This area where the pool is going was solid rock except for one little walk trail down to the windmill and that trail was about 1/2m wide.  We moved alot of rock to get this pool area.  And then built up the area at the bottom and leveled the ground behind it by building a rock wall.

 Yesterday I made a post about how to fly in your car in Mexico by hitting a speed bump (tope) without slowing down to drive over it.  They are everywhere in the city and also many more per block in the pueblos.   But there is another kind of tope that is seen a lot, but not as much as just the speed bumps.  They are pedestrian tope crosswalks.   And as the name implies, they are for people to cross the street, and people have the right of way.  They also "expect" you to see them about to cross one, and they "expect" you to slow down.  Day or night, it's all the same.  Even if they have on solid black clothing and there is no moon and no streetlights, they expect you to see them and stop.    Emphasis stop .  Not slow down. I've come very close on more than five or six times to hitting someone at night on one, just because they were wearing dark clothing and I couldn't see them about to step out, and I just slowed down to keep from launching myself into t

  Topes and Flying over them.   After making the post last night showing the bull to be slaughtered last night, I was looking again at the photo and thought I'd point out something to anyone in the USA or Canada or anywhere that might be considering a trip or move to Yucatan. The roads here have what I called in the US speed bumps.  They are everywhere.  In the biggest cities, and on many busy roads.  In a few cases you could even see them on a freeway.  Some are wider than others, but most look just like this.  The pueblos have many more per km of road that the large cities.  The message is clear:  slow down. Often times the "topes", as they are called here, will be painted in yellow.  Most of the time, the yellow has worn off, like this one shown here.   Also, most of the time (but not all of the time) there will be a sign to the right of it warning you that there is a tope.    I've learned in Yucatan you have to watch the road and the sidewalk all of the time.  You

 I made a post on August 27th about my discovery of what a cow or bull tied up in the street signifies to the local people.    You can read it here again if you'd like. It means the butcher is showing giving the locals a chance to "inspect" the beef before it's slaughtered that night and it will be available for sale the following day from the butcher.    Saturday market promotion that I had to navigate around going thru the Pueblo to drive to Merida: As we said back in Texas.  Drive Friendly and Share the road.

 I think I posted previously that when I bought my ranch, the reason everybody else had passed on it was because once you left the pueblo of Mayapan, it was only 4 km to the ranch, but that 4 km took at least 25 minutes to drive.  It was the road from hell.   So many big rocks sticking up in the path, and path is really all it was.    A photo of the old road is below, and somewhere back in my postings is a video of driving on the old road.  It was not only slow going, but still beat your brains out.  It was the most dreaded part of any day for me was going or coming from the ranch. From a prior life, I built subdivisions.  Roads, curbs, gutters, underground utilities, and the works.  So I bought my ranch knowing what could be done if I just got a new road to it.   In June I started taking those steps and I had a dozen men with machetes that I pointed "go that way" and that's the way they cleared.  I align myself with my compass and some landmarks and Google Earth when I c

I always enjoyed that line, and song, in My Fair Lady.  The professor had claimed that, given some time, he would make a lady out of Audrey Hepburn's character, Eliza Doolittle, and get rid of her cockney accent.    Click here for the song and scene. I grew asparagus years ago in Texas.  I loved growing it and made a lot of it from just 12 plants, for my family and many friends' families.  We gave away bags and bags of it every week.  And I wanted to grow in here in Yucatan.  But everyone I spoke to said that I would never get it to germinate in Yucatan soil. I have been hoping to find some cash vegetable crops that I could grow on the ranch that would be labor intensive to give me a lot of work for the Mayan helpers I have.  And Asparagus is exactly that.  Which explains why it is so expensive at the grocery stores. It's not a good idea to tell me something is not possible.  It just makes me more determined than ever to at least try and succeed, even at the risk of failure

 About ten days ago I posted about old dogs and new tricks, concerning my foreman showing me how to sprout and grow coconut palm trees from scratch.  I explained that you take ripe coconuts that have fallen from the tree and place them in water or just on very wet, muddy ground.   And after a while it will sprout and bust through the hard shell.  Well?  Today this is what we have from the first batch of 100 coconuts I put out.   More will be like this tomorrow and Salvador said that by Sunday they will all be open and 30 cm or more high.   I was so excited to see this I about Pee'd in my pants.  In fact, I gave him the money to buy 200 more coconuts and we're going to sprout them, and then 700 more.  A total of 1,000 baby palm trees that in 2 years will yield a nut or two.  But in 5 years will be yielding a dozen a piece and should be 3 meters or more tall.  In 5 years, I will have about 20 pesos invested in each one, plus some watering, but I can carry them to Merida and sell

 I wrote in another post about masons in the Yucatan.  They are a proud tradition and a highly sought-after skill.  Some of them, like masons everywhere, take years to develop their skill set, and various years of experience yield various levels of skill. In the post I wrote September 19th, I mentioned about getting my Architect to help train two of my labors in the most basic masonry skill of building a masonry rock wall.   I also mentioned that in Yucatan, (and possibly all Mexico?  I don't know) you refer to a mason with his title before his name, just like an Architect, or Doctor or Lawyer.  You might say Mason Julio can you help me?  Or Architect Edwin, what is this symbol.  If a friendship develops between you and the person, then there could be first names used instead.   In the same way, the mason would refer to me as Don-My-Name. A week ago on Monday, one of the men who is on my construction crew and is by profession a Mason did not show up for work.  Everyone else was the

 Birds and Trees are special things in nature to the Mayan.  We're building several masonry walls around the house at the back and front both.   And when they build a wall, if there is a large stone with a dimple or depression, the Mayan will put up facing up to catch rain water for birds or whatever animals may pass by.   If there isn't a dimple, they'll just chisel one.   I was looking at the progress on a wall at the back today and sure enough, there was a water pool. In this photo of the wall, you can see where they just build the wall over the top of a boulder with a "dimple" bird feeder.   In the background you can see a tree that looks like its got some big tomatoes or something hanging on it.   The Mayans call is Lek or Luch tree.  It is a fruit.  The shell is hard like a coconut and the men at the ranch say it is not edible because it tastes so bad.  But it is good to saw in half, when mature, and make bowls from it.    Today one of my guys was sitting wi

When I planted my banana trees, a friend told me that they grow so fast, you can almost stare at them and see them getting bigger.  I planted this tree one month ago.  And my fingertips of my hand show how high it was then.  Look at it now.

 I was happy to hear today that my local Mayan carpenter had come and quoted us for making all the kitchen cabinets.  Though modest in size because I'm solo, this is still a VERY large order for this man.  Most in the pueblo would not have this much.   It is almost extravagant to the local standards.  This is my architect's 3D rendering.  I have a 4-burner cooktop but instead of a stove I will have a built-in broiler/oven and then beside it a microwave.  Above, and below, each is abundant pantry space because the nearest grocery store is 40km away.  I'll need to stay stocked up on stuff.   When I unloaded the side-by-side refrigerator my 5 hombres all wanted to gather around it and see it.  They stared at it for a long time and wanted to take turns opening the doors and inspecting.  They'd never seen anything as "high tech".    3 of the 5 don't have refrigerators of any kind, so this is a mechanical monster.  And they're especially amazed that drinking

One of the things I love about being here in the pueblo and on the ranch with these Mayans, is that almost every day they teach me something I didn't know.  Many things I'd just never thought about. Today I learned from Salvador, my foreman, how we are going to grow our own coconut palm trees.  I have 20 trees that we planted that are about 5 feet tall now and should have nuts on them (a few) in a year.  But those trees cost almost 400 pesos each (20 bucks). To grow new trees, you just take some coconuts from the variety of tree you want (short or tall, yellow or green) and put them on the ground on really wet muddy soil.  Just lay them there and they will bust open and sprout.   Wallah!  A new baby coconut tree in the making. Coconuts costs about 5 pesos each (25 cents).  To get started I have 100 of them coming in a few days and I'll post a photo of them in a few weeks when they've sprouted.  After they sprout, you just pick them up and put them in some soil about 2/3

 I made a post a couple of weeks ago about my only disappointment in the project so far, when I discovered the blacksmith (Mexican term for welder) had put the front porch roof on differently that I had been imagining for a year.   The angle was just shallow and to me looked like a Taco Bell drive thru or something.   As anxious as I was to get finished, I still went ahead and told them to tear it off and start over on the porch roof. I'm happy I did.  I have what I had imagined all this time I'd have.  A slope on the roof that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also keeps the sun from hitting any part of the porch until about 4:30 in the afternoon, which will make the porch nice and help keep the house from heating up. Below is a photo "Before" and now.  I tried to match them up as close as I could. In the before photo you can see the front corner of the original Mayan house that I have added on to with another addition plus the porch.   So now the wall in the se

 October 3, 2022 Well, have you ever put off something for a while because you were dreading it?  That's me in this case.  It wasn't that it would be terribly hard, but I had never done it before and was a bit scared of the idea of maybe I'd bitten off more than I could chew.    But last Friday I made the decision that today was the day to install the pump down in the well.   Part of the decision was because I just wanted to get it done and stop dreading it, and partly because the house is getting to the point where we have to hook some water up to it.   So Friday, I got my Architect/Manager to agree that he'd help me today and I got to the ranch about 9 and we jumped right in. I already had the pump, and cables, and wiring, and pvc fittings and plenty of PVC tubes to reach down 13 meters.  We got those all out of the bodega and Salvador helped us carry it all down, and then . . .we jumped into the project.   To my great benefit, neither of them knew how to do it, so I

  As I've already told anyone reading this blog, my pueblo near the ranch, is Mayan.  I guess most pueblos in Yucatan are too.  Mayan in Yucatan are the indigenous people.  Many things in life in the pueblos go on today as it has for a 100 years or more.  There are still some pueblos here that are not on a road, but far off the roads, have no electricity or running water, no schools, and life exists today for the inhabitants as it did 300 years ago.     The pueblos offer many colorful traditions, that probably gringos would find "backward" or primitive.   It's fine with me.  I'm looking here for simple and peaceful, and Mayan living has helped to wean me off the steady-slow-IV-drip of consumerism I've lived with in the states for many, many years. At my ranch, 3 km from the pueblo, I have 5 men from the pueblo who work for me clearing, planting, climbing trees, killing poisonous snakes, animal care, plant care, fence building and sometimes just helping me up o