Home Sweet Home...

We have had 2 days to get settled in, and it's not enough. But we are making progress. We had official visa business to get done today so it meant a trip across the north shore of the lake to the city of Chapala. When we came back we made an effort to capture some photos of our entrance. Our property is about half a mile down a dirt track just off the main highway that we drove all the way from Nogales, Arizona to here.

But first, this is what it was like upstairs on the bedroom terrace at dawn. The first photo is facing east where the sun rises out of the lake. 

This second photo is facing north-northwest across the valley and Jocotepec to the south
shore mountains. You can see the fog rolling through the pass to the left. It burned off rapidly.

On the way home, this is Independencia Avenue (it's true, not just a joke) that leads us to the
driveway....Look at the lower hill, and find the tree at the top of the hill. Our property goes
downhill from that tree to the bottom by the road. The house is halfway up the hill but not
visible from this angle.

 Here's a closeup.

And this is the entrance into the ejido de San Martin

 Our neighbourhood is called the ejido of San Martin (San Martin is the pueblo out near the highway). Ejidos are communal Mexican property given to peasants after the revolution. Lately, some of them have privatized their land so they can sell their parcels. We have one of those parcels (7 acres).

Well folks, this is our new driveway. Before this, it was a steep rocky deeply rutted track up the mountain that washed out every rainy season. We tried all sorts of things, but the 500 foot long driveway prevented us from most of the options as being too expensive. This past year, our neighbour and caretaker Don, a retired contractor from Arizona, figured out a reasonable way to pave it and told us he would supervise the whole process accepting no payment. In the end, it saved us a huge amount of money. Even better, despite extremely torrential downpours in September, the paving stayed put. The middle section between the concrete treads, was filled with rock and then topped up with a concrete slurry. In the rains, grass managed to grow right up through it, which was a God send, because it knit the whole thing together and prevented any erosion or washing out of the treads. It has been a huge success. Thanks Don!!!

 The lake is at 5,000 feet elevation. Independencia Avenue is 5225 feet, our house is 5328 feet and the top of the property is 5400 feet. You can see from that just how steep the driveway is. The photos do not adequately convey the reality.

Up at the top, the driveway takes a sharp dogleg to the left and up onto the terraced platform where the house was built. The house is actually quite small. The edge of the covered terrace on the back of the house is only 13 feet from the exposed rock face of the mountain. You will see that in a moment. But first for the newbies, I need to tell them how this house was built. It will look large, but do trust me when I say it is NOT. It just has large covered terraces on three sides which give it the illusion of much greater size. It is only 700 square feet, plus another 1,000 square feet of exterior terraces. The little casita next door is another 200 square feet. It serves as a guest residence, main level bathroom and laundry. When we aren't here, we use it as a secure storage shed where we lock up all the valuable equipment.

When we started building in 2005, there was no power into the ejido. The closest transformer was about half a mile away or more. The ejido had just drilled a community well at the entrance, but there was not way to access it without power. Considering the awful access we had up onto the building site, and the fact that we had no facilities at all, you can appreciate the total hand labour that went into building this house. Our Mexican neighbour supervised three other very talented local albanils (masons), who were brothers and worked very well together. They managed to build it totally by hand with no power tools. The description of how they did this would be a book in itself, so you will have to imagine it yourself. They took 20 months to do it.

This is the back terrace I told you about. It is both a sun trap and sheltered from the breezes coming
off the lake, so we spend a lot of time here as the winter deepens and the temperatures start to fall. The climate here is a moderate one because of the elevation but frost free. It is moderated by the influence of the lake. In summer the high temperatures are around 85F and in winter around 70-75F. The lows in the winter will drop into the low 50s. We rely on the strength of the sun to heat up the masonry mass during the day, and it holds it overnight.
Please note the twisted igneous rock face on the mountain. I just love the exposed surface. The oldest of the albanil brothers, Jose Luis, built all the rock walls around the garden after the house was built.

The back terrace off the kitchen. The main floor has only 2 rooms, a living room across the
front and a kitchen-diner across the back. The upstairs has only the main bedroom and bathroom. You see? Really, a 3 room house!!

There is a lake view from this back garden area, which you can see best from the little patio area open to the sun. 

I hope you all enjoy the photos of the outside of El Nido. Once I get the inside tidy I will show you that too..

Hasta la vista,
Barbara and Rick