin near the beach towards the point in a small complex which had about 15 little wood cabins, about 12 feet square, packed close together, with shared (cold) showers and toilets. It was OK but at 375 a night, overpriced, even in this high season. So yesterday the search resumed a bit, and as I write today I am on the terrace outside our 2nd-floor room in a small Mexican-family Posada above the highway and a few blocks from downtown The road noise might be a bit loud, we'll see, but then it is new year's eve so it will be noisy everywhere.

We have our own bath, with two valves in the shower so there might be warm water, and five beds in two rooms. Since we need five nights, we can sleep on clean sheets every night if we like. Sophie is sleeping nearby as I write, no problems for Mr Enrique and his family/staff. Liz is out shopping and sweating.

Just after we left Dereks, two things happened -- they got a call that the new tennants would be a day late, and their drains stopped draining. He had to break through the terrace tile and concrete outside the lower apartment (where we were last year) to pump the tank but that didn't fix it. Yesterday the plumber came back and eventually found the clog which was from heavy sediment which had gathered in the drain from when their roof leaked and some runoff was diverted into the drains. The new people made it (from Canada) yesterday but they lose a day in paradise to the weather. Derek was relieved they were late or they wouldn't have had toilets or showers on arrival for their nice vacation.

Yesterday we went to Playa Coral for some snorkeling in the big waves in the afternoon. First we took a beach walk in the morning wich got a bit long for Sophie as we found out there were baby turtles down the way crawling to the waves. Later we went for a drive to and walk along the beach below Barra De Navidad, the little town just past the point, and found the narrow dirt road back toward Casa Den. That wore out Sophie some more. By the time we got her down the path to the snorkeling beach she had about reached her limit so she needed a carry or two up the hill back to the car.

Monday afternon, after moving, we went down to the very busy main part of Zicatela beach to watch the crowds, the sunsets, and the skydivers coming down. Every year they come to town for a week or two, taking people up ($400 US last year) for tandem jumps and for solo jumps after that. The plane is making repeated trips, delivering one set (a few to maybe 20) of jumpers up and diving back to the airport for the next set, about 23 minutes later. It looks like such a thrill. It's fun to just lie on your back on the sand and watch them sailing and flying in, some coming extremely fast at ground level, using the chute at the end to slow them down horizontally for a gentle running (or tripping) landing. In the Mexican way, people leave some beach space for them to land, but there is a volleyball net a few meters away that looks like a huge hazard to flying humans.

Last night we went out for pizza (La Hosteria) and then to the Rockaway for great live music. Too bad we go home so early. Since we lost our kitchen at Derek and Christine's and have to eat out now, we've had breakfasts at Dan's (nee Carmen) cafe (and internet WiFi). We had a lousy undercooked chicken dinner the other night at Cabo Blanco and burgers at Mangoes again too. And some tlayudas downtown for lunch yesterday, from which we have yet to get sick again, so far. Life is good.