Merida

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About to Sign My First Mexican (Yucatecan) Lease

Like she promised, my real estate agent sent me a copy of my lease to peruse before the official signing tomorrow. As expected, it was six legal size pages of bla bla bla that could mostly be summarised in a few sentences.

As a former rental agent and tenant in Canada, I was first struck by what was not in the lease — the monthly rental amount and terms for renewal — and what was considered pertinent, like the owner’s proxy’s person details (age, address) and the exact specifications and location of the house (things I’d expect to see in a legal land description), rather than just an address.

Otherwise, the lease was exactly as I expected, with the standard clauses about having to pay my utilities, returning the house in the condition in which it was received, not subletting, and not turning the house into a meth lab (that clause was more PC than that, but that’s what they mean). I have zero qualms signing that document, although I do have a few questions, like what are the terms, if any, for renewal. The lease says that I have to vacate in two years, but it’d be good to know today if there is zero hope for a renewal or if the owners are also hoping this works out well enough for a renewal.

The other thing we need to clarify is the address, which is super confusing. The address is given as actually being in Colonia Felipe Carrillo Puerto. If I put my address into Google Maps or my GPS using that colonia, I end up right across the city. You can see my colonia at the top left there, but in red at the bottom right is the area that Google and the GPS think is my colonia.

What I’m worried about are silly guests ignoring my instructions and insisting on using just an address, as well as deliveries, but since with the latter, you have to give the nearest intersections and, ideally, a landmark, as well as your postal code I should be fine.

Now, here’s to hoping I actually get access to keys tomorrow so I can go take pictures! I don’t have any other listing ones really worth sharing as a teaser, but here’s part of the master closet. It has its own window so it could actually double as a secondary bedroom as I’m sure there’s enough room in there for a full size mattress and it also has a ceiling fan!

I’ve started to window shop for what I need to move in so I can firm up my budget. A mattress will be new, of course, but since I have a good mattress topper, I can get something on the lower end of the scale. I’m going used for appliances, though. A super cheap placeholder fridge fell through, but it made me realise that I should get a super cheap placeholder fridge for now and upgrade later. I’m also waiting to hear about about a reasonably priced Bosch range. It was immediately evident from the photos that it’s better than even a higher end Mabe because it had cast iron grills, rather than cheap enamelled ones that will wear down and rust. I am not opposed to a Mabe fridge and washer, though.

I really don’t want to buy anything until I actually have access to the house to avoid having to move things twice or worry about storing them in the meantime since the storage room here is pretty small. It’s going to be wonderful to start moving in and see my new home take shape!

Now, I leave you with this curious fact from my lease that surprised me, considering how big the house is. The house lot is about 4,600 square feet, with the house being about 2,600 square feet. My “small” lot at Haven is 5,000 square feet!

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Summer’s End

It is incredible to be days from September and to not be thinking about packing so I can get on the road or pulling out my cold weather clothes or anticipating any change in my routine. I can focus on other things and expend energy on more productive endeavours.  I love that I’m going to move into my house at the start of November and I can still think about planting a garden. I really think that I’m going to do very well living in a world of perpetual summer.

Plus, there is so much to explore just in the Yucatán peninsula that I’ll be able to keep satisfying my wanderlust. Just as I know that Haven is the perfect-but-for-the-internet-situation place for  me, so too I know that Mérida is the perfect-but-for-the-humidity place for me. I have very few reservations about setting up housekeeping here and committing to Mérida for at least four years. And I am so grateful to have had the years of RVing and snowbirding and the months in Europe behind me as they bolster that confidence that I’m doing the right thing at this stage in my life.

I was supposed to sign the lease tomorrow, but there were scheduling conflicts. After a flurry of hilarious texts, my agent is pretty sure that 10AM Saturday will work with everyone’s schedules and we’re going with that. 6PM tomorrow would have worked as well, but mean driving home in the dark and I really do avoid that whenever possible because my night vision is so terrible. At any rate, it’s not like a few more days will make a huge difference and it eased the work pressure a bit.

Speaking of work, here is a wall of my new office. I thought this rather strange cabinet could be a writing desk, but only just noticed that it’s up on a dais, with no space for a chair. I cannot for the life of me figure out what it’s actually meant to be then…

This room is really big and I’m actually starting to think that it should be the guest room so that I can actually make a guest studio, especially since it has its own exterior door to the parking area. It would be rather a shame for guests to lose their huge closet, but the extra space might make it worthwhile as I could even set up a small kitchenette. At any rate, if I ever get the Airbnb thing going, I’m going to consider it…

 

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Priorities vs. Signs

I tend to have my financial priorities straight. This summer, it’s been very clearly save up for office furniture, save up for the house deposit, and then start looking for furniture for the house, starting with a fridge and a bed. It doesn’t matter how many awesome things I see in between, I need a roof over my head in November, a place to keep food cold, and a bed.

That hasn’t stopped me from thinking about what I would want for my house, though, and making a list so that when I’m ready to start dropping pesos, I’m not stopping at every shiny thing I see.

One of the things I’ve known from last summer that I really want is an IKEA Poang chair. This surprised me because I’m really not a fan of IKEA, but the Poang chair is absolutely incredible. It looks good. It’s light. It’s supremely comfortable. It’s very inexpensive. And it is the perfect chair for putting the lap back into laptop. I typed from one of those all of last summer and also during part of my time in Spain. I do prefer to work at my desk, but I sometimes like to take my computer to the couch in the evenings to do social or fun online things, so the Poang would be a better place to do that.

I doubted that I had a Poang in my future here in Mexico because there is no IKEA in Mexico. I would have to hope that an expat brought one from NOB or Europe, but accept that I would not get the combination I want, either a dark frame with bright cushions or one with dark fabric and a light frame I could paint a bright colour.

So what is a gal to do when a Poang chair with a light frame and dark fabric gets posted to her local garage sale site for 50% of the cost of that combination in Canada? Well, she makes an offer of 40% of the cost of that combination in Canada, of course. Priorities are one thing, but signs must be heeded!

Getting the chair was not without some drama. I showed up at the appointed time for the pickup meeting in Mérida yesterday afternoon and the guy was a no show. He was not responding to messages. I gave up in disgust after waiting almost 50 minutes, very annoyed because he’d said our deal was only valid if I came that day and I’d taken time off work to go.

Several hours later, he messaged me with a bunch of excuses that may or may not have been valid, apologised profusely, and offered to bring me the chair this morning and said that he would throw in a Pyrex dish since he knows I collect them (from past discussions on the garage sale group). I was still leery, but sent him the directions to La Barca (again, only a couple of blocks away — easy for him to find, plus I didn’t want him to know where I live).

He texted me this morning to say that he was on his way and pretty much at the exact second I expected him to pull into the hotel parking lot, he was there and my faith in humanity was restored. 🙂

It’s hard to see from the picture, but the fabric is like dark denim. I was expecting dark grey, but this is definitely more blue. It totally works for me and now I have to decide if the frame is going to be pink, orange, or turquoise… I’m leaning towards pink since it’s not quite the right blue to go with orange and I have something else in mind that will be painted turquoise. 🙂

So I got the chair, the Pyrex baking dish, and two very nice (and heavy) brushed aluminium tea candle holders that I like and will use out of this deal. At 65CAD, even with the wasted fuel yesterday, I done good on this one. 🙂

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Visiting the Ruins of Dzibilchaltún

Today was the first day since I got here in May that I was caught up on my chores, my sleep, my work, and my financial goals and I really wanted to do something special. The obvious choice was to visit some more Mayan ruins. Thankfully, there are some only 30 minutes away!

Interestingly, my hamlet in SK is best known for being home to one of two sites in North America with petroglyphs on a horizontal surface. You could call that the “place where there is writing on the stones.” Well, Dzibilchaltún, the name of the Mayan city nearest where I’ve chosen to put down my first Mexican roots means… the “place where there is writing on the stones.” What a coincidence.

Dzibilchaltún is ridiculously accessible, just 5KM from the Progreso/Mérida highway on good roads.

Access to the site is quite pricy — $25 for parking + $142 for admisssion. Mexicans and permanent residents get free access on Sundays. There is no incentive for folks from the area who are temporary residents or who come down every winter. That’s rather a shame because it makes it less likely that I would want to come back here with guests. It would be nice to be able to buy a yearly membership or to get a break on admission for future visits as it’s such a lovely place to get out of the city.

From the parking lot, you take a meandering path in the forest to get to the ticket booth.

There was quite a bit of signage throughout the site in Spanish, Maya, and English. So any info I share is from there since I opted not to take a $350 (or 25USD…) guided tour. I learned a lot at Uxmal, but did not get much time to wander around. Today, I just wanted to enjoy being outside and poke through ruins at my own pace rather than hear a lot of information.

Dzibilchatún, with its proximity to the northern coast of Yucatán had both a marine and agricultural economy. The site was occupied from about 300 B.C. and was populated until the Spanish Conquest. It peaked from 600 to 900 A.D, with a population of 20,000. It was about 9KM square and had a concentric layout. The central part of the settlement had grand plazas connected by roadways in an area of 3KM square. It was in the central part that lived the administrative and religious elite. The population lived around the core. It was this population that contributed to change the concept of “ceremonial centre” to one of “urban centre.”

Here’s a map of the site:


Like at Uxmal, there are two separate fees to pay to enter the site. Here, I was able to pay the whole thing at one window and then collect my ticket at the second window. After that is a booth where you can hire guides and beyond that is a covered market area (very disappointing) and clean bathrooms.

Behind the entrance area, you can access the “archaeological zone.” To the right are the ruins I explore below as well as the cenote, which, unfortunately, was closed today. To the left is another ruin we’ll get to in a bit.

This is the area of the grand plaza. It covers about 12,240 metres and would have had a stucco floor (!). It was surrounded by buildings with stairs leading to the plaza. Most of the surviving buildings date to the early Middle Ages, 600 to 1,000 A.D., but a couple date to 1000 to 1200 A.D.

The cenote is a popular local swimming spot, but it seemed a bit uninviting to me.

Can you spot the giant iguana?

On this site are the ruins of a 16th century chapel. As a reminder, that’s the time of the Renaissance. You don’t need to go to Europe to visit old buildings!

These are part of the ruins of a 17th century ranch.

I must have been a mountain goat in a past life. Up I went!

I’m starting to think about getting myself a selfie stick. Not. 🙂

The wooden lintels make me suspect that these structures were also part of the ranch.

Back of the chapel.

There were way too many people to climb the pyramid, so I decided to head to the other part of the site.

It was only about 10:30 and while the sun had been unrelenting since I’d gotten up at 8:00, there was a wonderfully cool breeze running through the site, making it very comfortable. I walked on a 20 metre wide road called a “sacbe.” It begins at the east of the central square and connects 400 metres later with the building called the “Seven Dolls.” The road was mainly in use from 600 to 100 A.D. There are 11 of these roads in Dzibilchaltún, all beginning in the centre and going to peripheral structures, giving the site its urban character. The inner roads have been interpreted as evidence of ties between families.

I took a short detour into the woods to see what’s left of the housing complex, a cluster of buildings in an area of about 4,000 square meters. The dwellings had different heights, speaking to different social status. The inhabitants were buried beneath the floors of the platforms. There really wasn’t much to see, but I enjoyed the shady trail.

Back at the main road, I came across Structure 12, a quadrangular platform with access points on all four sides. Upon it is a monolith, which would have been decorated with stucco and functioned as one of the 20 stelle on the site.

In front of the Seven Dolls are three adjoining rooms aligned with a double open hall. To the south is another double room and to the east a single room. They were inhabited circa 800 A.D. Beneath their floor were offerings of shells, fishbones, stingray tails, small objects made out of green stones, grey obsidian, and other marine materials.

The Seven Dolls building owes its name to an offering of seven coarsely made dolls found inside. It is a one-story quadrangular building with a central chamber surrounded by a corridor. The roof was tower-like and it projected itself upwards from the vaulting. It had four access points and a window to the side of each entrance facing east and west, giving it the characteristics of an astronomical observatory. It was constructed on a pyramidal pedestal, with sloping corners, with sets of steps on all four sides. The frieze of the building was decorated with eight stuccoed masks upon a base of carved stone, two intertwined serpents and glyphs, and beads, feathers, and sea creatures in modelled stucco. Towards 800 A.D., it was filled with stones and covered by another, larger, building, whose remains still partially cover it.

I then headed back towards the entrance to find the museum, when another stone structure caught my eye. I quickly realised from its roof that it was a tad more modern! 🙂


The museum is in two buildings, is small, and is really informational. The Grand Museo del Mundo Maya is really a must, but this little museum does a great job of giving the folks who are coming to Dzibilchatún as a day trip from the cruise ships a primer on the Mayans.

The museum starts by situating the Maya in their geographical context, explaining that there are very distinct ecosystems in their world. Where I am, in northern Yucatán, is more desertic and flat, but you get into mountains and rainforests as you move south towards Honduras.

The serpent is a very important part of their mythology.

This is a hoop from a ballgame that I learned today was usually a prelude to human sacrifice.

Map of Mayan settlements in Yucatán. I still can’t believe that I was taught in school that there is no history in North America before the Europeans came.

There are a lot of parallels between the Maya and the Egyptians, such as the fact that they wrote in hieroglyphs set in cartouches. The Dresden Codex is the Maya equivalent of the Rosetta Stone that decoded Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Pretty purple flowers by the entrance to the second half.

While the first half was about the Maya in general, the second half was more about Dzibilchatún and also the Spanish Conquest.

Here are the Seven Dolls!

I’m not going to retype all of the information I got in the museum, but here is something of particular interest. “Scarcely five metres above sea level, very close to the coast, located on the difficult, calcareous and porous soil of north Yucatán, Dzibilchaltún is an example of a successful Maya urban dwelling. It was a challenge to life. Without rivers to justify the decision to build, its inhabitants obtained water from more than a hundred wells and some neighbouring sinkholes. The largest of the later, the cenote of Xlacah in the very centre of the city, quenched thirst of rulers, priests, merchants, and pilgrims.”

The section about the conquest was very well done, showing how the Maya evolved and yet kept old traditions and knowledge alive.

The Maya were expert stone craftsmen and their “artistic ability was demanded as tribute,” to build churches, mansions, streets, and aqueducts of Spanish towns.

I’m trying to remember where else I saw this system of currency, where employees of a hacienda were paid with tokens that could only be used at that hacienda’s store.

A bale of henequen, which is an agave (yes, the same stuff used to make tequila).

Very old map of Mérida.

There was an ecological path outside of the museum… that was closed. 🙁

There were a couple of dwellings to check out.

There’s an impressive meeting area with a woven roof.

And a lovely covered walkway back to the main entrance.

I spent about two full hours at Dzibilchaltún, which was plenty for me. I learned a lot about the geography of Yucatán, more about the Maya, got to explore some ruins, spent some time outside, and got scratches and bruises from my adventure. I’d call my morning seized. 🙂

It was still breakfast hour at this point (just before noon), so I had no trouble finding myself some tacos for lunch.

Al pastor tacos in Yucatán are very different than in Sinaloa. I haven’t decided yet if I like them as much or if I need to find a new favourite taco. But these were really good. I couldn’t believe I got all this (which has a very generous portion of Tex-Mex style guacamole under the totopos!) and a real strawberry agua fresca for only $79.

Since I was practically in Mérida, I did a quick blip over to Costco. I was amused to find actual Korean people (there is a sizeable Korean community in Mérida) debating the possible merits of the very kimchi dumplings I was coming to pick up. They put them back…

I got in around 2:00 and by the time I’d played with Puppy and had a swim, it was time for a long chat with a friend by phone, then dinner. It’s now almost 9:00. I forgot how long these posts take to write! At any rate, I hope you enjoyed my morning at Dzibilchatún as much as I did!

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Getting Closer to a Set of Keys

As I suspected, today’s appointment was not to sign the final documents for the house. It was to pay a deposit and to go over final details before making an appointment to sign the lease at a lawyer’s office at a later date. That date would depend on when I could pay the rest of the fees, which total four months of rent. I had expected to need no more than $30,000 by this date to rent a house, but the house is a bit more expensive than planned so I was a little short. If I’d had to, I could have cobbled together the whole amount, but there really was no pressure since the lawyer wasn’t available this week and I can’t get keys until September anyway. I would have had to pay that extra amount for furniture, so it really comes out in the wash. I would feel a little squeezed if I was spending all this money to get an empty house, but I actually feel less stressed than I would have renting a less expensive house!

So what I was paying and signing for today were the “apartado,” which is for the lawyer’s fees, and also a double deposit (which is entirely refundable as long as I return the house in the condition in which I got it). The final amount will be the first month’s rent.

The agent had me tell her the most important thing in each document to make sure that I really did know what I was signing and that we would not need an interpreter at the lawyer’s office. That something important is, not surprisingly, that if I back out, I lose all my money, but if the owners back out, I get it back. As we were finishing up, my agent confessed that she speaks fluent English, but that since the documents aren’t legal unless they’re in Spanish, there’s really no point in us doing any of the transaction in English since I’m clearly understanding everything correctly. She will send me an e-copy of the lease ahead of time to make sure I don’t feel pressured when it comes time to sign and that I can look up anything I don’t understand. The documents today were just one pagers and I didn’t encounter any words I didn’t know.

If anyone wants the contact details for a personable, helpful, English-speaking, and non-pushy real estate firm in Mérida that has listings outside of the expat areas at local market rates, please let me know. Someone actually asked me for them yesterday so she can’t be alone!

We wrapped up pretty quickly, but it was too early to go home since the cleaner was there. I found a yummy lunch and then went to Gran Plaza to do some window shopping. I checked out the movie listings, but nothing good was playing at a convenient time today (I had to be home around 3:30 for the cleaner).

My meeting with the lawyer is in exactly two weeks, the next time the cleaner is here. I can slow the pace down a tad now and will have more free time since I’m not going to spend hours a week looking at real estate listings. Oh, wait, I’m going to replace that time with looking at the classifieds in the hopes of finding my dream fridge. 😀

The owners of the house here have confirmed that they are returning on October 31st so I am now starting a 76-day countdown until I’m back in my own space. I’ve got a lot of pool enjoying and dog cuddling to do by then! 😀