Sandy - Schmandy…

With the “super-storm” Hurricane Sandy wreaking devastation through the US northeast and into Eastern Canada, I say, “Come on down to the Yucatan -- weather’s great!”
I'm just being silly of course. I know I can't control or influence the weather, in spite of my irreverence.


This pic is of the tropical storms and hurricanes of 2005 -- weird patterns, eh?
Living our winters here on Caribbean coast, the hurricane issue is an annual concern. (Hurricane season is July to October). Before we committed to setting up our winter home here, I checked the hurricane history of this region. Over the last 50 years, there was a serious storm to cross this general area 10 times -- that makes an average of once every 5 years.
In 2005 there were 2 big ones to make landfall along our coast. Emily (July 18 Cat 4) went over Playa del Carmen just 15 km to our north. She stripped the grass roofs off several palapas and cracked a few walls in some older units here in Paamul.
Wilma (Oct 22 Cat 4) settled right over Cancun, busting up several of the cheaper hotels. Those hotels were either poorly built or under funded. Cancun is about 60 kms to the north of us.
2005 was a bad year for tropical storms, including both Katrina and Rita which devastated the US Gulf coast. My actuarial thinking says that with our two hurricanes in 2005, it gives us clear skies for the next 10 years, right? Well 7 years later, we are still just fine...

There is a great resilience in the people and their buildings in this area. Very few buildings are made of lumber. Our palapa has a grass roof, but it is over a concrete building blocks casita. Besides, grass roofs typically have to be replaced every 8 to 10 years.
I think if/when a super-storm hits us we will have some rebuilding but it should be quite simple.
Meanwhile, good luck to all our friends and neighbors to the north.
I think I’ll go for another swim today. Seas are calm...82 degrees...wonderful.

One Last Drive

We have gone full circle. What started with a mini-van, is now ending with a mini-van.
(The pic, left, is our first day across the border - our first stop for a roadside taco lunch at "Grama's Tacos" - yum!)

We made our first holiday drive to Mexico 12 years ago. We had a Ford Windstar, loaded with two small tents, sleeping bags, and minimal camping gear and supplies (and our new puppy, Pippin). We spent a couple of weeks going down the US west coast, then down the long Mexican Baja, and back. It was enough of a taste of Mexico to bring us back.
A brief evolutionary history:
In 2003, we had acquired a ½ ton truck and small fifth wheel, and that served us for three more winter trips, each outing taking more time exploring the Mexican west coast.
On our way north in the spring of 06, we agreed that our living in Vancouver had run its natural course, and we should look at full retirement, selling the house, and traveling more.
That summer, we successfully pulled the plug, and moved to a new truck and trailer, and our “full-time RVing” life began. That fall, we headed south and spent much of the winter in the west coast town of Lo de Marcos, where we had developed a close community of friends and activities.
However, we weren’t quite ready to settle down. We had been driving through much of the northern Mexican interior, enjoying it all, and knew there was more we wanted to see. We kept hearing about this RV beach community way out on the eastern Caribbean coast of Mexico, called Paamul, and decided next winter, 2007, to head that way.
We were well-smitten by the area, the beach, the facilities and the people. We still considered ourselves “full-time travelers”, but reasoned that if we leased a spot on this Caribbean coast, and built a palapa, we could still be touring with our rv through so much more or the US and Mexico on our annual trips south and north.
Those trips each ran 6000 kilometers (or more), and each year the drive seemed a little longer. Over the next five years, we visited most of the States of Mexico, and most of the United States too. Yes, I’m sure there is more to see, but then, there always will be.
Then we re-evaluated our life as RVers. We still enjoy spending our summers in the 5th wheel at beautiful Guelph Lake Park, but maybe we needn’t  be pulling our big rolling house around. Our wonderful ‘06 Chevy Duramax Silverado had done its job. With 192,000 kms (more than half of those pulling our 5th wheel), we bade it farewell, and it found a new home to be the trailer-puller for another family. For now, we will still be living our summers in our trailer, but now it goes into storage for the winter.

So we are back to a mini-van -- this time an 06 Dodge Grand Caravan. I have to admit, it was more relaxing to drive the long days without the 12,000 lbs of weight behind, though it seems like we had a good deal of that weight loaded into this van. We took the topes (speed bumps) very slowly, scraping our underside a few times. The van was stuffed with a last load of our stuff -- 12 rubbermaid totes, 4 suitcases, two tool boxes, two guitars, an amp, etc, that will be part of our winter life. The Dodge will stay here and be our winter vehicle.
The trip was kind of a last waltz. We drove many familiar roads, commenting to each other that it would likely be our last time passing by: “Goodbye Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock, Austin, San Antonio, Eagle Pass.
Adios Piedras Negras, Monclova, Matehuala, San Miguel de Allende, Arco Norte, Puebla, Orizaba, Villahermosa, Escarsega.
Hasta Luego (Until we meet again).

Casita 179

Our season of 2011/12 in Paamul is over and the tools are put away. So what has this winter been about?
Here a little tour of our new casita that replaced the trailer in our palapa.

Looking at the front exterior, the building on the right half is where the trailer used to sit. The landscaping is incomplete as we are planning to add a cactus garden.

The view from inside the palapa -- the casita is now integrated into the design and colours of our palapa. It is essentially the footprint of the trailer that was there before with a living area, a bedroom and a 1/2 bath.  This winter has been very warm and humid, and we enjoyed the cool dry air conditioned space in the casita.

The living room is not finished with some decorating and cabinets and coffee table still in development.
There is also a desk and tall shelf next to where I am standing - my designated “messy area”

The bedroom with my cabinetry. Susan’s wardrobe is to my left and my closet is on my right.

The bathroom with varnished counter and onyx sink.

A Post in Every Room
Each of the interior rooms includes one of the big Zapote posts that hold up the palapa. I find them beautiful and reassuring in their strength.

Slow and steady...

The casita is coming along slowly with many little things under way, and will not be getting to completion this spring. As I mentioned in an earlier post, after the New Year when the casita shell and floors were done, we have been down to a crew of one. Or perhaps more like 1/2 worker. It seems my age and a chronically sensitive back have caught up with me this winter, and after morning-to-night activity of building, and a little time for my sports, tennis and volleyball, my back and sciatic nerves went on tilt. So I gave up up sports, and I have been taking it slowly on the work site, trying not to lift too much, or bend up, down or sideways too much, and coax my lower spine to get better.

Living in a workshop My finishing was going so slowly, all the little steps haven’t inspired me to be reporting its progress. Along with my sore back, I have caught a case of “mañana”. Thanks to Susan for being patient.

Working down The List: --Install the windows and doors. --Paint and stain --Install the AC. --More lights, plugs and switches. --Shop for living room set couch and chair. --Build the wood furniture, bed, tables, shelves, wardrobes --Walls and doors for ensuite bath and closet. Some details follow... Windows and the sliding door came from stock sizes available at Home Depot. All went in pretty well though there still is some calking to do. Paint for the casita became another finding-just-the-right-colour-paint drill. For our two and a half rooms we tried out about a dozen this time, but the results, like goldilocks’ choice: not too bright, not too dull, but just right. The wood furniture was stained with a custom mix of acrylic red and brown and then urethane.

AC Mini-Split : Maxi-great For readers from the US and Canada who aren’t familiar with the mini-split air conditioner which is widely used down here and some other parts of the world, let me tell you it is a wonderful fixture. One of my main complaints of RV life in warm summers in Canada and warm winters in Mexico is living with the roof mounted AC. So noisy, inside and out. Little better are the options for a typical Canadian home when you want to add an AC to a room, you have to put up with the ugliness and whine from a window mounted AC unit. A mini-split is not those. It is mini -- good for a room or two or three, and it is split two parts. A condenser unit sits outside, on the ground, an outside wall or the roof. We have ours on our new cement roof. The second part is the unit which sits on an inside wall quietly distributing its cooling. It is almost silent except for a gentle cool fan. Mini Split ACs come in a few sizes. Ours is small, a 9k btu that runs on 110 volts. The larger units are 220 volt and have one, two or three cooling units. Homes and buildings down here don’t need central heating, and there are no pipes available to distribute AC either. So I think these ACs are quite efficient at distributing the the cooling where it is needed.

We checked out every furniture store we could find in Playa, and then took a couple of drives to Cancun. To make a long story short, we found what we needed at the Cancun Costco! Wood you, could you? A couple of years ago I designed and built our kitchen cabinets from scratch which was quite satisfying, so for the casita I set out to do all the interior woodwork -- the bed, side tables, bureaus, the closets, a desk, and living room cabinets and shelving -- about 15 items in all. The en-suite bathroom and one closet were framed with metal studs and moisture resistant gyprock. However for the woodwork, this time I thought I would up the challenge and try for a bit more of the “fine woodworking” effect. This meant using better wood, with stains and varnishes rather than paint. I am quite an amateur, but step by step, have been learning what materials are available and the method I can use to get a result I like. Once more I was prowling through the madera (wood) stores in our area. There seems to be a wide choice in laminated wood that is not the plain old G1S (good one side) pine plywood that I was familiar with from the lumber stores back home. They had names like Okume, Fresno, Encino, Sande, Haya, Coaba, some of which translated to Oak, Mahogany and Birch.

For the framing and edging of the cabinets, I found a nice hardwood called Haya which I am told is a birch from Germany. In the many times I have been to lumber yards and building centres in Canada, I never saw quality hardwoods. I remember my choices were very basic 2x4’s and the like. Upscale lumber was either just kiln-dried or perhaps cedar. Here in Playa, there seem to be all kinds of exotic woods. Mahogany of all shapes and sizes. Others had nice piles of clean, knot-free tight grained boards from Mexico as well as Europe and South America. These boards arrive in rough cut various dimensions, with noticeable chainsaw cut marks, from small mills in the jungle.

One huge ramshackle place is sort of a warehouse-workshop where you have to climb over under and around piles of exotic Caribbean woods.

I bought several of these -one a Zapote board approximately 2” x 12” that I used to make a headboard for the bed.

To build the bathroom counter, I found a couple of pieces of a beautifully grained wood called Machiche, one piece that is about 1.5 “ x 16” (x 8’), that I am using for the counter and for a coffee table. At these lumber stores there are saws and planers in order to cut down, straighten and smooth the boards you buy. I had them do one piece through their well worn planer, but it didn’t come out very even. I took the others “as is” and when I got them home, I attacked them with a belt sander.

Un Desvío...

My faithful readers have been wondering what is happening with the palapa. Well, the work crew has been reduced to basically just me, so things are moving along, but more slowly. Also Christmas happened and all that, and we took a “holiday” which is the posting of this detour...

After a month of having workers here, morning to night, we decided to take a break and spend a few days away. We parked our puppy with our neighbors and drove the three hours to Merida. This was to be pre-Christmas shopping and furniture scouting for the palalpa.
It was also our anniversary (The Big 2-5) and while we didn’t have the time or inclination for a Caribbean cruise or the like, we felt we deserved a treat in a big city. Back when ropes were being made out of sisal and henequen, Merida was one of the grandest in the western hemisphere, and is today a renown cultural and commercial centre.
We chose to stay at a classical old hotel, just 1/2 block off the main square, where we could easily avail ourselves of the vibrant night life. On the weekend, the central plaza comes to full life, with market stalls being set up all around, as well as countless food vendors. In the evenings, they close off several streets to vehicles, including the two blocks in front of our hotel, where the streets became malls of more food and music.

Mexican folk dancing (Ballet Folkorico) is practiced practice throughout Mexico and tours the world representing this country's culture. We checked into an events guide and found that the 10th annual symposium of Folklorico was taking place in a theatre just two blocks away, with groups from around Mexico, including participants from the US and Canada.


We wandered down at the appointed time and found this grand theatre with four levels of boxes. It was the opening night, and after many speeches and thank you’s, and two anthems (Mexico and Yucatan?) we were treated to an evening of music and dance from the host city. Just lovely.

Mostly very stylized and formal, with costumes to knock your eyes out.


Our city visit agenda, included scouting for furniture -- specifically for the couch that will be right for our casita. We had already looked through most of the Muebles (furniture) stores in Playa, so with a few recommendations, headed out (without a city map). There were two stores in particular I felt we should check out. The first we found easily, on a main street not far away. The second, when I called them, told me that they were also not far away. I took instructions over the phone, and set out. Finding our hotel, and that first store had been easy so I was confident. Besides virtually all streets in Merida are numbered -- even-numbered streets run north-south, odd-numbered streets run east-west. What we discovered, was that the corner of 20th and 23 occurs all over the city, as the sequence of numbers changes when you go from neighborhood (colonia) to neighborhood. Yes, “Mr. No Problema -- I can drive anywhere” got to see a fair amount of the city as we drove around in a few circles. In the end, we saw a some furniture we liked, but decided to defer.


On Monday we drove out to Uxmal, one of the great historical sites of the ancient Mayans.


Meanwhile, back in the “Centro” near the hotel, the streets were as crowded with pedestrians as I have ever seen. Fortunately the downtown streets are one-way, so you just mosey along, trying not to run over shoppers who are walking with the traffic because the sidewalks were jammed. With each return to the hotel, we left the truck with the valet at the hotel, and ventured out on foot to mix and mingle.
In brief, we didn’t do much buying, but Merida is beautiful, the people and food are great, and we’ll be back.

Christmas in the Jungle

Yesterday we celebrated Christmas in a Mayan village about an hour and a half from here. Chumpon was ‘adopted’ a few years ago by people in PaaMul, and is about quite a way off the main roads. This is where we built a school library last year.
For a few years a convoy of Paamulians have brought Santa with presents for all the kids in the village. It started with the school kids but has been expanded to include the pre-school children.


Our rotund white-bearded dive shop master, John, serves as and excellent Santa much to the delight of the more than a hundred children.


Susan and our neighbor Dot, took on the new project of the preschool tots.
Through the summer and fall, Susan shopped for toys, stuffed animals and things like coloring books, for their xmas gift bags. Another woman in the park, Debbie, sewed lovely little bags with straps to hold all the treats.
The preschool teacher, Claudia, got most of her little ones to dress in red and white, and we were quite amazed how patient and well-behaved they were.




First we all had snacks and cake, then they lined up to have a go at the piñata. What a hoot. There is a special song that goes with the piñata attack, and one after another of the little ones had a whack. It resisted quite a while amidst much laughter.


Then the gift bags were given out, completing what for many of the kids might be their first Christmas memory.
It was over in a couple of hours, we were exhausted, and drove home for afternoon naps.

We are floored!

Once we pick our floor, we better be sure as it is what we will be living with.
Walls can be painted, covered with fabric, but ....
The typical floor in this part of the world is ceramic tile. We went through some drama choosing the tiles for our palapa three years ago. (After looking at many, found one we liked, ordered it, the wrong one came, went looking again in a rush, found another tile, drove to the warehouse about an hour away, brought it back in our truck, had it installed, and now are only moderately happy with it -- oh well.)


With another opportunity to choose flooring, we were trying some thinking outside the box. Several friends here have pulled carpets from their rvs and replaced them with laminate. I like laminate. I have installed it several times over many years. As laminate is made with an absorbent base, is not recommended for kitchens and bathrooms. Some of what I read on line, cautioned about its use in humid conditions like new concrete, particularly in this climate.
We looked at solid bamboo flooring, but it was pricey, and meant to be nailed to a subfloor. I couldn’t see how that would work for us.
Then one afternoon, we were in another floor design place and saw these displays of travertine. Wow! This is the stuff that is used in deluxe places like hotels, and up-scale malls, and museums.
It turns our that there is a type of travertine that is mined from a quarry near Puebla (Mx) that had some lovely subtle colors and we thought would be a nice shift from our ‘outside’ palapa area to our ‘inside’ casita.
With our two and a half rooms being only 32 sq. M (345 sq. ft), it was something we decided we could afford.


Like many other aspects of this renovation, once again we were fortunate that it has gone smoothly. They had the material in stock and could start as soon as we were ready. Two guys have been here for the last three days and this morning the floor is going to get final polishing and sealing.
Then paint, then electrical, then furniture, then...

As the dust settles

At last we brought out the brooms for a proper cleaning. It has been over a month that we have lived in this construction zone. Several times a day, I would grab a broom, shovel or rake in an effort to control the detritus.

Building out of cement involves a lot of grit and dust. Most of the materials - gravel, sand and especially cement are dusty. The same for the stucco, floor adhesive and grout which comes in bags of fine powder. Our hallway at the front entrance has been the storage place for the bags and bags of these powders.
I also created my share of dust, in my role as the electric guy. As the floor, walls and roof went up, I was in there with the diamond blade side grinder to cut all the outlets for the conduits, plugs, plug switches and lighting outlets.
I also was busy with the heavy chisel removing the old floor tiles adhesive and grout along the modified line of the hallway. Pounding a chisel was slow and brutal work, chipping away as though I was working on a rock pile. Still it seemed a bit meditative, swinging away for as long as my hands could take it, resting and going again.
Each pour of cement seemed to include a lot of chipping away where the edges and corners were not quite right. The forms (wood framework for cement pours) are heavily recycled boards of many sizes, and not always a good fit. It seems it is easier / cheaper to chip away the spillover areas than to spend money on good lumber.




Some of the last pieces our albanils installed were glass block windows in the bedroom. Once again Lucio and Gilberto mixed more emulsion of white cement and their part was nearly done.

For the whole month we had some plastic sheets hanging between our kitchen and the work zone to create a little separation between the building area and our living area. These come down yesterday, and today the last bits of cleaning will be done. For now.

Raise High the Roof Beams, Albañils

The masons who are putting up our casita are called “albañils” in Spanish. I think the old adage which in other parts has been used to refer to Italians, Portuguese and other nationality’s tradesmen, can be used to refer to a typical Mexican, that “he is born with a trowel in his hand!”
Much of Mexico is made of cement blocks, and what isn’t made of cement is made of our other palapa materials -- wood poles and ceramic tile. Very little except doors and furniture is made of lumber. As we have travelled through Mexico it is noteworthy to go through any small region where there are buildings made of boards.


The roof of our casita will be made of cement beams and cement blocks like the rest of the exterior. The cements roofs are assembled in an ingenious method and will be very strong, I’m sure.


Once the walls are up, cement beams are laid across the span of the rooms. These beams are made in the shape of an upside down “T”. They are set to a precise distance apart into which are placed the roof blocks. The roof blocks are shaped with ledges that fit between the beams, dropping into place, side by side, forming a continuous flat interior, ready for stucco.
The roof raising was not a job for the old and weak like me, as the beams weighed about 100 lbs and the huge blocks close to 50 lbs each. It added up to a lot of brute muscle work.


Then more forms are assembled around the upper parameter, and filled with rebar and concrete. The topside is then covered with a steel mesh and covered with a couple more inches of poured concrete, making a solid roof.
When all the forms were fixed in position, my ceiling electrical conduits in place our crew was ready to mix and pour.


This got going about 3 p.m.. Once again we had the motorized cement mixer on hand, making a combination of old methods and the new. Several batches were mixed in the machine, poured into a pool on the ground, then shoveled into pails and lifted hand to hand up a ramp to the roof where it was poured and trowelled.
Dusk arrived at 5:30, and the mixing and pouring went on.
I strung up a few lights from the palapa rafters, and the five guys kept going until the pour was done. With the cleanup of tools and equipment, the guys sat down at 9 p.m. to well earned pizzas and beer.

Playing with blocks

The bricks and blocks are going up.
As soon as the floor was set, the truckloads of blocks and more cement arrived. It seemed to be going almost too fast. I had drawn my sketches where the walls, doors and windows would go, but I wasn’t getting my “mulling it over” time.
Fortunately, I still have my councillors, our neighbors, Bob & Dale to talk things through with, and clarify a few ideas. The plumbing was an early fait accompli as the drain pipes were set into the concrete poured floor.
I like to design kinetically, so when the floor was established, I came in with some boards and big felt markers to show where the walls of the dividing section -- half bath and closets would fit.


Then came the decisions for the location of the electrical plugs and switches. With a little experience from last time, I was able to incorporate the conduits into channels inside the block walls, rather than drilling through the walls and ceiling later, and thus avoid a maze of conduits along the outer walls and roof. Already I have cut 19 plug outlets running around the perimeter of the rooms (you can never have too many plugs), and several switch places, and run the wires to the location of the sub-panel.
Each couple of hours I walk through the rooms, monitoring the walls going up and marking the openings for the 8 windows and one sliding door.
Even tonight, after our workers had gone, I realized that another light and switch was required, so will be threaded in tomorrow morning before they pour the wall headers.

I am pleased to say, that my guys, Lucio and Paulito are doing a pretty good job. They put in full days from 7 am to dusk, and are easy to talk to - as well as I can with my Spanish building terms, and otherwise they talk cheerily in native Mayan.
The best news is that so far the walls seem to be going up straight.

The Machine Age

In our five years here in PaaMul and before that our travel up and down the west coast of Mexico, we have had opportunity to observe many building sites. Actually it is hard to miss them if you are traveling through a village or here in the PaaMul park, because of the tradition and practice of mixing concrete on the ground, right out front, on the road or street. First comes the piles of gravel and sand, then the bags of cement and stacks of re-bar.
Then come the workers with their short handled shovels who portion out the ingredients in a pile and adding water, start to mix it all by hand. This works fine when making mortar, which in only needed in small quantities and are transported onto the work-site in pails, but for mixing up larger batches of concrete, even if they are mixing a large batch of sand, gravel and cement, there is only so large a mix-patch you can handle with short shovels, so it takes a while, mixing and pouring over and over again and makes for lumpy, patchy surfaces.




Well much to our surprise, two pieces of motorized equipment showed up at our build. The first was a gasoline riven thumper to tamp down the calica fill that is the base for the floor. This replaced the hand tamper and water hose technique that went on for days when we first were building the other side of our palapa floor a couple of years ago. The thumper hopped around our casita base for several hours, but it compacted very well, I think.


The bigger deal was the arrival of a motorized cement mixer. The first one any of us had seen in PaaMul and attracted a lot of attention. With a crew of four to keep the mixer going, running in and out with the wheelbarrows, and another guy “screeding” the pour, we got the whole floor done in one day. And to top it off, the floor was very level and quite smooth. The modern techniques didn’t go as far as “floating” the surface to get a finished surface such as we would have in our basements or garages up north, but at least is was quite level, and will be quite easy to lay a finished floor.
Yes these motorized tools went faster, and did a better job, but it sure was noisy for a couple of days.

The 3rd Little Piggy...

“The first little piggy built his house of straw. The second little piggy built his house of wood, and the third little piggy build his house of bricks...” Well you probably remember what happened. “The big bad wolf...etc.”

From that old fairy tale, let me take you through a brief history of Paa Mul. PM started out as tent camping on the beach, which evolved to a trailer park, which evolved to people building palapas for shade next to their trailers, which evolved to building bigger palapas and parking the rvs under them, which evolved to adding patios and outside kitchens which evolved to building part of the structure with cement blocks, and then to building mostly out of block. These are still all under the classic PM palapa.

This may be obscure minutia to most of you readers but bear with me.
Paa Mul is technically a “trailer park” and up to the recent past, all of PM palapas included rvs. Some of the older trailers have been here for 20 or more years and like trailer parks anywhere and especially here, these old trailers were not standing up well to the years of tropical weather. Some of these trailers have been modified and upgraded with stucco exteriors, more substantial floors, new doors and windows, etc. But underneath, they were still flimsy rvs.
A couple of years ago, PM palapa construction went through a phase of “faux” trailers, in which the trailer part of the building was permitted to be built on a steel beam frame, off the ground, with an old axle under the frame, and the rooms built from lumber and sheetrock. Quite complicated and expensive.
Then last winter a few palapas were being built from the ground up with all rooms of cement block. This is basic tropical construction -- very sturdy and inexpensive.
Last spring, we applied for a renovation permit from the office. For unclear reasons, they brought a halt to these cement block non-trailer structures.

Over the summer we found “new/old” trailer and brought it down to be our permanent home here. But as often is said here in Paamul, “Just wait, things will change”.
When we here arrived a couple of weeks ago, we saw that the all-block building had started again. This time our visit to the office was greeted with positive response and our all-brick casita construction is a go.
I brought out my plans, got a quote from our Mayan builder, David, and we are under way. We have moved the trailer across the road to another lot and will live there for the next month or so. The foundations have been dug and this morning as I sat in the loft and wrote this, there was a crew of 4 mixing concrete to pour the footings.




This “casita” will essentially replace the footprint of the trailer, with two rooms and a half bath adding up to approximately 12 x 34 feet and 8 feet tall. Being all cement and stucco, it will nicely compliment our existing rooms -- the kitchen, living, dining, bathroom and bodega.

In the interest of full disclosure, our Mexican home will be made of straw (the palapa roof), wood (the palapa posts and beams), but mainly of bricks (and tile). So I say, bring on the big bad wolf (hurricane), let him/her huff and puff and our home should stand.