Hosepipe showers ... ain't so bad!

I tackle the palapero when he arrives about the roof – best not to beat around the bush ... or thatch in this case.

It appears no-one had mentioned the lower roof over the stair to the workers but the present design has more continuity and is more as I had originally intended it to look. This time I think I will leave things be. I called my builder for a bit of advice on the potential for hurricane damage with this present design. We ponder upsides and downsides – and agree to leave it be this time. Things always seem to come together on Cozumel. It is Saturday and the guys are all paid and leave at three.

Since we knew it was going to be a quiet afternoon my plumber and I had chosen to start work on the plumbing today. By evening he has the filter installed but the numerous joins and additional llaves (“yabbes” valves) have taken time and we are not yet ready to switch on … the guy has worked diligently and offers to return tomorrow to finish. I do have street water and a hose that can be carried into the paplapa studio so I can shower (see casaolivia.com for photos of the palapa studio). My past experience here told me what I was letting myself in for when we started …so I cant complain!

A brief diversion:
Water on Cozumel for Dummies

Our house is very well served with water. We have;

the usual cisterna/tinaco arrangement with a bomba/hydro – a large underground water storage tank in garden fed from the city water supply, a water tank on roof (tinaco), a pump (bomba) to get the water through the system and hydro to add pressure. This, of course, all requires power to work.

a well (yes, as in “a big deep hole in the ground” and in the well known nursery rhyme) used mainly for garden and cleaning purposes and,

two faucets (taps) in our garden plumbed directly from our city supply. The city supply has little pressure without the assistance of the pump system so this faucet is our last resort.

Point of interest: the tinaco (shown above) on our roof is of the older style. Most now are large cylindrical black containers of varying sizes. Despite its age, this one made it through Hurricane Wilma intact, unlike some of the newer counterparts. One up to the oldies!


All of the above offer very clean water for household use – but it is not advisable to drink or cook with it. Most now use bottled water for drinking and cooking. Bottled water is delivered regularly. I prefer the “Crystal” brand, which has a good reputation. We usually keep six bottles on hand.
Many have used city water for years for brushing teeth without problems (including my husband and I), others diligently use bottled only.

Bottled is best for cooking and a few drops of “Microdyn” in the water is good for washing vegetables. Microdyn is available in supermarkets here, I always some in my house. Some even use it when washing dishes … but I never have.

Regarding the well, many properties here have a well. Ours was built at a time when blasting with explosives was allowed, which probably made life much easier to get 18 feet down into the karst.

When we first bought our house it was a novelty. During the various work projects I have come to depend on it. I never envisioned I would hear myself say “Thank goodness we have a well”. Of course for safety it’s well covered (sorry, couldn’t resist again!), with a locked iron bar grill and a wooden cover on top of that. It also needs to be cleaned out at least once yearly … I’ll leave you with a thought on that…how would you clean out a 30” (90cm) diameter, 18 foot deep (5.5mtr), hole in the ground?

On Sunday the plumber arrives a little later than planned. His mother has arrived from Merida, a four/five hour journey from here. He still insists on finishing the work and a few hours later it is done. We switch on the water. The palapa studio house has water but the main house has none. This is hardly a surprise since we are sailing in uncharted waters. We work out where the problem is. We have missed a connection. I tell the plumber to go back home to spend time with his mother …I have one shower back in action now. We will finish mañana (tomorrow …sometime).

That evening I go into the studio palapa bathroom for my shower. The shower splutters out its last drop, coughs and dies, there is water in the kitchen and washbasin faucets (taps) but not in the shower! Oh well …its back to the hose and the city water.

A footnote of possible interest – a shower with city water is warmer than a shower with well water!

Best laid plans ... go oft awry

The Palapero arrives shortly after the builders and makes great headway. By mid afternoon the bare bones are in place. Late afternoon my builder notices that the design isn’t quite as planned in our drawings and we tell the Palapero. For a brief moment we have a pause while each side waits to see if the other will give way.

I have occasionally backed down in such moments – a bit of give and take can be helpful here. On this occasion I was not willing to give way. The half dozen workers balanced precariously on the roof top beam “a la Cirque du Soleil” some 25 feet aloft, awaited further instruction. My builder and the Palapero conferred for a few moments and it was resolved. The design stays as planned and the changes would be made.

My builder provided me an estimate for the extra “privacy" meter (39") elevation of the wall behind the pool. I gave it my approval then advised my neighbour of the work that was due to commence. He was very amenable and we agreed an suitable timeframe to get it done.

All this, and the DOW is up 200 points … This day has almost been too easy!

Friday

This morning’s sunrise was a wonderful blaze of pinks and reds with golden highlights. My grandmother’s proverb came to mind. Red sky in the morning shepherds warning … red sky at night shepherds delight. She was a farmer’s daughter and knew a thing or two about such matters.

It turns out the old adage works in Cozumel too. The rain is heavy, and is on and off all day. It’s amazing how different a place looks when the sun goes. This could be Glasgow … but still a bit on the hot side.

When my builder arrives I ask why we are building a wall of rock and not bloques (breeze/cinder block). He tells me we are using the stone around the pool for greater durability – the stone will last forever while the bloques have a shorter lifespan. The water will add much stress to the structure and we are building for perpetuity – apparently my pool may outlast my house!

Our well overshoots the pool entry area and my builder suggests we need to cut off a piece the well. I am not sure about this – it’s a lot of extra work and I will need to make a new iron safety cover and wooden top for the new shape of the well. I measure and decide to avoid hassle we will have an angular entry, it will add character and make life easier. Leave it as it is! We agree.

Ten minutes later I decide this is a bad idea. It will look odd and we will not be able to hurl ourselves, carelessly from the steps into the pool. Fortunately, my builder takes my change of mind with good humour. He stops drilling and puts the drill aside with a smile. The workers give each other “that look” that men who deal with women know well. We all have laugh then I attempt to retreat back to the house with grace.


Despite the rain, the palapero’s guys get the skeleton of the palapa finished and shelter under a neighbouring canopy, waiting for their ride home. They are in good humour and certainly don’t seem to mind the rain. With all the work still going on under the carport, there is no room to shelter there. The builders eventually give way to the weather and leave at 4.45. The earliest finish time so far. As I go out to take a look around … a truck pulls up with the other guys from the palapa crew sitting in the back. One of the guys waves and shouts “Palaperos! Palaperos!” I guess it is their ride home. I tell the guys that the palaperos were waiting on the corner just ten minutes ago– maybe my builders gave them a lift. We comment on the heavy rain and then laughing and waving, they leave.

The rain finally dries up around 7pm and the temperature is unusually below 80. Strangely, without my blanket of warm air around me it almost feels cold!

I go out to see the progress of the day and find the palapa roof, once again, is not quite as we planned.

Hmmmm … to be continued.

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Title from Robert Burns "To a mouse"
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley

Plumbing and poetry ...

The early week buzzes by. On Monday my carpenter arrives, a few days later than originally planned. He is going to custom build a shelf for my microwave “on the spot”, giving me more counter (worktop) space. He will return next Monday to replace our curved kitchen window ledge, which was rain beaten during the hurricanes and now is showing signs of deterioration. Custom “on the spot” built items are the norm here and can even cost less than you would pay for flat-pack.

The harsh sunlight and heavy rains here are tough on exterior fittings. If they are not kept up to scratch, decay soon sets into to exposed wood and metal – its like painting the golden gate bridge, (or forth road bridge depending on your location) the maintenance never ceases.

On the new palapa sundeck we add another line to the plumbing to prevent a washing machine located there from becoming the main feature. They also install a shiny new breaker (fuse) box for the palapa sundeck and I am glad to see they have installed a strong, capable looking box with multiple switches without needing prompting. Excellente!

On Tuesday my house plumber/electrician arrives early (plumbers here are always electricians! and vice-versa). I joked previously about him disappearing but he is in fact a very dependable guy. A forward thinker and one of my key workers. He chooses to be a plumber but can also turn his hand to other trades.

We had worked out that we may be able to remove more of the maze of plumbing pipes in our dive equipment drying area while installing our new “whole house” water filter. Im also installing a backup to our tankless water heater … overkill you might think but you can never have too many backups on Cozumel! I stress the need to leave me with water on at the end of the day. I have lost my water supply from the well while the pool work is in progress and will only have a trickle of water from the street supply until he is finished. I say this tentatively, knowing my plumber’s home is a rental and entirely without power. He will need to manually haul water for everything at his house.

The difference between the extranjero (foreigner) lifestyle and that of the locals is notable. There are so many levels of lifestyle here and yet we all seem to mix without envy or animosity. The Cozumel crime rate is extremely low. It’s a western arrogance to assume everyone wants to be us. The more humble lifestyles here show us how much pleasure we have lost in our convenience and wealth driven search for that “better life”.

And since the tone today seems to have become meditative, I will leave you with a slice of culture from this side of the world.

A poem by - Jorge Luis Borges
(get your hankies out… !)

Instantes (Moments)

If I were able to live my life anew,
In the next I would try to commit more errors.
I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more.
I would be more foolish than I've been,
In fact, I would take few things seriously.
I would be less hygienic.
I would run more risks,
take more vacations,
contemplate more sunsets,
climb more mountains,
swim more rivers.
I would go to more places where I've never been,
I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans,
I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.

I was one of those people that lived sensibly
and prolifically each minute of his life;
Of course I had moments of happiness.
If I could go back I would try
to have only good moments.
Because if you didn't know, of that is life made:
only of moments; Don't lose the now.

I was one of those that never
went anywhere without a thermometer,
a hot-water bottle,
an umbrella,
and a parachute;
If I could live again,
I would travel lighter.

If I could live again,
I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring
and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends.
I would take more cart rides,
contemplate more dawns,
and play with more children,
If I had another life ahead of me.

~~~~~~~~~

A cheery little tome that actually goes on to become even more poignant (you can look that up later should you please) ... a bit of food for thought!

Lazy weekend on Cozumel.

On Saturday I wake at 6.00. I read for an hour or so while having my morning cups of tea and use the Franklin to re-remind myself of some words from the day before. It’s raining quite heavily outside, but that is of little consequence. It’s the rainy season, the air is still hot and the rain will end in a short while. I don’t even bother to bring the hammocks in. Im certainly not in Glasgow any more!

On making my morning round of the work I notice that one of the small windows in stair/ceiling support is going to overlap the line of the stairs. The stair support is not just cinder (breeze) block it’s filled with concrete for even more support and it might prove difficult to change. I consider options

• Scrapping the idea altogether – not good, we want to try and get some natural light in the pool equipment area.


• Putting some glass blocks (vitroblock) in – that would work.

Before tackling the builders with a problem its good to have a few options up ones sleeves. (not that one wears sleeves in this heat!). The workers need to keep moving and there is little time for indecision.

Stop to ponder … and all eyes are on you, awaiting your command. Ask for a day or so to think and they may take off for an unlimited period to work another project – not a good thing. I asked my house electrician to give me time to think on Tuesday and I haven’t seen him since. (I think I still have the upper hand though – I have a hostage - his workbag is still here.)

My builder checks the window when he arrives … no problem – we will just chip a chunk out of the concrete later. In my pre Mexico-building days I would never have guessed concrete would be so easy to work with. I swear, it’s probably easier to mess with than drywall (plasterboard).

I pop out to run around the usual suspects and check out washers and furnishings for the new palapa sundeck. When I return I have the place to myself.

To absolve any guilt of a whole afternoon doing nothing I spray arms and legs with “H24” (deet insect repellant – the mosquitoes are always worse in the evenings) and go out to paint our new dive rinse tank. That done, I lay on the couch, open a Sol and uninterruptedly watched two whole movies, without interruption, on the golden channel … golden bliss! (am I anti-social or what!).

Sunday is a beautiful sunny day. No workers …so I get social again and am a tourist for the day. The beach beckons - nuff said!

Photos to follow shortly …

Shuffling money and shopping.

Today was mostly about shuffling money. Since I lost my other card in the card eating ATM I am now down to two, the latter never tested here so I am experimenting.

Fortunately the new card worked and I was awash with cash until the palapero showed up and asked for the usual half up front for materials. I had also to make sure I could get enough out the machine for the workers to get their cash at the end of day on Friday/Saturday. The lost card is a significant speed bump to my financial planning and has me on tender hooks now listening anxiously for the churning of fresh the cash each time I use the ATM.

The builders here on Cozumel always prefer cash when available. Cheques take time to process and don’t have the same safe “bird in the hand” feel about them. Credit cards sometimes work for materials but for building work… forget-about-it!

At the end of the day I go up onto our new sundeck for the first time ever and survey the work. (re first time visit - it’s a heights thing!) . We mark the power outlets. Our builder suggests two, maybe three – but we are gringo power hogs and so we mark six outlets and three lights. Always easier to put these things in place during the building process than mess it all up later. For the same reason we went for a water supply line to be installed before the floor was leveled.

I briefly note we have a very good view of my neighbours garden from our sundeck … this will need to be addressed later … but for now it’s a whole new breezy world up here and its looking really good!

We then check if our washing machine will fit the maintenance hole under the stair. When they leave I continue the measuring till sunset and then retire around 9 for a very welcome shower and beer.

Friday

I awake at 5.30 with thoughts washing machines and at sunrise I am back out measuring – the weather is much cooler in the mornings – its always a very pleasant time of day here on Cozumel.

Many are already up and so there is a bit of movement on the street. My neighbour’s workers who start at 7.30 arrive and start chipping away at their project – another repair to a damaged wall from Wilma.

I finally come up with a chalked out plan by 9. Washing machine upstairs and a storage area with side access door for pool equipment. Maybe some little windows – I have a louvered window left over from another building project that will be ideal – things often seem to come together on Cozumel but you do need to keep on your toes and think ahead.

When I measure up I find that the height of the deck and the height of the stair may eventually be a problem for the taller gringos so when the builders arrive we have some more serious measuring to make sure all falls nicely into place. I have an aversion to a spiraling stair option so for aesthetic reasons… and because I want it that way… we eventually decide on a plan that means more elevated guests will have to beware. (“duck or grouse” as the saying goes). My builder suggests helmets at the foot of the stair!

Around two we set off to order a boatload of plumbing and electrical items at Boxito … the bill is high but they take American Express, so all is well! We also get some estimates from two guys in town who supply the necessary items for pool set up and maintenance. One had the lower prices but the other takes the now melting Amex card… it’s a tough choice! We will probably opt for the best of all worlds - a bit from both.

To your average shopper I guess this sounds like a short trip …pop into town, run up a couple of estimates … and spend the rest of the day at the beach – a cakewalk! Not so on Cozumel – the whole venture took the majority of the afternoon. On returning we had still to decide how to add some natural light to the pool maintenance and storage area – probably using vitroblock.

Now vitroblock is one of those things to love on Cozumel. They are thick glass blocks that come in multiple patterns and colours. They add a bit of light in the most awkward of situations and are used pervasively here. Between the three of us we eventually hammered out a solution – the vitroblocks will be hidden within the “vista maya” wall under the waterfall area – it sounds great in practice – will work out well in reality… of course it will!

As if that’s not enough for the day, we also tackled the problem of how to avoid the ease of visibility into a neighbouring garden from our new sun deck… a courtesy taken seriously here on Cozumel. The options were limited … we probably needed to raise our already towering 10’ wall another meter. Less than a meter would not be worth the scaffolding and extra man hours required. It was a decision that needed to be made before the pool was built … alterations after would just be too much hassle … but … the extra meter would be on the boundaries of a hurricane hazard …it would need more support. Since Wilma everyone is treating hurricanes with way more respect. Ok, ok so … we need more varilla (rebar) … so we need more columns.

Our builder draws a very decorative design involving three Colonial columns with adornments. The whole thing suddenly becomes a joke in its extremity of embellishment. The father suggests a mural of dolphins and divers and fish and I throw in the suggestion of concealed spotlighting … we are all beginning to get quite carried away.

Eventually we consider a two column decoration … the all-important hurricane defying varilla will cleverly be concealed in this adornment and we will consider ambient lighting, colonial arches, murals and sky pointing laser lights “à la los angeles” later … the price is the thing for now. The workers, who have been waiting very patiently while we fantazise, are all paid and leave for the day.

The sunset looks good so I venture off for a hiatus to take a few snapshots.

If you would like a desktop size version of any of these shots - just drop me a line to blog at casa olivia (all one word) dot com

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

On Tuesday morning the palapero (the guy who builds the thatched palapa roofs) dropped by. For the record, my builders are a father and son team. The son speaks good English, his father speaks slow enough for me to follow with my limited “building Spanish” vocabulary but the palapero spoke at over 100mph without even breathing. Clear instructions are important here so we called the builder for assistance. Within the hour my builder, the palapero and I, had finalized a design I was very happy with. The palapero will also quote me for replacement to our little palapa guest house roof (concrete with decorative palapa topping), which took a beating during Wilma and right now is looking like a bad Beatle haircut (– yes I am a boomer!)

That done my builder and I then went off to Boxito (Bo-shi-to), a well know building goods supplier here on Cozumel, to choose the pool tiles. Here in Mexico it is better to tile a pool. Painted pools have problems when the effects of intense sunlight and pool chemicals cause the paint to start peeling. This will eventually get your filters blocked and require a repaint in the long run. The labour costs are lower here too so the tiling work is cheaper. So although the tiles cost a bundle - in the long run tiles are your best bet for a longer pool life! The downside is that unlike paint, once in place, tiles are pretty well permanent. And at that price ... they will be staying!

The supplier Boxito is probably about as close to Home Depot (Great Mills) as you are going to get on Cozumel. I strangely enjoy my visits there. It’s a very different place since Wilma though … its all poshed up now and has a huge new bodega (storage area). Ah …the supplies, the possibilities - I told you I’m not a sunning myself-on-the-beach gal, and anyhoo, suntans are so passé these days!

After some humming and hawing and a bit of hands on checking through the boxes of tiles in the bodega ( they dont always know what they have in there), we finally chose pool tiles. My builder showed great patience while I wrestled with the choices.

Anyone who knows me well will know that I am a "decision challenged" person. When in doubt I usually prefer to leave decisions to the nearest person available ... strangers included! In the past I have had a whole wall of newly installed tiles removed when I forced a decision then decided they just didn’t quite fit my vison.

This decision understandably took the wind from the sails of the builder who had just installed them that previous day! Gobsmacked was putting it mildly, but he took it with good humour and agreed my new choice was much better. He benefited well later, when we made a deal and he took them home. Returns do not go down well here - (especially tiles just peeled off a wall!) so unlike back home, where returns are a walk in the park - when you make your choice here ... you are usually stuck with it.

Craters in the Garden and Card Eating ATM's

We finally arrived on Cozumel on Friday to start the nitty-gritty work on our pool. We had hoped to start a week earlier but our builders were not going to be available and a second date was stymied by the airline deciding at the last minute to cancel the flight.

Once we dropped off the bags we went out to gawp in admiration at the extra deep crater in our back garden. I say extra deep because we have ventured further into the karst (limestone and dead coral) than most do.

Mi esposo, the diver, wanted a place to check his dive gear so we are intending to go for two meters (6’ 6”) at the deep end to accomplish this. Going deeper than around 4 feet is no easy task on Cozumel as the island’s karst core is literally rock hard. It took a three weeks of digging and drilling to clear the depth we wanted. While we were happily swanning around in Virginia our neighbours were probably getting pretty desperate but thankfully they all still seemed pleased to see us return and there were no complaints to our builders.


We hadn’t helped matters much ourselves by choosing a site which was originally a circular ten foot by one foot deep concrete patio with a whacking great 45 foot royal palm in the middle! The grand old palm had long past bitten the dust, mid hurricanes Emily and Wilma but its roots were pervasive. (Actually biting the dust is is putting it mildly – but that’s a whole other story yet to be told).

Saturday was a half day for the workers so for the first few days we hung out as tourists generally enjoying the house, the weather and the food.


On Sunday my bank card was swallowed up by the ATM outside one of the main supermarkets on the island. This was a serious dent to my financial planning but I had backups in place and my management company has a chunk of change I wired while the pesos was high so all is still far from lost . It will just require a bit more juggling now.

Life never flows smoothly on Cozumel but backups and perserverence usually help you to endure the bumps.

The story so far …

We finally bought our home - Casa Olivia - on the island of Cozumel in 2005. Since 1998 we had been spending a lot of time in the Caribbean, and like all tourists on vacation, had often daydreamed of homeownership in these exotic locales.

When we decided to try to make our dream a reality our research was extensive. Considerations, too numerous to mention in this short introduction, figured in our choice. We had already enjoyed many vacations on Cozumel and felt it would definitely hold our interests for years to come, in the end there was little competition. We signed a contract in the early spring and have never looked back.

We had origionally planned to purchase a turnkey, income producing, part rental, part vacation home. We would then upgrade it gradually and maybe sell it further down the road but, as with many well-laid plans, we threw all our ideas out the window when we instantly fell in love with a little casa in Corpus Christi. Our house is in the Gonzalo Guerrero neighbourhood of the town, the area more commonly known to the many gringo renters and settlers here like us as Corpus Christi, because of the Corpus Christi Church and a park, just footsteps from our house.

For the record … the esposa is the planner/blog writer and general web nerd, who prefers a the building site to the beach (unless there is Sol and food involved). The esposo is the diver/tourist who prefers to enjoy the final product of the building work rather than pariticpate in the execution (and preferably after a dive!).

And so … we are now in the process of adding, upgrading, and generally re-styling our house to be the “home away from home” we had always wished for.

Stop off here from time to time or at Casa Olivia and find out more about trials and tribulations, ... and ultimately the pleasures of home ownership on Cozumel.

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A note to readers:

I intend not to mention particular names or products here … it seems poor form to mention that or those who may not know they have been mentioned. If that seems excessively formal for a blog, it probably is … but i'm a Brit ... and we do formal so well!

If you want any info on the unmentioned, do drop me a line either to "myblog at casaolivia dot com" or at CasaOlivia.com and I will (probably) be happy to answer. But be warned, spam me, or add me to one of your joke of the day lists ... and very bad things will happen to you!