Before I get to shots of the house, here are some photos I took last night when we went to an expat-owned Tex-Mex restaurant in Chelem, Lizard Joe’s. I had a very good burger with ho-hum fries; nothing worth photographing.

View from the rear of the restaurant:

Sunset as we came out:

Love the colour of this house!

So my hosts left this morning and it was time to get some more boxes out of my suite and into the kitchen! I was left with tons of empty cabinet space, so I knew I could unpack fully. I washed so many dishes today! Everything was gross from nearly a year of disuse.

Once everything was put away, I was able to take some photographs.

So here’s the compound as viewed from inside the gate. Huge pebble yard with the house at the back.

To my right is a laundry area. Need to teach the dog to not pull stuff off the line and shred it! No important casualties so far, but I have to be vigilant!

Here is the courtyard with the pool. It is very much part of the interior space since you can’t go between most of the rooms from indoors.

You can see the patio door to my unit here and opposite is a bathroom. In the far left corner is the other guest suite and across from that is a bodega (storage room) with laundry.

Looking back to the yard. I am in charge of taking care of the pool. It sounds easy enough even if there is quite a bit to do. It’ll be worth it! I really enjoyed my swim this afternoon after all that hard work!

If you go into that second set of patio doors in the picture above, you walk into the kitchen. All set up as my own! 🙂

The door at the back leads into another bodega. To the immediate left of the kitchen (open plan, L shape), is the main house’s living room, the master bathroom, and the master bedroom. I will not be using those spaces and don’t feel they should be shared.

I labeled all the doors I’m using so I know where my stuff is. 🙂

I was left lots of space in the bodega/pantry at the back of the kitchen. My neighbour Caroline sent me off with several tight fitting mason jars for storage. She’s been hankering at me for years to take them, but I didn’t have enough space. I knew they would be perfect for this climate and fit as many into the truck as I could. I wish I had more. I was grateful to have a dishwasher here to wash them all, but was told that it is preferred that I not use the dishwasher since dirty dishes sitting in it will attract pests.

Now, we’ll go next door to my suite. It’s still a huge mess and I felt like taking pictures of the empty one next door and flipping them, but anyway. 🙂 So I have a full set of bedroom furniture and a nice couch with a coffee table in the front of the suite. That’s my table to the left with my tablecloth that just happens to match the colour palette. The plan is to use that as my desk soon as I get a decent computer chair. In the meantime, I’m set up in the kitchen, which is not going to work because it’s way too loud next to the fridge. If I luck out and find a cheap desk as well, the table will come down and I’ll set up the desk.

The biggest fault with this room is the three huge skylights right by the bed that I could only cover up by going onto the roof. I’ve tried three times before in my life to sleep with a sleep mask and failed, but I really have no choice here.

But I keep pulling the mask off in the middle of the night, so I have a backup that I can easily reach!

I love the couch. So comfy. Particularly like the chaise longue part for stretching out. Yes, that’s my tablecloth from Maz covering the table. I love the combo of blue and orange so why not?!

Now, into the bathroom. OMG Yes, this is where I have to shower for the next six months. Do try to be sympathetic. 😉 And, yes, those are real plants!

I was left with a huge pile of super luxurious towels, but I prefer to use my own things. So now that my towels are clean and dry, I’ll wash those of my hosts and put them away. Using my own things makes me feel more at home and I’m also not worried about ruining someone else’s belongings.

So that’s where I’m living this summer! The house is very much like an RV with its complex power and water systems. I would be overwhelmed if I did not have the knowledge gained from RVing!

My hosts are very keen to keep the outside separate from the inside so as to not have all the problems that come with keeping a home in this climate, like dust coming in from open windows and mould growing. So the doors and few windows are shut tight at all times and the AC has to run 24/7 (but pretty high — I think 27C will be the sweet spot). To avoid massive power bills, they have 16 solar panels on the roof and I believe each is about 250W. The system has been running for about two months now and they are managing so far to make just a bit more power than they are consuming. There is no battery system. Anything that doesn’t get used returns to CFE (power company) and earns them a credit for cloudy days when they don’t generate as much. I’ve been asked to keep track daily of my usage and adjust accordingly.

There is city water, but it apparently runs dry frequently. So then, I have to switch over to a well. The city water is on a water softener system and clean enough to use for washing produce, but it tastes terrible (and salty) so we use bottled water for cleaning teeth and drinking. Personally, whenever I end up buying a home in Mexico, I will put in a whole house filtration system and do away with bottled water altogether. But with the two water sources here and good potable water being so cheap and easy to access in Mexico (0.75CAD for 5 gallons, versus about 3CAD in Canada), I can understand why there is no filter in place here.

My priority at this point is a proper office setup. I can’t work from the couch here because even with the AC running, a laptop on the lap is way too hot, plus I’m frankly DONE with typing on the laptop keyboard and miss my external professional keyboard. I’ll go to Office Max and Office Depot in Mérida on Monday and see what I can find for a chair. Maybe I’ll luck out like I did with my last one (which I’m bitterly regretting not bringing) and find a demonstration model for cheap…

Other than that, I just want to get back into a “normal” routine so I can remind myself that I’m not on vacation despite being in paradise. I’ll have time to explore when the coffers are fuller.

At any rate, I hope this post assuages your curiosity. 🙂