San Pancho Vida

The Case of the Disappearing Doors

It was a dark and stormy night...somewhere, but not in Guadalajara that day last week when I went with El Arquitecto to inventory the doors at Salvage Guy’s. Two days previously, we had been there for 6 hours, doing who knows what, and had arranged to return to go to the Other Warehouse to look at (read “count”) the doors I’ve been purchasing in spates for three years.

Salvage Guy was futzing around on the patio when we arrived. Although he returned my “¿Como estás?” with a “Bien bien”, he didn’t look bien bien. He looked like he’d been run over by a Corona truck. He was unshaven, disheveled, baggy eyed and dismayed. He soon admitted that he had a problema. A big problema.

To make an excruciatingly long story short, three (or maybe four) of my doors had gone Missing. Apparently Salvage Guy’s wife had mistakenly (probably) sent them to Ajijic to sell on consignment. S.G. had (maybe) driven to Ajijic yesterday to track them down, but the place she had consigned them to seemed not to be there any more, replaced (according to S.G.) by a car repair shop.

“No problema,” said I (although Arquitecto, a normally calm guy, was looking fairly apoplectic). “I’m going to Ajijic tomorrow! What a stroke of luck! I will look for them myself.” Perhaps, from S.G.’s facial expression, this was not what he would consider a stroke of luck, but he put on a brave face and wrote down for me all he knew about the guy in Ajijic who had received my doors (some time ago, apparently). Mostly, this was the guy’s name.

In Ajijic, I explained the situation to Travis and Allen, my hosts. Being excellent hosts, they immediately offered to have a field trip and go track down the doors. I called El Arquitecto to tell him. 

“AhA!” he said in his charming English. “You will be Sherlock Holmsing! You need a...what do you call it in English? A lupa. You know, those round glass things you look through?”

“A magnifying glass,” I said.

“That’s it!” said he. “Put on your Sherlock hat. Oh, what an adventure!” 

Travis and Allen and I climbed in the old Honda and headed out. We started in Chapala because we were hungry. But first we had to go see the new Jesus statue in the lake.

 

Then, we had to go eat.

Allen and I had carne en su jugo (beef in its juice) which was warm and tasty and just the thing for detectiving. Travis had the zapote which was a chalupa. I helped him eat it. He suggested, since we were already in Chapala, that we stop at a junk/antique place he knew of over by the train station and see if the people there knew this guy we needed to track down (let's call him Alejandro, because that's his name). 

The train station:

 

(No trains stop here. That's a story for later.)

We turned into an unlikely neighborhood and found a little shop with some interesting stuff in it, including some old doors.

But they were not my doors. We asked the woman there if she knew Alejandro. Not only did she know him, but she provided directions (not easy directions, and all in Spanish) to Travis, the Driving Detective, who decided we needed further fortifying before we tackled this part of the adventure.

So we went back to the malecón for gelato.

It was really, really good gelato. So good, in fact, that we were sufficiently energized to continue the search. We headed back into Ajijic, hung a right at the overturned cement truck blocking the intersection which they STILL hadn't managed to pull upright, and cruised observantly up the hill past all the new housing developments. No stores, no warehouse, not even an auto repair shop to be seen. Travis turned around at the top of the hill and started back. We had just begun to admit temporary defeat when suddenly he yelled, "That's it!! That has to be it!", slammed on the brakes and squealed into a gravel lot. Allen threw open the car door, strode to the iron gate, then leapt back as a snarling dog hurled itself against the bars.

By now, we were all together. "Hola?" we offered timidly. "Anybody here?" A man appeared. A smiling, friendly man, who took his dog to its chain where it lay, wagging, as he let us in. Yes, he was closed, but come on in anyway. Sure enough, his name was Alejandro. He recognized one of the photos I detectively had brought along.

He'd had that door, some time ago, but sold it. "Sold it?" I wailed, once I'd figured out what he was saying in Spanish. "To whom?" Well, to a woman in Chapala who owns a shop near the train station. 

Still no trains...

So I took his picture...

...and off we went, back to Chapala.

The woman at the Chapala shop did not seem thrilled to see us return, for some reason. Perhaps this was because I happened to mention as we were leaving the last time that we were trying to track down some doors that I had PAID FOR and that had somehow hitched a ride to Ajijic. This time I showed her the picture. She knew the door immediately. She had, she explained, sold it. In December.

Well #@**!&%!. It was one of my favorites, too. The others aren't that important. In fact, I didn't even want one of them. But fooey. So I took another picture of her shop. That'll show her.

 

On the other hand, we had solved part of the mystery, the part I cared about. We were planning to go to some other Ajijic antiquey shops and look for the others, but we got sidetracked.

I called El Arquitecto and reported in. 

"We solved the door mystery," I said. 

"You did! I can't believe it! Fantastic!" he exulted, until I told him the outcome. He's not all that happy with Salvage Guy at the moment, or with Wife of Salvage Guy, either, although El Arq is a compassionate sort and has already found plenty of reasons to forgive. I have too, although I still think we should get something out of it, but that's probably just my Sicilian and Basque heritage oozing out. 

I have to go now because I have to rearrange all the doors on the second floor before first light and send the new plans to El Arqui's daughter La Arquitecta before all the holes are bricked in, which the builders are doing tomorrow (probably). And then I have to envision the Perfect Door for the master bedroom to replace the disappeared one, which I will strongly encourage Salvage Guy to manifest ASAP.

Tripping to Guadalajara

They're pouring concrete for the bedroom floor this week, and it will take a while for the walls to go up, so this seemed like a good time for a trip to Guadalajara with El Arquitecto. Drives with El Arqui are always a trip.

As with so many things in Mexico, one has to go backwards to get sideways. Guadalajara is due east of San Pancho, but you have to go north first on the highway to Las Varas, then up a steep and nasty piece of road to Compostela, then southeast to Guad. Normally this can be done in four and a half hours or so, but I suspend any expectation of anything direct or speedy.

Our first unscheduled stop is in La Peñita for "five minutes" at the nursery.

 

We wander about, admiring palms and gingers, jasmines and fat red heliconias.

 

We're still several months from being able to plant, but it's lots of fun to examine the options. We discuss texture and placement and dirt, and after a longish visit with the owner who abandons his midday tortillas to chat, we're off again.

We almost make it to the Pemex station until El Arqui asks if I've tasted jaca (jackfruit), so we have to stop at a roadside stand and buy some for me to try. Not as easy as it sounds, as it involves watching the vendor open the huge, prickly, sticky fruit, clean it and carefully remove the edible nuggets which I find delicious. The orange variety tastes like cantaloupe, and the yellow is tropical and fragrant. The tree is slender and looks hardly able to hold its giant fruits. We add jackfruit to the list of trees to buy for the orchard.

Without fog, rain, or big slow trucks, the twisty road to Compostela is no problema. Before long we are high on the plateau, with views opening up--mountains and valleys, cultivated fields of blue agave, little towns scattered like spilled pearls. Time to stop at another roadside stand for some fresh-squeezed mandarin orange juice, pulpy and seedy and tasting like sunshine.

Now we are passing wide fields of sugar cane ready for harvest, feathery as pampas grass waving in the breeze. Have I tasted jugo de caña? NO? How is this possible? How about a detour? So we leave the cuota, the faster toll-road, and enter the libre--the pokey free road--into the tiny town of Santa Isabel. El Arquitecto knows of a stand where an old couple squeezes the best juice from fresh sugar cane. Sure enough, there is the old lady, who reproaches El A. for having stayed away so long. She pours us plastic cups of greenish-gray juice. It tastes the tiniest bit grassy and not as sugary sweet as I expect, and is cool and refreshing once you get past the color.

 

Of course, there is more to this visit than cane juice. There is fresh sage honey and molasses to buy and giant squashes to try on.

There is mango candy and coconut candy and brown sugar candy to consider, and a clever little parrot to chat with.

Finally we say our lengthy goodbyes and promise to return. I leave the parrot there, although I am sorely tempted to become a birdnapper.

Soon we are driving through stark stretches of black rock, lava fields from the eruption in the 1870's of the nearby volcano Ceboruco. We return to the cuota before Ixtlán del Río and summon the discipline not to go into the town of Jala and visit the witch. Instead, we unwrap divine sandwiches of fresh cheese and vegetables prepared for us by Arqui's angel wife, and finish a bag of chips.

From Jala past Tequila, I nearly get whiplash looking at the view. This is a stunningly beautiful area of rolling hills studded with oak trees and vistas of the Sierra Madre. I fantasize for a bit about building a stone hacienda in the hills...but I guess I have my hands full at the moment. We cross the line from Nayarit into Jalisco and enter the outskirts of Guadalajara. I recognize right away that we'll have to make another stop. Here is the restaurant that makes El Arquitecto's favorite tamales, and beside it a stand for corn on the cob, to which he is addicted. (I usually pass, having found the corn in Mexico a very different culinary experience than young, tender sweet corn. It takes me a week to get it out of my teeth.) We pull off, precariously, and he buys a sack of tamales to take to his sister, then happily devours a steamed cob sprinkled with chile.

By now, I am craving the peace and solitude of a nice hotel room. There's still some heavy traffic to stop-and-go through. We arrange the morning start to our busy tomorrow, congratulate ourselves on an excellent trip, and soon enough Arqui drops me off at my lovely hotel and heads to his sister's. 

Guess where we're going first thing in the morning? Salvage Guy's!!

 

Javier

This adorable little fellow is Javier. I met him on the beach one day selling small multi-colored bobble-head animals for twenty pesos each. They were nicely displayed in a tattered old Frisbee. He had the idea to take each one out and put it on my table, saying its Spanish name for me.

The first time we met, I chose one, a cowboy on a peculiar horse, for my sister. After verifying the price, I gave him two ten peso coins. His sweet smile immediately turned south. Eyes downcast, he shook his head. “Veinte,” he said. Twenty. “Si, Javier, es veinte. Diez y diez.” Ten and ten. Now his pout deepened. “No,” he said. “Veinte.” I pulled out my wallet and shuffled through the pockets until I found a crinkled twenty peso note. His eyes brightened, he took it from my hand, thanked me, and scampered back to find his parents.

Javier’s family are vendadores, sellers of baskets they make themselves. They are a sweet couple with gentle smiles. As I was leaving the beach that day, I went to his mother and told her the story of the coins. He doesn’t know, I explained, that there is another way to make twenty. She laughed and shook her head. “Javier, Javier,” she said, full of maternal pride.

The next time I visited, I brought Javier some tiny cars to play with, and now we are fast friends. I ask him to tell me the colors of the animals (in Spanish) and sometimes he is correct. During my May ’09 visit, when the swine flu panic and the U.S. economy did a double whammy on Mexico tourism, the beaches were empty, the vendors waiting all day for a single sale or none at all. Needless to say, I bought more bobble-heads from Javier over the days, mostly choosing pigs to take back to my flu-wary friends at home as a little joke. I only bought one at a time, pacing myself--and him. Once I offered him two ten-peso coins, just to see what happened. His little brow twitched with suspicion--then he looked in my eyes, and when I gave a nod, he took them. 

Toward the end of my stay, Javier appeared at my table once more. “Javier!” I said. “Mas animales? Ya tengo siete. Siete es mucho!” I already have seven, seven is a lot! He looked at me with his solemn brown eyes as if I were hopelessly confused. “No, senora. Siete no es mucho. Ocho es mucho!” So now I have eight.

*** 

A postscript: Javier turned four last June 5. I get luscious hugs from him when he sees me at the beach. He is now enrolled in the kindergarten here in San Pancho during his parents’ workday on the beach. He tells me, beaming, how much he loves his teacher.

With modest pride, he shows me page after page of his coloring book. I’m not at all sure he knows his colors yet, but he may be a budding engineer. We had a chat a few days ago as I shared my shrimp tostada with him, all about our favorite foods. We both have many, so it was a good long chat. (I've found there's nothing like chatting with little children for practicing one's Spanish--they are invariably patient and frank with their instruction.) At one point, he asked me if I liked banana juice. “Banana juice?" I said. "I like bananas but I don’t think I’ve ever had banana juice." At which point he slid off his hammock and drew me a detailed map in the sand of La Peñita, the town north of us where he lives, with stores and even the bus station, poking with his stick at the corner where the man makes, so Javier reports, delicious jugo de platanos.

I promised I’d try it.

***

Another postscript: I've learned over the years that Javier's mama is really his aunt, who has taken him to raise for mysterious reasons. I'm happy to report, three years after initially writing this post, that Javier is still going to school regularly, can speak some English, and is as smart and sweet as he was at 3 years old.

A Lot of Flavor

Early on in my casa-design phase, I received by email this delightful proposal:

Hi,  That such Mrs. Candice, as are you, look at, I write because his data they passed me some people that know that you bought a land in San Francisco Nayarit, and I am putting me to his orders in questions of construction, I have a build company, and wanted to talk with you on my services, I send him data of the same one:

A lot of flavor, and I expect its answer

Ing. (signature deleted)

Now, I did not hire this particular builder, and although his proposal was strangely translated (to put it mildly), after a good bout of hilarity I also found it strangely...inspiring.

I really liked that part about “a lot of flavor”. I like things with a lot of flavor, don’t you? Good Cesar salads with anchovies, chocolate ice cream, street tacos with all the salsas. Certain books and gardens. Circuses. Museums, sometimes. Road trips. Houses. 

Shortly after receiving the email, I took a road trip to Guadalajara with El Arquitecto (whom I didchoose as builder). He took me to the lair of Salvage Guy--a warehouse hidden in the middle of a semi-residential neighborhood hidden somewhere in the convoluted streets of that large and motley city. One enters through a patio strewn with pieces of things: cantera stone objects, old windows, hunks of cornice and chunks of fountain, unidentifiable miscellany. I knew right away it was My Kind of Place.

Through the first door is a home strewn with other kinds of objects. More furniture than should naturally fit, paintings and crucifixes and doodads covering walls, low-slung dogs and small sticky children running amok. Down a hall past rooms like wrecked galleons is the door to the warehouse. Carefully down the wood steps, as they too are strewn, and here we are:

 

  

Ha! Is that flavorful, or what? Needless to say, I lost my mind immediately. Over the course of several more visits to Salvage Guy, I purchased several dozen old doors and objects de junque to add to--even to determine--the flavor of Casa Luz de Luna. I bought a thirteen foot high rusted lamppost. I bought a weathered owl of cantera. I bought...I can't remember what I bought, but I'll find out when it all gets delivered. I sent this photo in an email to my friend Travis with the note:

'I bought the thing on the right for me and the thing on the left for you'.

 

I didn't really buy the skeleton, although I might one day. I did buy the thing on the right which will be a table on the terrace. 

Every door in the interior of the casa will be different, mostly because I couldn't decide so I just kept saying "Okay." They are totally impractical and will have to be sealed and fitted and hardwared, but they are old and tasty. Here are a few:

 

Here is a peek at the front doors to the house: 

They are three meters high. That would be ten feet. They will go up to the ceiling and I will look like an elf when I open them to you.

But y' know, they are 200 years old and came from a convent and...how could I resist?

Wishing you A Lot of Flavor today and always.

What's Happened Up to Now

I have some catching up to do. Approximately three years worth. I’m going to do it very quickly so as not to bore anyone. Take a deep breath. Ready, set, go. 

In December of 2006, after exploring a number of likely spots to build a house in Mexico, my husband Dick and I found San Pancho, a little village an hour north of Puerto Vallarta in the state of Nayarit. We fell in love with the pueblo and with a big lot in the jungle (in an about-to-be-developed area just outside the village) covered with vines and palms and crawly things and crowned by a giant tree with iguanas and an owl in it. However, due to those same (protected) palms and a (premature) road and a convoluted beaurocracy, the developers still had no permits to begin making the jungle into building lots by May 2008.

So I flew to San Pancho to see what was going on. The answer was “pretty much nothing”. I shook off the sadness and disappointment and decided to look around for other options. Connie from Texas introduced me to Jesse (‘the Indiana Jones of San Pancho’). Jesse took me and Travis and Allen (yes, you’ll get to know who all these people are eventually) out to look at houses for sale but I didn’t want a house made by somebody else, so he showed us this double lot right in the pueblo on the hill above the soccer field and the polo field and it was a whole change of direction but had potential.

Plus I’d been spending all my time on many visits living in rentals in the pueblo and I kind of really liked it in the pueblo.

And also I found out that the giant tree with the owl and the iguanas on the jungle lot had just up and fallen over, and that seemed like a sign to me.

So I took some pictures of the pueblo lot and emailed them to Dick and then I bought it.

(This is the top, level-ish part. It drops away drastically at the left. Doesn't it look lovely?) 

The lot closed pretty darn quickly, but that turned out to be a tease, as it then took a ridiculously long time to finish the fusion of the lots (that’s to make the two lots into one so we only have one fideicomiso which is a legal trust thingy you have to have if you’re not Mexican and buy property near the coastline), and then an even more ridiculously long time to get a building permit. Some other creepy stuff happened during that time but first I have to find out if they can throw me out of the country if I tell you about it.

Meanwhile, back when we were still waiting for the jungle lot, I met El Arquitecto (in fact, we designed a house for the jungle lot but let’s not think about that big waste of time and money) and we got to be good pals and decided to work together on the current project. But this time I started by designing a whole floor plan then gave it to him to more or less design a house around, and then we changed a lot of things and tweaked things (and are still tweaking things), and it is being a true and delightful collaboration.

El Arquitecto (who has been building in Mexico for 40 years or so) has a bunch of fabulous craftsmen he works with including the Palapa Guy and the Tile Guy and the Carpenter Guy and the Stonework Guy and omigod wait ‘til I tell you about the Salvage Guy!!

Okey dokey. That’s about it. Any questions?