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| Colourful Juarez Avenue |
It’s almost 2017, time for that inevitable New Year’s Resolution – get more exercise! So, here’s an idea for you: take a stroll along colourful Juarez Avenue on Isla Mujeres. Enjoy the fun buildings. Enjoy the sunshine.
And stop for lunch or a
cold beverage. Hey, you are still exercising; you are just rewarding yourself
for the effort.
There are more
than a dozen interesting structures on Juarez Avenue with wild colour
combinations and murals, or covered in bits of mosaic. Starting at the southern
end, behind the navy base and heading north, there is a lot to see.
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| Fluffy white dog and kitty share their chairs |
First, there is Dede Clark’s tall, narrow home featuring a recent street-side addition of two benches painted to resemble delicate chairs.
Friendly images of a fluffy white dog plus a black and white cat invite you to join them in quiet contemplation of their neighbourhood.
Across the street from her house is a single-level house decorated in hot pink and fuchsia, with a wild assortment of mythical trees, psychedelic flowers and solar images.
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| La Lomita Restaurante |
A few steps further is the busy La Lomita Restaurante, decked out in flowers and images, welcoming its guests to enter.
As you crest the small rise, look to the left. Red Buddha Yoga
& Wellness centre glows a ruby red in the morning sun, directly across from another multi-coloured, artistically decorated home.
At the first cross
street, a solitary woman boldly stands at the corner of a derelict building.
She
is wearing an eclectic mix of leather and feathers or perhaps tatty fur. What
appears to be a World War Two pilot’s helmet is pulled tightly over her short hair,
the goggles pushed up and away from her eyes. She has an oddly compelling face.
Defiant, yet apprehensive, staring at something only she can see.
Don’t give up exploring when you come to the more commercial-looking buildings that are prevalent in
the next two blocks; there is more to be discovered. A little further north of the pedestrian-only
street is another home covered in a mosaic of tiles, glass, paint and poetry.
It was a painstaking process for the young artist as she studied each piece
before adding it to her creation.
Then there are a few of the old original wood homes with tin roofs, built when Isla Mujeres was a fishing village. We call them the ‘painted ladies.’
They resemble the Victorian-era homes with their intricate architectural details and interesting colour combinations.
The interior-decorating business at 13 Juarez Galeria is another fun older building highlighted with orange, green, turquoise and yellow.
At the corner of Juarez and Matamoras, there are four beautiful structures: the terracotta-coloured Mundaca Real Estate office, the pink, yellow, and blue Café Cito, the wooden painted lady belonging to Tony Garcia’s auntie, and the hand-crafted stonewall surrounding the home of long time-islander Hettie Veneziano, who recently passed away.
Our current
favourite is close by. It is a newly
remodelled space with a sky-blue wall, pink-trimmed doors and windows, and mango-coloured interior courtyard walls.
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| Love the colours! |
We don’t know who owns the property, but what a cheerful addition to the
neighbourhood.
There are many more buildings with murals and amusing paint combinations scattered all along the street.
Get out there and enjoy colourful
Juarez Avenue.
On a
personal note, thank you to the many readers of my new e-book novel, Treasure Isla, for leaving reviews on
Amazon. It’s a huge boost to my energy level as I am working through the
intricacies of the sequel.
A very happy and
prosperous New Year to everyone,
Lynda, Lawrie, Sparky and Tommy
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| Happy New Year, everyone from Sparky |
Or
2 comments:
Will be reading Treasure Isla next week. Cant wait to read it. Loved this article. Will use it for reference when I go to Red Buddha daily.
Lynn Warner
Thank you Lynn, I hope you enjoy my first novel. The sequel is underway. Cheers Lynda
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