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Name:Jillian DOB: 11/06/78 Occupation: Dilettante Beverage: Anything Bubbly |
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Turn Ons: Vespas, Bullfighting, Decadence, True Romance Turn Offs: Chicken Omlettes, Fetus in Fetu, 9-5, Velvet Hobbies Smugness, NIA, Wearing Boots, Looking & Thinking |
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Name: Malcolm DOB: 05/25/78 Occupation: Designer Food: Beef Beverage: Maudite |
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Measurements: 36-24-36 Turn Ons: Coney Island, dive bars, XTREME tubing, graphic design, other people's dogs, stupid hats, strategy games, peachcake, pixel art, knife fights Turn Offs: Leaving the house, driving cars, my own smoking, strangers |
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« December 2006 | Main | February 2007 »
Maleconstruction
The Palm at the End of the Mind
1 Dalmation
Too the Lighthouse
thisoldman
30 pesos of oranges minus a few
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I thought I would bike into town this morning to buy some fruit and read for a while on the Malecon. Little did I know that it was cruise ship day...
I was stumbling around the craft market bewildered by the sound of my own language coming from every which way when I noticed that an open air tour bus was about to leave and cost $20 mxp (actually $2.00 US – everyone but me paid with American dollars). I collapsed my bicycle and hopped aboard, unsure why I wanted to take this ride. I found a seat in the last row of the lower level and started to look around.
Progreso is a different town when the tourists come to shore. It appeared on its best behavior displaying not a few items I have not seen here before. The tour bus itself was brightly painted with civic pride and our conductor Renee introduced himself in good English as a student. Renee was wearing a palm frond hat – an appropriate choice in millinery for a banana republic – but unlike anything I have seen around here. Then I spotted the guys selling them to some older adults and while my initial reaction was to scoff and mock, I'm on this bus too, and so I will just say that I am sure that the transaction was mutually beneficial.
I am completely bemused by the entire happening. There are so many vendors, lots of very white people in shorts drinking margaritas before noon, and everyone is waving. I don’t know if everyone is drunk or if they are experiencing that goofy euphoria of being in a strange place for a short time, or if overzealous arm movement is part of the cruising code, but again, I say (in my mind) So Be It.
Progreso, for all its charm, is not home to stunning architecture, pompous statuary, or historical type landmarks. Basically we drove along the water and looped around, passed the modest zocalo and returned to the market square. Renee made some standard tour guy banter and jokes at the town's expense that made me cringe, and endeared him to me all at once. With a smile and a "gracias" and propinas all around I bounded down from the bus and sped off and away from the chaos of coral anklets and my countrymen.
I am both comforted and repelled to be near them, these vacationers. They are getting massages and playing volleyball on the sand and it is almost too much to take. Three people asked me if my bike was for sale. The enterprising spirit is infectious and I almost told a kid to make an offer - until I remembered it was not my property to sell. I really enjoy telling them that I live here. What a kick in the pants. I know I won't be able to stay away.
Without further ado, some footage from the tour:
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Saturday afternoon, just before gloaming, Malcolm and I were walking into the Yucatan jungle. We had followed a sign and down a trail and it seemed very safe and civilized until we saw a tapir, a howler monkey, a tropical raccoon of uncommon length, a ground dwelling hominid of the missing link variety, or a tepesquintle crossing the road four feet in front of us. I - you might have guessed - am partial to the penultimate possiility. And this is why we turned around. Malcolm was compelled to go on, while I was inclined to run, very carefully back to the safety of the monoliths. My problem is that I have never been close, never been confronted by a real wild thing. (there was that Donkey Who Stole My Wallet in St. John, but that is another story). I like the idea of monkeys, as obedient and clever pets, as observers watching with shrewd eyes, unnoticed amid the flora, and as our earnest if inferior evolutionary relatives. Monkey theory, I am thinking, is a lot more charming than monkey actuality. Especially because living among the ruins of the Post Classical Maya, who knows what they may have picked up - astronomy, architecture, the mathematics of sacrifice. So, even though I wanted to see the habitacions of Dzibilchaltun and continue to feel that frisson of being sort of alone in the woods, the prospect of super smart simians wanting to make me their bride delivered me quicly back to the field.
Then on Sunday while exploring the village of Telchac Puerto, driving down its sandy roads enjoying the bright blue day, and about to confer upon it adorable status, a locust flew into the car and landed on my shorts. You may remember locusts, those Biblical grasshoppers that fly and swarm and destroy crops, terrorizing the Egyptians and foreshadowing end of times - yeah, one of those was on me. It was dry and earth brown like a late autumn leaf and obviously menacing, disusting and capable of eating my face off. I freaked out, flailing about the driver's seat. These are insects described collectively as a "plague" by believers and atheists alike. In the same way one might describe a grist of bees, a flange of baboons, a herd of chinchillas, a congregation of crocodiles, a pod of dolphins, a team of seals or a flock of sheep, one will say, "oh look, there goes the plague of locusts". That is if you stick around long enough in Locust Land to see their numbers blackening the sky, which I, for one, do not. Malcolm, who is obviously a lunatic wanted to leave the relative safety of the car, and against my better judgement, I followed him to the beach. In doing so, I found myself tiptoeing over a minefield of locust corpses. I do not like anything that drops dead on the spot as soon as its has committed its aviary atrocities. We had heard that there have been in the area, passing over Telchac on their way to fulfill their dark destiny. It was simply unexpected to find one on my lap. We got out of Telcchac as fast as the Jetta could carry us. Back to Progreso where I bought a sack of green and yellow oranges and a pirated DVD of Blood Diamondfor $60 mxp. What a weekend.
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We woke up yesterday with absolutely no agenda or plans. So we thought, hell, we might as well go and check out another example of the last ruins of a thousand-year-old civilization. Now, though Chichen Itza gets all the play, with El Castillo thinkin' it's all big, the exploration of the ruins at Dzibilchaltun, located about 15 minutes outside of Merida, is an entirely different experience.
For about six bucks US, you get access to the archaeological site and the very polished, very modern museum of Mayan history, billed as one of the best in the region. But the best part of all...is that there were only about three other groups of people there. No one trying to sell us overpriced masks, no one charging insane prices for bottles of water. A trip to Dzibilchaltun is peaceful, quiet, even spiritual. That is, until Jillian was threatened by a monkey, who didn't want us walking down his road. Fair enough, monkey, these things happen.
Here are our pictures, all of which click through to larger versions. Enjoy.
When you can sit out on the front of your sand lot on a warm evening in January, hoisting an ice cold beer, and grilling a sirloin and some asparagus on the $3 grill you bought (a true marvel of Chinese engineering), you can really believe that maybe, just maybe, every little thing is, after all, gonna be alright.
That's all. Happy Saturday.
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Since Jillian got me this awesome folding bike for Christmas, I have started taking evening rides around the neighborhood. This seems like a good way to both explore our new surroundings, as well as combat what seems to be happening to my body as a result of "being nearly 30" and "eating nothing but beans and beer for the last 6 months." Bicycle exploration is a wonderful thing, I've found. It allows you to gawk pretty openly at things, snap a few pictures, but still never really feel committed to a scene or an environment the way you do on foot. So last night, I pedaled over to the local Marina in Progreso.
This is not the Marina surrounded by condominiums and expensive yachts. This is the MARINA, filled almost entirely with rusted out tugboats and local fishing boats. Dusk proved a very interesting time to go there, as the boats have all unloaded for the day, and salt-soaked men are relaxing for the evening. In the dim light, you at first feel entirely alone there...until you realize that there are, in fact, faces everywhere peeking out at you, from the portholes of ships and from the hammocks strung up on deck. The overall combination was mysterious, magical, and a little downright spooky. Here are my attempts to capture this feeling on film...all thumbnails click through to a larger version. Enjoy.
A shrine to fallen fishermen?
El Robot. Obviously.
As it grew too dark for more pictures, I decided to ride down this Dirt Road to Nowhere. The entrance was guarded by stray dogs.
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We had heard the whispers among the other foreigners living here in the Yucatan. There was a Costco, and we would have to go. Now, back in the States, our Costco usage was pretty limited to stocking up after an apartment move...buying 100 rolls of toilet paper, for example, so you could once and for all strike that from your list of Things to Worry About. We have never been really into bulk food purchases, in part because we have always had tiny apartment refrigerators. And while the same is doubly true at our rental house in Progreso (the freezer is just a drawer inside the main fridge compartment), we were interested in a Costco membership to see what kinds of foods from the US we could find that were unavailable elsewhere.
Jillian got the membership last week, for 400 pesos, and today, we hit it. Hard. We promised ourselves that we wouldn't buy things that we could get in neighborhood markets...this was purely a trip to find the things we were missing from our old lives. (If I ever move back to the States, I wonder how I will satisfy my cravings for cochinita pibil and fresh corn tortillas? Oh well, we'll worry about that later.) Among the haul of things we found at Costco that we simply couldn't find anywhere else:
Oh, and you had better believe there was more. We spent more on food in this one trip than we have in any other single shopping trip here, but we probably won't need to buy food for, oh, two months. Among the other items we considered and passed on, but noted due to their unavailability anywhere else:
Oddly absent from the Merida Costco? Samples. And it was a shame, because we arrived HUNGRY. It is surprising that in a country so seemingly sample-mad, this was missing from Costco, the North American Sample Kings. A walk through Costco in America means being assaulted with Bagel Bites (which, presumably, you will never have tried and enjoy SO MUCH that you will be inspired to buy a crate of them) and tiny paper cups of soup. Hell, a walk through a supermarket in Merida means you can fill up on a free assortment of ham, a slice of chocolate cake, and a shot of vodka to wash it down. But somehow, these two cultures aren't coming together the way they should. It's perplexing, but perhaps our visit at midday on a Wednesday is to blame.
All in all, we are now officially happy to report that there is not one food item that we are missing from the States that we simply can't find here. Shopping here is more of a day-long, leisurely event...you go to different stores to find the different things you need, you take your time, and you shop around. But at the end of the day, you're not going without. Except for maybe bagels.
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With Jillian and I both coming down ill with some kind of awful chest/head cold, we haven't gotten as many pictures of Progreso together as we would like. There will definitely be more to come, but in the meantime, here's some tide-you-over, wet-your-whistle pictures of what life has looked like since we moved to Progreso.
The street we live on. Follow this, and you end up in Centro Progreso.
Sick and cranky on the couch.
Centro.
Adios, pinata.
With so many homeless dogs and cats here, it's no wonder one started coming and going into our house as she sees fit. Internet, meet Dr. Jean Grey, the blue-eyed mangey cat we feed, who may or may not have infested our house with fleas.
...And that's about it for this instant. Jillian and I are on the road to recovery, and our internet service should be kickin' in our house by Thursday, at the latest. For now, we are more or less commuting to Merida every day to work at Pioneros, my favorite internet cafe. As soon as we are up and hummin', expect more photos of our new digs, and the frequent updates you expect and deserve. Until next time, chicas.
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Wow, everyone has been positively CLAMORING for more details about our Yucatan-bought 1995 Volkswagen Jetta that I mentioned earlier. Y'all were foaming at the mouth when you heard about its body kit and tinted windows. You were SALIVATING when you heard about our Mexican soccer team upholstery and "makes the car go faster" rear spoiler. Okay, well, Nick was. Anyway, without further ado, here's some more photos of the hottest ride to grace the streets of Progreso:
last night
We did it. We live in a beach house. It’s raining. We may be here for a few months. When next we move it will be into a house of our own. This place will feel like home in a week. Malcolm was insightful when he said that moving to Progreso is like moving to Mexico all over again. It’s rustic and rougher and we must be resourceful. There are more stray dogs and no fresh milk.
this morning
I wake up and it is bright, blue and scrubbed. We slept with the windows open under down. We do an errand in town and then drive south to Merida to work in a café. Maybe when the day is done we will swim in the nearest cenote or maybe just go for a beer on the beach. It´s January 16 and sunny here.
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It looks like everyone loves Yolisto. Rivergirl over at HiddenCancun has given us a very nice little writeup comparing Yolisto to the online yard sale she has been waiting for. Go on over and give it a read.
We have spent the last week taking feedback and following suggestions to get the site where it needs to be. These ranged from basic functionality issues that we had missed, like the image uploading not working and the contact form being dead (whoops), to feature enhancements and new categories. Free listings on Yolisto now run for 30 days instead of seven, upgradeable to 90 days for two bucks US. We have expanded the cities covered to a couple of our friends over in Quintana Roo, namely Cancun and Cozumel. We have also added a section under "Community" for pet and animal rescues, to try and put a dent in this stray dog and cat situation.
The writing is on the wall. People have been waiting for Yolisto for a long time. They love Yolisto. YOU love Yolisto. Now, go place your free ad today!
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Some of you may have noticed that we quietly snuck a little ad for Yolisto into the bottom-left corner of the page. We weren't quite ready to talk about it, but the time has come.
Here's the thing. The Yucatan needs a community classifieds website, similar to Craigslist. Ideally, it should be available in both English and Spanish. There have been some attempts at this. MeridaInsider, a fairly popular community forum, has a classifieds section that nobody uses. So we built a better one, and called it Yolisto: The English Language Marketplace.
Then, about a week before we were ready to launch, Craigslist announced they were launching a Yucatan section of their website. This was devastating news, but we talked ourselves off the ledge. The Yucatan section of Craigslist thus far seems to be limited to real estate listings for Cancun. We are in a far better position to break down categories by individual towns in the Yucatan, and after all...do you want to support a multi-million dollar San Francisco company, or the locally run alternative?
Getting the website rolling has been tough. We are much more accustomed to attracting a readership by providing content. On a site like Yolisto, the USERS generate the content...and if there's none there, no one will add any. We have sent out a press release, and momentum is starting to build. There have been a few posts, which our users report have gotten them some good responses. We have a slick PDF for you to share with your friends. And today, our good friends over at Yucatan Living gave us a very nice little writeup.
So if you're living in the Yucatan, and looking to connect with your fellow gringos, be sure to check out Yolisto. Post a free ad, browse around, and let us know what you think.
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Remember how I said last week we were going to get our momentum back? The last two days have proven just that. In the last two days, we have:
See! I told you! We're back, baby! Next up: Buying a house and completing our move to the beach house. Stay tuned.
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"An honest man’s word is as good as his bond."
- Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. xxxiii.
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Delicious trepidation is how I might describe our feelings yesterday morning, as we drove up the highway on our way to our new rental. I had seen the outside of the house and we had some assurance from Karita that it was furnished. I was fully expecting Sol branded plastic chairs. I was pretty certain I could find it again on the long stretch of beach houses west of the Malecon. It reminds me a little of the Florida Keys.
We were relieved to find a totally reasonable little house complete with two bedrooms, giant oscillating fans, a dining room table, a banana colored sofa, and a newly tiled sunken shower. we even have a backyard, which would be a perfect setting for a snuff film about IV drug using orphan run aways who find redemption in ritual sacrifice and cannibalism. I'm sure a hibachi and some tiki torches will fix it right up.
it's not so bad, really. There's a store 300 meters away that delivers beer and a hotel with an outdoor bar a few doors down. And we are at the beach, in Progreso, which we love for its charming restaurants and family atmosphere. We jumped into our swimsuits and drove into town for some lunch.
After some pollo pibil and garlic shrimp at Flamingos we drove out along the coast to Chelem and Chiburna, where we will be focusing our house search. We were initially sort of turned off about these towns because they have become so popular among norteamericanos for vacation and retirement. But there is a lot to be said for being close to Merida, for an infrastructure. So much depends upon an internet connection. And the towns are totally cute.
We headed to the mall to see a movie and get our heads straight, where it occurred to us to stay here at the good old Suites del for one more week while we find a good enough car and wait for Telmex to install phone/internet in our rental house. It would be difficult for us to live our there stranded and with no means of communication. I told Malcolm that if I had a pony I could start a mail service and solve like, three problems at once. Malcolm says no pony.
I think we'll like it out there once we have a television, an internet connection, our pillows and painting of Cervantes. Is it terrible that the thought of living without these things gives us a crawly sick sort of feeling? I'm working out what I think about the quality of life/creature comforts that we are so accustomed to. When we were safe in our apartment in New Haven it was easy to think we could sleep on the beach while our house was built. Life in Merida is sweet. We even found Veuve Cliquot for New Years Eve. We will make another small break this Sunday, when for better of worse, we get to the beach, which was the vision we had in the first place.
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If DroppedIn has an overall philosophy, perhaps it can be found through some combination of the below:
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream." -Mark Twain
"I left Pasadena for Europe when I was nineteen, with absolutely no money at all...simply because I'd been reading a lot of Henry Miller's stories about living in Paris. Once you learn the secret of departure, it's easy after that." -My Dad
I've never been much of one for "inspirational quotes," but I thought these two guys summed everything up quite neatly.
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As some of our readers may remember, last September we officially put an offer on a lovely little beach house in San Crisanto. Some of you have also noticed that we seem to still be living in the Suites del Sol. I have been holding off a long time before writing this entry, but it's time to talk about what went wrong, so that others may avoid our mistakes.
So here's the deal. After selling off our possessions and moving here, sight unseen, with nothing but two suitcases full of clothes to our name, we moved incredibly quickly. We spent two nights at the Hyatt, then moved down the street to a long-term rental at the Suites del Sol. We were sure this was going to be a temporary move, because everything was moving so fast, and falling into place amazingly neatly. We met with a realtor, who showed us two properties a week after we arrived. We fell in love with the third, and immediately wanted to make an offer on it. The realtor said that was great, and that she would pull the offer contract together.
Oh, there was just one little detail before we put pen to paper. The house was currently in ejido status. Our blood ran cold. Now, we aren't just winging it down here. We had a year's worth of research backing us up, and we knew that houses that were still in ejido status should be avoided at all costs. Properties that are ejido are not owned by one person; they are owned by a community, making sale to a private party a process that can take ten years. However, our realtor assured us that the privatization process had already been completed, and the seller was just waiting for the final okay from the Office of Ejido. We were told that that would be, at most, a three month wait.
In a place where everything is so foreign to you, you have no choice but to choose some people to trust. And in this case, we chose to trust our realtor. We signed the offer, and transferred 10k in earnest money into the real estate company's bank account. Then, we waited.
And waited. I emailed at least weekly, looking for updates. Had the paperwork arrived? Did anyone have any kind of better timeline? Could anyone tell me anything about the status of this property? The answers were no, sorry, and no. Months went by, and finally, we were approaching the expiration of our offer. I made one final call to the real estate company. Our original agent had left, and our new agent knew very little about the deal. I asked for some assurance that this deal would go through. I received none...and further, my new real estate agent didn't seem very interested in helping to get this deal closed.
I asked about our options. Could we renew our offer? We certainly wouldn't do so without some kind of firmer timeline with regard to the mysterious Ejido paperwork. Our new broker said that he couldn't give me one, and that the seller may not want to renew the offer, anyway.
I went mildly insane at this news. How could this be? We were the ones that had taken all the risk here, letting our ten grand sit in a non-interest bearing account for three months, with no explanation, and only some vague promises. And now, the SELLER didn't want to renew the offer? Something was wrong.
And indeed, something was. I finally made contact with the owner of the real estate company. By this point, I noticed that our house was no longer listed on the website as "under contract." It was listed "for sale..." for 15k more than our original offer. My brain spun out of control again. What happened? Why had our real estate company let this offer die for 15 grand? We certainly would've come up with that...what gives?
The owner of the real estate company explained that during all of this wait, the seller had gotten the property re-appraised, and wanted more money. Dirty pool, but okay, fine. We would be happy to get a new offer in at the higher price, provided the ejido paperwork was IN HAND and the property was ready to actually be sold to us. As of today, it still isn't. But the seller is expecting it sometime in...you guessed it...the next three months.
So we faced a tough decision. Did we really want to sign on for another three months of half-truths and empty promises? Did we want to continue living in the Suites del Sol, begging our real estate agent for information? At some point, you have to cut your losses and move on. And we have. Our earnest money was returned to us last week.
We have lost all momentum. What started as a crazy, whirlwind move, with new things happening every day, and us squarely nailing down a new life in a new country in a matter of weeks, has turned into a lot of moping around and daily trips to Wal-Mart. Of course, now that we've lived here almost five months, we have learned some things that we didn't know in week one. First, San Crisanto is simply to far out there for us. The availability of phone service is questionable, not to mention being able to find the basic things we need. We also probably would've had to rebuild the septic system out there, put in a new well, etc. And what if something happened? What if there was an accident? We have no car, and San Crisanto is at least a half an hour from any kind of civilization. It was a beautiful property, but we have talked ourselves out of it.
You may notice that the San Crisanto house is re-listed on the real estate company's website. I would advise all non-Mexican citizens to steer clear. The status of the property is not noted or disclosed on the listing, a detail I find pretty disingenuous on the part of the real estate company.
So this week, everything changes. We are getting our momentum back, starting with a move. We are bidding a fond farewell to the Suites del Sol, and renting a house out on the beach in Progreso, starting this coming Sunday. This is going to be a total shift in lifestyle, away from the somewhat urban mode we are in here in Merida, into a lazy, sun-drenched, beach life. We will buy a car next weekend. We will start looking for a new, even better house. We will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and drop back in.
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The last half of 2006 was all about some pretty dramatic changes for us. We remained happily engaged, found a feral, wounded kitten and in turn a small group of thoughtful, committed kitten lovers, watched as an apartment-full of our belongings was systematically sold and carried out the door, quit our college town again, and finally, one fine day in August, arrived in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico with a reservation for one night at the Hyatt, and a dream.
This is the year in which the dream - of owning our first home on the beach, getting married, and finding success in our personal projects - will be realized. And it begins this week. Sunday we move into a rental in Progreso, a tiny house across from the beach. Life there is going to be more unstructured than in the relative comfort of the Suites del Sol, but I think we're ready for the adventure. And there, with household expenses cut in half and income increased by a third at least, we become Consumers with a Capitalist C again. The Great Reacquisition of furniture, appliances, linens, art, and vehicles shall commence. 2007 is the year furnishing a life we love.
There have been a few glitches and unexpected turns: a language barrier, a house we loved and lost, questions about visas, ejido and fideicomisos. But, so far, we are navigating these problems and learning a lot along the way.
We have also been afforded the time and money to travel back to the States, spend more time with family, hang out in Malibu, take a sleeper train down the East Coast, go to Disney World, Chichen Itza and see the Gulf of Mexico from two perspectives.
We are getting to know a beautiful city. It's 75 degrees and sunny on January 2nd. We spent New Year's Eve meeting Americans on vacation or studying here and enjoying a safe, festive but not debauched and chaotic night of drinking, eating, music, dancing, carriage rides, tradition, youth and good cheer. To wit, it was a night not so different, in terms of atmosphere, than any other here in festive, easygoing Merida.
Malcolm and I hung out together shared our wishes and resolutions and confided in our confidence and excitement for the year ahead. Phase III of the Drop In won't be easy. It's going to be busy, crazy, and possibly perilous. But also so much fun you won't believe it.
Happy New Year.
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