Hell’s Half Acre

We know time moves much slower down here in Mexico and things are done differently. It will generally take 3 or more tries before you can accomplish anything. But after 4 or 5 days of waiting for the palapero to show up and the security guard to tell him that we wanted to see him (to fix the damage to the palapa) we decided to take things into our own hands. The office doesn’t have Dino’s (our palapero) phone number because they prefer to work with David (dah-veeedth). So we talked to the security guard, who is our contact for Dino and told him we were tired of waiting and wanted to get something going, even if it meant going with David (thems fighting words woman!). Sexto, the head security guard looked all over the security shack and could not, for love or money, come up with Dino’s phone number even though he’d had it onceuponatime. Instead he told us Dino lived nearby and gave us vague directions to Dino’s house. Listening to his directions, I realized that we were going to have to cross the land of grievances. We’ve heard that the land next door is currently in dispute and recently someone came running down the beach with a machete wound to the head, obviously the looser in the dispute of the day. So we were quite wary of passing through this land.

We figured Sexto was rather wary of crossing the land also as he was happy to GIVE us directions but didn’t offer to lead us there although he did offer to generally MEET us there. I was not surprised that he never showed up. Against better judgement we headed off to find Dino’s house on bike. We crossed one piece of land that we supposed belonged to Don Beto and looked for the land and house that Sexto had warned us not to go to; without words I got the impression that we’d be better off staying far away. We must have gotten really lucky; we strayed onto the “dispute” land and the owner simply told us that Dino was the next house down. So anti-climatic (other than pushing two bikes and crawling through barbed wire fence).

Dino is here today to right the palapa. He had no idea that we even wanted to see him, so we were quite behind Mexican time. Now we’re finally on Mexican time. We also have contracted a contractor to build the rest of the bodega, the comedor, roof the bodega and baño, build an upper terrace and fix all the other cement hurricane damage. He’ll get to work whenever Dino finishes. Or maybe during. Or who knows. He’s waiting on our Mexican time. If you’ve read Mexican construction blogs you know that we’re also responsible for purchasing all the materials but I’m going to try to get Don Manuel (the contractor) to go with me to the bodegas and pick out the stuff he needs. Over the next few days Dino and his crew will be fixing holes in the roof of the guano (roof of the palapa), removing the back wood balcony, spinning the staircase, replacing bad poles and adding a few more poles and refinishing all the wood. And hopefully will be helping us get the trailer into the palapa. Dino is quite used to working with gringos and while I’m not sure if he speaks English (he does speak Maya and Spanish) he does include all the materials in his price. He’s charging us, in my opinon, quite a load of cash; $2500USD, but I figure it will settle some of the debt that the previous owners left with him; they both agree he is owed at least $1200 from their work. The contractor, Don Manuel, is not used to working with gringos so while his price is rather low, we still need to lower it. He estimates $2700USD for the work (materials not included) but I think that’s high.

And we just found out this morning that the lot next to us was sold and Dino will be building that palapa also. Sob. We’d considered buying that lot also but figured we wouldn’t have anyone considering it until winter. Boy were we wrong. But we’ll at least have Mexican neighbors. They’re from Durango.

I’ll be sure to take pictures but since most of the workers are Mayan and the Maya in general don’t like photos, we’ll see how that goes.