Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Getting there is some fraction of the fun!

Another winter trip has come and gone as we needed to return to Ontario and Liz's teaching job by the end of January again this year. The few extra weeks we had in Mexico last year as she took a year off to settle her dad's estate were a real treat compared to returning in the January dark and cold.  I guess I should start at the beginning....

 We left Port Hope on the morning of Sunday, November 4th with a very full '99 Quest Minivan.  Among many other things we had a mini-fridge, 4 plastic chairs, a large telescope and tripod, and oh yeah, a queen size sofa-bed with mattress, storage box, cushions, and frame.  I needed to put the two mattress sections in thick trash bags and such the air out with a shop vac just to get them to stuff in. If customs wanted them open they would never go back in.  We made a drop-off in Cambridge of some work equipment in the dawn light and made the ambassador bridge border early in the day shift.  We look pretty innocent (a cute dog helps that) so we were allowed in the USA without much delay.  From Detroit through Toledo and south through Ohio the road is fast and long, with all the usual rhythms of cross-country freeway driving unchanged.  Gas, sandwiches, radio, and the occasional dog walk at a rest area punctuated the 1600 kM to the familiar cheap motel zone of West Memphis, Arkansas, where we landed at the Delux Inn (only the best for us!) for the night. They spent the money saved on the extra "E" on the sign making our stay particularly restful, I'm sure.  For dinner we had Mexican food, not to prepare us for Mexico but because after crossing the border the northern form of Mexican food would not be available.  

Our 2012 route south on Google Maps


I needed to UPS some monitoring equipment to my client in Colorado so we got to that errand in Little Rock on Monday morning and continued through Texas, choosing the slightly less boring (more trees) route through Houston which has worked well for us lately.  We got through Houston without trouble and to a la Quinta in Corpus Christie for a subsidized room on my LQ points and a $45 dinner.  The van was doing fine, as were Daisy and the rest of us, with over half the distance behind us.  We could have crossed the border Tuesday by noon if we had chosen that goal but this being Tuesday, November 6th in the USA on a leap year there was an election going on. Maybe you've heard of it.  So we took our time, did some USA shopping at Target, Best Buy and Harbor Freight Tools, and landed another subsidized LQ room in Pharr, TX, where I stayed up late to watch the election returns come in. 

Joshua Trees and Sierra Madre in northern Mexico
Tired, but pleased, Wednesday morning, we made a last minute dollar store stop, filled the tank with $3.29 Texas gas, and headed to the long, new Pharr-Reynosa bridge over the Rio Grande trickle and to the kingdom of the Mexican border officials.  We were smiled upon, paid our (ever-increasing, but not unreasonable) fees, and were turned loose on the roads of Tamuliapas and Nuevo Laredo states well before noon on Wednesday.  It is always a bit unnerving to merge into crazy border-town Mexico traffic for the first time but before long I was jockeying for left-lane position with the taxis and trucks like I'd never left. As is now our habit, we went inland but stayed away from Monterrey, the 3rd largest megalopolis inn Mexico after Mexico City and Guadelahara, by heading south on mostly 2-lane roads through China, Linares,and the spectacular canyon road through Intrubide to join the main 4-lane south of Monterrey and Saltillo, saving 50 kM, time ( I think), traffic stress, and substantial tolls. On the 4-lane we cruised to our now-usual hotel stop in Santa Maria Del Rio, past San Luis Potosi, and ate in the carving-adorned (the owner is the wood-carver) restaurant attached. There are a few odd creations in the courtyard.  Also the all-night sound of trucks struggling up and down the hill. So far, so good, no van issues, etc, 780 kM into Mexico, and about 4000 from Port Hope. 

In the courtyard at the Puesta del Sol, S.Maria del Rio
We had a bit of a navigational meltdown getting through Queretaro in the morning, missing a left and at one point circling around to the northwest part of the city near a university, but on finally getting off and reversing course we were able to get back on good old 57 south and eventually to the Arco Norte toll route that swings way wide, north, and east of Mexico City, connecting to the highway around Puebla and the toll road to Oaxaca.  The Arco Norte is still too new to have any services on it so woe be to those with a sub-half full gas tank but we know that now. The road to Oaxaca is another spectacular road to see, over tall dramatic bridges, over high passes, past grand distant vistas, generally smooth and fast. I am always reminded  as I get beyond the flats of the midwest and Texas, and start seeing distant mountains and long valleys, how much I miss the broad views of the open spaces of the west.  From my mailbox in central Oregon I could sometimes see Mt Adams, over 200 kM away in Washington state. It is about 830 kM to Oaxaca (if you don't screw up) but pretty much all fast except past Queretaro and Puebla, so we were easily to Oaxaca and finding our free lodging at a friend's daughter's apartment before dark.  A sunset drink on the roof and we were off on foot through the charming streets of the old colonial capital for a nice dinner, sharing stories of life in Oaxaca and the trip south. Unfortunately Mara (the daughter) is heading North this year but we arranged to stay again on the way back in January, picking up some of her goods to haul back to Toronto in a much emptier minivan. 

We decided to take advantage of the free (for the price of dinner) lodging in Oaxaca and spend Friday in the city catching our breath and some culture, and letting the dashed highway lines fade from our retinas. Mara's apartment is near the downtown, so very convenient to the museums. A bit more of a stretch to the mercado in the south of downtown, but a packed Avenida Crespo bus got us conveniently close with our purchased bedding.  By the way, this minivan is now about to burst, although the settling of the contents over 5000 kM did allow these things to fit in some cracks. 

Early Saturday we were on the narrow, twisty road to Puerto Escondido, over two sets of mountains. It is just 260 kM but really does take about 6 hours, between the curves, the hills, the slow trucks, the towns, and the groups of pilgrims to Juquilla, biking and running on the narrow road with their support trucks crawling along. Juquilla is the site of a modern miracle, a plastic doll of the virgin having survived a church burning down.  The slow road to Puerto may be out of use in a few years, as they are building a new toll road to Oaxaca now.  They have a lot of mountain road-building to go but the drive will probably go to a couple hours rather than six.  As nice as it would be to get to and from Oaxaca quicker, we worry that the resulting growth will change Puerto Escondido in many ways.  Hopefully our little neighborhood and beach will still be recognizable.

For the first time in five years our first stop in Puerto Escondido would not be at Derek and Christine's house...they were on Long Island, cleaning up the home they own and rent out there from the effects of Hurricane Sandy.  Their place (and Derek's mom's and brother's places) were all pretty much OK but there was no power and scarce gas for a while. With hurricane Carlotta making a direct hit on Puerto Escondido last summer -- and tearing off part of their palapa roof -- they managed to have both their houses in the paths hurricanes in five months.  They had planned their visit north well before the storm, and had they not delayed it a couple days they could have been in Sandy as well.  Our first stop in Puerto turned out to be to Dan's Cafe, for some quick internet contact and some tasty fish tacos, a weekend special at Dan's.

We were finally unloading the Quest at the casa by early afternoon.  The first order of business, however, was checking out Liz's new studio.  We had seen the excavation start before we left last February, and Derek had kept us supplied with pictures (and questions, and requests for money) over the months as it grew from paper to concrete, but it is another thing entirely (or a whole 'nother thing, as some say) to see it before you in real life.  But that's a whole 'nother blog post.

Our Derek-arranged house-sitter, Clay, had moved on, but had left a welcome cold case of beer in the fridge so the afternoon sun wasn't too hard to take as we unloaded everything into piles in the apartments, on the terrace, in the bodega, into the studio, and so on.  We had decided to move onto the second floor, with the better views and wrap-around deck, where we had never lived before. We had things well enough sorted and stowed to even make a first walk down to the beach for a quick dip in the warm pacific waters before a sunset drink.  5000+ kM from home, it was time to relax. Or so we thought. It turns out that owning a spare house does make for a bit of work. But we made it there just fine, happy to be 'home'. 

From La Punta, (the point) downhill from the casa, rocks, waves, surfers.. the usual.









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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Intro to Casa Den and the Apartments


Casa Den is our vacation home in Southern Mexico, in the state of Oaxaca (wa-ha-ka), on the Pacific coast in the small city of Puerto Escondido (hidden port).  The house is in a neighborhood called La Punta (the point) of small lots east of the main part of the city, above the point of rocks that defines the east end of Zicatela Beach, famed for its world-class surfing. The casa (house) is on one of four lots we control, each 15 by 20 meters, so together 60 x 20 meters, about 3/10ths of an acre. We are about a 500 meters walk up from the beach, through a mixed neighborhood of mostly Mexican but some 'gringo' homes, especially to our south and east. 

Casa Den from the NE, 2011

Location Of Puerto Ecsondido in Mexico
Puerto Escondido city map
















La Punta Map, our lot in black



Aerial view of La Punta


Our small place can best be described as three studio apartments stacked up.  There is an outside stairway to access the upper units, and each has a small 3-piece bathroom and a kitchen.  Since the weather there is basically great, all winter (lows about 75F (24C) and highs about 85/30, with little or no rain, much of life is lived outdoors. The lower apartment has a large terrace on the north (shady) side accessed through double doors, a patio out a south door in the sun, and of course access to the outdoor property.  The second floor apartment has a deck around all or part of the north, west, and south, wider on the west with a view to the Pacific, and the third floor or palapa level (named for the palm-frond roof) accesses the outdoors by being largely outdoors...there are only half-height walls on the west. north, and part of the east sides. The view up there is the best, and it is the most 'in Mexico' feeling area, though that means hearing roosters in the morning and the rest of the neighborhood sounds, including the waves crashing on the beach when the wind is right. 

The place is built of reinforced concrete with block infill, with all floors tiled with the local thick but uneven (character!) red-clay tiles. Concrete is even used for the kitchen counters and lower shelves. The windows and doors are aluminum and glass. These materials share the properties of not rusting in the salty air and not being edible by any of the local tropical insect species. Much of the house has the yellow pigment in the last layer of stucco (concrete) so as not to need paint. This also makes for an uneven finish, so more "character".


My original (sort of ) drawing
We worked out much of the design ourselves, in consultation with our architect, construction manager, and good friend, Derek. I used a consumer-type architecture program on my laptop and he improved the design and produced real, build-able, approve-able drawings for the contractor. 

The property is oriented north-south, sliced into 4 lots each oriented east-west. We originally bought only the lower three lots so the house is on the second from the top, the highest of those three.  The property slopes pretty down dramatically to the north and somewhat to the west. It had never been built on, except a lightweight tin-roof shelter for the goats the neighbors (sellers) had there at the time. There is city water (such as it is, untreated and running 2-3 times a week for a few hours) in the unpaved street and electricity both above and below the land. 

Each of the floors has the bathroom in the SW corner for ease of plumbing runs.  The kitchens of the first and palapa levels are on the west but we moved the second-floor kitchen to near the entry door on the south to preserve the possibility of maybe making that space into two bedrooms someday. 

The first floor has a closet which separates the bedroom and kitchen a bit (and supports the structure above). There are entry doors on the east and south as well as the double glass doors to the terrace. It is the largest apartment at 49 square meters and has the 'squarest' outdoor area as the terrace is about 6x7 meters. 




The second level has the big wrap-around deck. I see now this plan was from before the kitchen got moved to the south side just to the left of the entry door on the east. The bath stayed put, though. This level has a little better view to the Pacific over the neighbor's house, though you can see the water from the first floor terrace as well. The reduced floor space inside allowed for the large deck on the west. Also changed from this drawing, the deck actually continues along around to the north portion of the east wall and across the south to the kitchen window or so. There is a solar water heater on the deck there. 

The palapa level is as planned here, though the bed is closer to the south than shown, a large shelving unit is along that south wall, and the south part of the east wall is filled in above the ledge with a woodwork unit to give a little bedroom privacy relative to the eastern neighbor. Except for that, the south wall, and the west facing bathroom wall, the walls here are about one meter high, topped with a green concrete ledge allowing the view and wind and sounds (and bugs and occasional bird) in.  It is a bit like camping, only with a bathroom, kitchen, fridge, lights, music, internet, and perpetually perfect temperatures. Like the best camping ever. It was the first level completed, (Dec 2009) and we stay up there when visitors prefer the lower units, so it feels like home to us now. 

The First floor

First floor bedroom
We brought down a sofa frame and have cushions for use on the sofa or on the floor as a spare bed. Three ceiling fans keep the air moving downstairs and windows on all sides  keep allow cross through ventilation with the morning and evening ocean breezes. We had a shelving unit built into the closet and some bedstands made to order by our local woodshop. Liz made or found curtains for all the windows and we keep a pair of little speakers around for connecting to iPods, etc.
The double doors face northwest to the best of the view 
First floor looking out to terrace 
 to Zicatela beach and the lights of downtown at night. We often keep a desk under the window on the right here for a computer or games, etc. The first floor became party central with family around as the kitchen and terrace are best for large groups, particularly when one member isn't too good on stairs.  It is possible to get from the street to the south entry without using any stairs. We can't say the bath is wheelchair accessible but pretty good for use with a cane or maybe walker.
1st floor bath

First floor kitchen & fresh bread






Amazing sunset, 2012
Still life against contrast wall
2nd floor bed and divider

The Second floor

The second floor apartment might be the nicest; we can't say since it is the only one we have yet to live in. We got the furnishings there done just in time for our first guests at Christmastime last year and it stayed full of guests pretty much all the time until we left in mid-February. 


2nd floor kitchen
Tiled deck and rails

2nd floor bath
There are two ceiling fans here as well, and again the free cross-breezes so it stays pretty comfortable. With the deck on all sides there is usually sun and shade available somewhere. The fridge here is the only known left-hand opening unit that narrow in all of southern Mexico as far as we know -- a custom effort with Derek. All the apartments have propane stoves served by a tank in a vented part of the basement bodega. 
2nd floor view NW
Sunset beverages on the deck 

Solstice sunset from palapa level

The Palapa Level

Palapa Kitchen with bath behind.
The palapa level naturally has the best views.  Even at the December solstice, when the sunset is the furthest to the south, we can see it over the hill at the point from the palapa.
The kitchen is again small, but plenty functional for two, even with a guest or a few. The black tank above the bathroom is the water source for all the faucets, and is filled by pump from a cistern in the basement bodega which is filled when the city water runs every two or three days. Unfortunately the water is untreated from the river so we have 20-liter bottled water on each level for drinking; the 'Agua' guys come by yelling and bring fresh bottles over, and upstairs if you like, for about a dollar. 

Palapa bed, shelves, privacy wall
and the mosquito net for sleeping
Palapa level from behind the bed
Family sunset cocktail hour upstairs
The palapa palm-frond roof



Below and beyond

Below the first floor is a basement with the cistern and pump, a gas water heater, a vented chamber for the propane tank, and two storage rooms. The local term is bodega, or cellar storeroom.  Outside the bodega is a slab over the septic tank (fosa septica) which can provide shaded parking inside a gate from the street. The landscaping is a work in progress, but presently includes palm trees, plus a lime tree, papayas, several other small shade or flowering trees, and many bouganvillas which should fill out around the perimeter of the property over the next years. Hopefully the hummingbirds will enjoy them. We have built walkways of local rock around the unpaved west side and down to the lower lots.  

The Studio building under construction

One of those rock stairways goes to a new building, an art studio building (also overflow housing) with its own small bath,a  great work space, and a flat, shaded roof deck about the same level as the first floor terrace. This building occupies the west half of the lot just below the casa and will also serve as overflow housing as needed and might serve for storage of a car if we ever choose to leave one there. Anyone need a site for an artist's residency?

Come on down!

All of the apartments can be rented in any combination for larger groups.  The going rate around town seems to be about 300 US or Canadian a week, $1000 a month so that's sort of what we expect. We did not build the place as a business or investment; we wanted a place we can share with friends and family; if we can recoup some of the ongoing costs, all the better. It is also better for us to have the place occupied when we cannot be there so if you can work out a way to get to southern Mexico we hope the price of rent won't stop you from taking some time at the casa. 

Puerto Escondido has an airport (PXM), but the only flights are to Oaxaca City and Mexico City, and either likely involves an overnight stay or two along the way from up north. It is possible to take an overnight first-class bus form Mexico City, or Acapulco, if a cheaper flight gets you there.  The best option for many, though, is a scheduled or charter flight to Huatulco (HUX) which is about a 90 minute drive south and is served by United from Houston and, weekly this winter, by Air Canada from Toronto. Charters frequently fly there from Canada and the US as well, and it is simple to catch an inexpensive bus from just outside the airport to Puerto. 

Of course we drive every year, but that option only works if you have lots of time as you can figure at last a week each way, especially if you have never driven around Mexico and you should should surely take it slow and see at least a few of the wonderful sights along the way.  





Bad Blogger!


August, 2012


What a bad blogger I can be! For a while we were too busy to write, then work gets in the way, then I get so far behind it is too much to catch up and it gets put off some more. Well, here goes. It has only been 20 months or so.



First of all, Casa Den is done, is pretty much all we hoped for and is in good shape for guests.  Since I left off blogging we have made much progress for furnishings, landscaping, and so on.  We managed to get the place livable before the first guests arrived in December 2010: Toronto artists-friends Jan & Dan and Kurt. We were still short a fridge on the second floor as nobody sells one narrow enough with a reversible or left-opening door in Mexico, but eventually (2011) Derek and I managed to reverse one that was made almost reversible, voiding the warranty immediately after figuring out it would work.  We got some more furniture bought or built by the local woodworker, the remaining necessities and furnishings hauled or found, and we -- and Casa Den -- are ready to go.


We had a great time with the visitors, seeing the sights, hanging at the beach, enjoying sunset refreshments, and the rest of living in a tropical paradise.  One day we took a long beach walk east, to the mouth of the Colotepec River, forded it, to patronize the little restaurant, see the beached whale spine and mangrove pathway, and walked part way back into town untill we could find a ride. After they were gone we went back into fix-up mode for a while, but in late January had to drive off ourselves for the trip home. We did rent the second floor apartment to adventurous retired friends from Oregon, Ward and Cherie, for February. Derek is assisting our renters when we are away.  Ward and Cherie took language and cooking lessons, and left us with some great photos of their time.










After we had returned home I had a lot of work on my plate, one of the reasons I did not do any blogging.  But it does help the bank account.  In February 2011, we heard from Vicki at Zicatela Properties (who helped us obtain our 3 lots) that the fourth lot, just above the house, was up for quick sale.  We bought it (so much for nice bank balance) and now we have half the block, a 60 meter by 20 meter piece of the tropics.  That lot was dominated by a large tree (half on the roadway) that dropped yellow flowers daily that the passing goats would scramble to eat.  A few weeks after the lot was ours, the tree blew over in a windstorm, fortunately missing the house but damaging the chain-link fencing on the south side.  Oh well. This lot is actually the best of the four, being the highest, and on the better road. We would have built there if it had been in the original purchase, but so it goes.  We had Derek arrange to get it fenced and have since been working on planting trees and bouganvillas and attempting to control the worst types of weeds.  Maybe we should have kept the goats; since that winter the goat herds have left the neighborhood. At least without them the nasty weeds they encouraged by eating everything else have become a smaller fraction of the total. 











Work here in Canada, driving around Ontario looking at energy savings projects, on-line examination at energy use patterns in Oregon schools, and lastly in the Seattle area installing energy-use monitoring equipment for a residential study kept me pretty occupied all of summer and fall 2011, through the first 10 days of November, so it wasn’t a long visit home before we were driving south again.  We arrived back in Puerto for US Thanksgiving dinner with Derek, Christine, and the kids.

The drive south had gone quite well, with no problems through the US (after my long work stay in Seattle I had lots of hotel points for free nights).  We took my new favorite inland route via Pharr, TX, east and south of Monterrey through Linares and Inturbide for all three trips since I last wrote.

A few hours short of Puerto Escondido, on the very steep, narrow, curvy road from Oaxaca – also sprinkled with groups of bicycle pilgrims heading to the famous church at Juquila along the way – the screeching from the brakes became hard to ignore.  We found a riverside mechanic in a small town, who found the front brake pads shot.  I went all over town with a moto (3-wheel motorcycle based taxi) driver in the unsuccessful search for parts, then got on the phone to Derek. We left the van by the river, surrounded by pilgrim-campers for the night and we took a hotel room and waited, while the new brake pads Derek had managed to find in Puerto made their way by bus overnight.  In the morning, reassembled, we finished the drive, to the casa and then to Christine and Derek’s for Thanksgiving dinner.

Once more it was a few weeks of furnishing and preparing for guests...this time my family was coming after Christmas.  My sister Peggy planned to come down with her husband Mike and younger son JJ, to meet their daughter Molly, who was finishing up her extended time with the Peace Corps in Guatemala, and catching the bus to Puerto. Also, they brought our father, Tom, 86, and none to ambulatory.  My brother Dave and wife Sue would be coming in February.  Kurt wanted to come back, too.

It was a busy time. Unfortunately, before they all arrived, the Quest minivan became unavailable.  One day I heard a clunk when I put it in reverse.  The next day I heard a quieter clunk and reverse was not happening.  It was a challenge to get it turned around on our downhill, no-way-out street, but eventually I got it to the only automatic transmission shop in Puerto, run by Tico up above downtown.  About 10 days and a pile of pesos later, we got it back.  Reverse worked fine! Too bad it now never shifted to first gear or to top gear...it had become a two-speed instead of four.  Back to Tico.  This time it was a bigger problem. The first attempted repair with a new control module cost a bunch but did nothing.  Then he determined that it had to be fixed in Oaxaca (!) and carted it over the mountains. They couldn’t fix it there either, so they eventually bought a used tranny from Mexico City and put that in.  All of this took money and weeks and weeks of time, meaning we had no vehicle while my family was in town.  We became much more familiar with the various public transportation systems around Puerto, and it actually is possible to function quite adequately without a car.  Not so great for someone like my dad, but if you can walk a bit (like a few hundred yards downhill) you can get around town on the buses, colectivos, and taxis. Maybe we should have kept the van as a two-speed, but up the steep Puerto Escondido hills first gear is rather useful, and the highway miles home would be more economical with fourth, and in any case it was hard to have confidence that the rest of the gears would not fail too.

I rented a little VW car to go pick up the fliers from the Huatulco airport (HUX) and we made the best of it. Dad mostly wanted to sit in the sun with a cool drink but was game for dinner out or other adventures we could arrange, like birding at Manialtepec or sticking a finger in the Pacific, which he had not done for decades.  We found a new favorite restaurant, with about 6 tables and a different small menu every night, where we became regulars. With the swimming, shopping, eating, and beaching the time went fast but well.  Still without the Quest, we sent them (in Molly’s fluent and capable charge) back to the HUX airport on the bus. 



Molly returned to Puerto after getting them all on the plane. Her bus left Puerto later.  One of the neighbor’s daughters was visibly expecting, and her sister brought over an invite to her baby shower across town.  Actually we think they were hoping we could drive them over in the van, but of course we had no van. Liz and Molly decided to go, bought a little baby outfit in town, got dressed up a bit, and walked next door. Daisy and I would have a quiet evening, it seemed, but then Liz called the cell saying that they were taking taxis over, men were invited too, and I should come. Liz, Daisy and I had been staying in the palapa while the family was visiting, so I quickly changed and left Daisy up there with her food and water and hurried to join them. It was a cultural experience, I guess, but it is a wonderful thing that most bridal and baby showers do not include men. (By the way we learned the local term for “Baby Shower”.  In Mexican Spanish, it is spelled and pronounced “Baby Shower".) Enough about that. 

We finally got a cab back home and I rushed upstairs to free Daisy, who was no doubt worried, as she is attached to the point of neurosis and never happy alone.  But I found no Daisy in the palapa! It was dark by now so we turned on all the lights and found flashlights and began the search.  The palapa level has no walls on 3 sides, just a ledge about a meter up from the floor. Presumably she had gone over the edge.  Depending on where she went off if was a 4 to 8 meter drop to a hard landing on rocks, railings, or concrete surfaces just about everywhere, and we feared she would not have survived. Then Molly found a scattering of palapa-palm leaves on the first floor terrace and it was pretty clear that she had come down there. We fanned out in the yard and beyond with the flashlights, wondering where she has managed to crawl to, calling her name, asking the neighbors if they had seen her. Eventually, I heard a noise in the weeds of the vacant lot south and east of us which turned out to be Daisy….alive, limping, and absolutely covered in burrs and fuzzy-sticky twigs. But apparently mostly OK. 

She had panicked while we were gone, and jumped up on bed and then the ledge (knocking over a lamp). Making her way around the ledge she came to the post in the middle of the north wall, attempted to go around it to the outside, and slipped down the slope of the lower palapa roof. Her luck had a mid-air change for the better, as this trajectory took her to the only possible soft landing (or soft enough) which was in the camping ‘bag’ chair that had been set up for my father at the head of the table on the first floor terrace.  That chair broke her fall enough to keep her with us and from there she limped off to hide in the neighbor’s bushes full of burrs. Liz, Molly and I spent the next hour or so extricating plant debris from fur, and she limped a few days, but seems none the worse for the aerial adventure.  No more Daisy alone upstairs! From the ledge to the terrace is about 6.4 meters, or about 21 feet. Even from the edge of the roof to the chair it is about 17 feet down.  Lucky dog.

I had brought down a pile of irrigation valves and fittings and with some local PVC pipe and some fooling around, managed to assemble a watering system for the various plants we were putting in.  We planted our first two palms, a Neem tree, a ‘Flame of the Forest’ (orange blossoms all winter), some papayas, jasmines, a lime tree, some shrubs called Copo de Oro (cup of gold) along the rock walls, and bouganvillas all along the fences on the new upper lot. The place is greening up.  We made a small herb garden by the stairs too. 

Another major effort was a rock walkway along the west side of the house from the sidewalk above and to the stairs and also around to the bodega / parking area. Later I also built a rock-covered ramp down to the lower lot and a rock stairway down the rock wall to …where the new art studio is now built! More on that later. A lot of the rocks came from the street, where the town was installing a new water system.  They brought in a backhoe, dug trenches, installed the pipes, backfilled with some sand they brought in, and then went away, leaving huge berms of dirt and rocks along both of our streets. This made the streets narrower and set up all this loose soil to wash downhill in the next rainy season.  We had another backhoe to excavate the studio anyway so we appropriated a lot of ‘spare’ dirt from the roads and hand-harvested a lot of rocks for those various walkway and stairs projects.

 








Another project was the solar water heating system. We replaced our boiler last fall in Port Hope, and one byproduct of that was an old galvanized expansion tank, about a foot in diameter and three feet long, which I propped up in the back of the van for the trip down. Painted black, and placed in an insulated box (which Derek and Mike helped me build while the family was in town), it can sit in the sun all day on the second-floor south deck warming up, and be covered at night to keep the heat in.  Since the ‘cold’ water is about room temperature anyway, it doesn’t take a lot to boost it up to shower temperature, and sun is free and there are few complexities…not much worry about freezing, for one thing, nor too much city water pressure since it is gravity fed from the tank atop the third floor bathroom.

Not that all we did was work. There were waves to dive into, meals to make and enjoy, sunset pina-ritas and cervezas, and a few books to read along the way.  We brought down a used breadmaker, so we could have fresh bread without needing a car to get to a bakery.  I did some running on the beach on low-tide mornings.  The bikes were handy for some errands, or just to get up to the highway to catch a colectivo into town.  Derek was accommodating when we needed something hauled by car.  

I went out several times with what Liz called the Geezer Swim Club, which was four to six of us older gringos who put on swim fins and paddled out past the breaking waves at the point one weekday afternoon each week.  We would discuss events around the colonia and beyond, first over the waves and eventually over beachside cervezas. I learned a bit about stinging jellyfish as well as La Punta politics and swimming in breaking waves. One evening I went to see local 

politics in  direct action. The Colonia election is held annually to choose a local rep to the local municipality. All who show up get to vote for various offices and decisions, by holding up your hand while volunteers walk around and count.  The past year's budget, income and expenses are reported. No secret ballot, but no registration, no campaign, no real easy way to cheat (well, except through the rampant corruption to get people there and raising their hands). The previous year my neighbor was chosen for one of the offices; coincidentally, no doubt, the absurdly steep road past his property got paved that year. 

Then there was this other little project. Liz wanted a studio, a dedicated art space, plus we could use a bit of overflow housing at peak  (Christmas to New Year's) times, and maybe a place to park a vehicle if we ever want to start flying instead of driving back and forth.  I wanted a flat roof, both for use as another deck and as a place for a telescope observatory. The logical place for it (as it grew bigger on paper to accommodate all these possible uses) was the lot below the house, as it had the least potential view,  and could block the least attractive part of the neighbor’s place.  

The plan became a rectangle, 6 x 9 meters (20 by 30 feet) with the long side placed a meter off of our west boundary.  It has a south side (nearest the casa) exterior stairway to the roof/observatory, a half-bath under those stairs accessible from indoors or out, and that south interior wall unbroken to allow a large art surface.  The west wall has a row of high windows for light and air (above another art surface), the east side has a large window, a passage door, and on the north a large door to allow a car inside. It has its own septic tank (fosa septic) and water plumbed from the house above.  It may get its own small solar water heater later.  On the north, three large windows will let in lots of that desired north light. The south half of the roof is shaded by a slatted wood covering on four round concrete posts with posts, and rails around three sides and a half-height wall on the west, to not block the view west to the beach from the casa.  The final coat of stucco, inside and out, is white concrete. 

We did the measuring and moved the building around a bit, and plotted out the excavation areas with lines of lime on the ground while Kurt was visiting (Kurt is an easy guest, able to be completely independent around Puerto now, and coming down for a third visit this winter.)  About this time Dave & Sue arrived at HUX, and although they got sidetracked by the legalized thieves one meets exiting the customs area at the airport (go past those guys, and walk out to the highway!), they eventually got on the Sur bus to Puerto and I met them at the station.  Kurt was still around so we left him on the first floor and installed Dave & Sue on the second, while Liz, I, and Daisy (never alone) stayed in the penthouse.
























Kurt had to go home too soon to see it, but we had a backhoe operator out again while Dave & Sue were around, moving some of the previously piled-up rocks out of the way and excavating for the footings, fosa septic, etc.  The studio was going to happen.  Also, we finally got the Quest back!  It had been over a month since we had last driven it with 2 speeds, and two months since it originally went to Tico’s. He wanted more money than quoted, since the trip to and from Oaxaca and the replacement transmission had cost him a lot, but after some conversation with (with Derek’s translation help) he settled for the original quote.  What an ordeal.

We went on a dolphin-spotting boat ride with Dave & Sue one day, but too soon their time in the south came to an end, and our own was running out.  We had one more set of guests, Gayle & Joel from Toronto, to meet and greet and get settled in on the second floor, while we madly put away as much of everything else as we could, packed the van, enjoyed our last days, and said our goodbyes around town.  Though with Liz deciding not to teach this year we were able to stay a few weeks longer than usual, until just after Valentine’s Day, it still felt too soon to drive north.  But drive we did, pretty much without incident, retracing the steep, slow mountain road to Oaxaca and the fast, smooth toll-road route from there around Puebla, to the Arco Norte bypass of Mexico City, up the inland highway, through Inturbide and the canyon, and up via Pharr, the rest of Texas, Memphis, Indy, Sarnia, and home. That part of the experience (Texas & north) is getting a little old, but it is part of our life now.

The gentle global-warming winter of 2011-12 gave us easy driving all the way, but a storm was forecast overnight when we arrived after dark.  In the fall, we had barely crammed Liz’s Prius into our garage down the steep driveway from the street (I had crawled out the back hatch as the doors couldn't open), and it seemed prudent to get it out of there before the snow came.  As wonderful a vehicle as the Prius is, it is not to be left alone for three months.  It turns out the smallish 12V battery which runs the locks, etc., goes dead by then, so the key clicker didn’t work. With the back closed and the doors blocked there was no getting it going that night. In the morning, with the snow starting as expected, I was able to get a key into the lock on the driver’s door, open that enough to unlock the back door, then  squeeze in, crawl back and open the rear hatch from inside. Then we could uncover the 12V battery to jump it with the van.  By then the van could not then make it back up the snowy hill but luckily a neighbor had a pickup with a winch to help it up and then the Prius with its snow tires could get out.  This year I am disconnecting the battery and leaving the hatch unlatched!


We were home by Leap Year Day when Gail & Joel were returning north, and Derek and our builder Lencho could start draining my bank account and turning cash into studio.  It is a simple building and went up quickly, with the walls and columns up by late April and the last of the white stucco on before the end of May and the rainy season. The windows and doors are taking a bit longer but it should be ready for me to install he light fixtures, and Liz to get it painted if she chooses to, by the time we get there this fall.  We had hoped to make a rainy-season visit this summer, but various events conspired to push that back to September, at which point it seemed silly to quick-visit a place we will be returning to in six more weeks or so. Our plan is presently to head south about November 1.

One visitor we missed by staying north was named Carlotta. Hurricane Carlotta actually, who came ashore at Puerto on the night of June 15 as a category two hurricane with winds of about 100 mph. The long term map of hurricane tracks below shows a swarm of storms offshore, parallel to the pacific coast and the occasional odd storm heading inland. The last storm to hit Puerto, in 1998, went parallel but just onshore, but Carlotta had her own plan and headed pretty much straight north, and right at Puerto Escondido, the eye passing right over town. We were fortunate enough to have little damage: a couple of the new trees were knocked over, a few leaves of the lower palapa were torn up, and the runoff from a foot of rain carved up the roads. Inside the palapa fans swung around and collided with each other, knocking loose some blades and breaking the lamp glass on one. The palapa shelving unit got tipped over onto the bed frame. The studio was under construction, but as a concrete box without windows it was pretty invulnerable to wind and rain damage.


Derek and Christine, with their commanding hilltop view, got it much worse. They are OK, but had to replace their large palapa, and clean up quite a mess upstairs. Their great room is a large space with a round front facing southwest to the pacific with tall windows, except no glass, just screens.  They knew trouble was coming, moved most everything they could into the bedrooms and hall, and took shelter in their lower floor with the kids. One of the pins locking the French doors shut on that apartment was broken so Derek and Christine had to physically hold the doors shut for hours as the wind-driven rain ran over their feet into the apartment, while the kids and pets were scared, and all of this in the dark as the power failed.  After, their living room was a mess, with leaves, water and debris all over, the roof damaged, the pool full of mud,  the screens all blown in, etc.  Many of the lesser-built places around town and in our neighborhood lost their metal roofs some lost more; the place across the street to our south had their retaining wall fail, spilling rocks and mud into the street. Overall there were amazingly no fatalities in Puerto, though Brad the grill cook took a nasty fall from his roof during the preparations and is still recovering from his injuries now, hoping to be turning ribs this fall.

 








Carlotta, and another rainstorm that dropped a foot rain August 10th, have made it a busy summer for backhoes and builders, one of the reasons the studio doors and landscaping are not yet complete.  Our neighbor and friend Gordon is coordinating some road improvement efforts nearby. Go Gord!

Up north, from April through much of June I was working for the Ontario Power Authority under a contract with Nexant again; so far I have had no road work out west this year so there has been no air travel and only one major road trip to visit family for a wedding in Minnesota. As the mornings start to cool and August turns into September we are starting to gather up the things we want to haul south this fall.  Liz is busy in her northern studio getting some work done to be dropped off for exhibitions she is showing in this winter.

We plan to head south about November 1. Nephew Dan Gooch and partner Jenna Reid are planning to come down; Jan and Dan, a friend, and Kurt, will all be coming around the holidays as well – it’s good we will have the studio for use as a spare apartment.  Before and after the school-Christmas holidays the apartments are pretty much open, though, so if anyone reading this wants to come down and enjoy the beach life, do get in touch. 

If you are in Canada, Air Canada is flying direct from Toronto to Huatulco weekly this winter; I understand United is serving HUX from the US, having taken over Continental’s flights from Houston. A travel agent might be able to get you there on a charter flight. There are also options from Mexico City to Puerto Escondido, though they may require an overnight stay in Mexico City one or both ways. Or if you have a few weeks, it is an interesting drive.