Balance, Muscles, Coordination, building in Mexico!

Barefoot, casually balanced on top of our eight-foot-high patio wall, he slides the paint roller up to the top of the house, and back down again. His roller handle is constructed out of three five-foot lengths duct-taped together into one long, oversized handle. 

It’s hard, hot work in the tropical summer heat. He makes it look so easy. Up, down, up, down, dip the roller in the bucket and repeat. Nothing to it. 

It’s all in the balance, muscles and coordination. 

We often marvel at the easy grace of the local construction workers, performing difficult jobs with little or no equipment. Most worksites in Mexico would cause pulse-pounding night sweats for American OSHA or Canadian WCB safety inspectors. 

 

Scaffolding created out of lengths of wood, used and reused for every job site. 

 

Ladders nailed together in varying lengths and sizes, the steps a combination of wide, narrow, skinny, and thick. 

My favourite ladder photo!

 

Bracing, cobbled together from more bits and pieces of lumber, concrete blocks for levelling, and wire to tie the whole mess together. 

 

Our expressions of concern over their choices of equipment are met with good-natured grins, laughter. “No problemo.”

Concrete work is tedious. The sand, water and cement are mixed usually by hand or sometimes with a portable mixer. Then tendon-popping, ligament-straining twenty-litre buckets are filled, handed up overhead and lifted again to the next set of hands, and re-lifted to the top of the structure. 

The expensive pumper trucks are reserved for very large pours that can’t be accomplished in one day by the crew. 

Many workers are barefoot or wear ninety-nine-cent plastic sandals or flip-flops. 

Work gloves? Eye protection? Dust masks? Hard hats? No, no, no, and definitely no.

When our house and several of the houses along this road were built, the contractor instructed the workers to dig down to the bedrock before pouring the foundation. Some of the excavations went down eleven, twelve, thirteen, and for one house sixteen feet to find a firm base for the foundations.

 It’s a pretty good bet these houses will withstand a direct hit by a hurricane; however, watching the guys dig the holes, I could hardly stand it. There were no reinforcements of any kind. 

The part of my brain that stores the little bits of useful or sometimes useless trivia to do with safety, first aid, and cave-ins was spinning at 70000 RPM, looking for info on what to do if the walls collapsed. 

Thankfully, the information was not needed – this time.

I know I have said it before, but Mexico reminds us so much of Canada in the 1950s and 60s, before workplace safety regulations, before OSHA and WCB, when we too were casually indifferent to our safety. 

 

Now, we worry and fret about these guys, many of whom have become good friends. 

 

They are dads, and brothers, nephews, and sons.  Good guys, nice guys, hardworking guys. 

 

Hopefully, their balance, muscles and coordination will keep them safe. 

 

Even pets have good balance and coordination 

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Silly fun and sacred rituals: Halloween and Día de Los Muertos

Sponge Bob and Spider-person

Halloween: it’s the one time of year when perfectly normal people happily make fools of themselves playing dress-up!  

Lawrie and I love costume parties, especially when there is enthusiastic participation of other friends in the zany fun. 

In previous lives, we have worn some unusual outfits.

One year, I was an armless pumpkin requiring assistance to sip a drink through a straw.  Lawrie, on the other hand, was fetchingly attired in a green gingham dress.  Another year, I was a bruised-up accident victim, and he was the attending doctor.  More recently, we were a pirate wench and a headless butler, followed by Miss Piggy and Elmo. For the third year in a row, Curtis and Ashley Blogin hosted their annual costume party for invited guests at Villa la Bella.    

Sponge Bob and Spider-person who didn't have a clue!

This year, my date was a very handsome SpongeBob, while I was attired as Spider-person. I had a slight costume failure, arriving at the party wearing my costume backwards. Apparently, getting dressed without the aid of a mirror or without looking at the end result before heading out to a party is a very bad idea. 

SpongeBob was of no assistance with wardrobe advice as he couldn’t see his own feet, never mind what I was wearing. 

SpongeBob also had a slight physical challenge; he could not reach his mouth with a beverage container, so he cleverly inserted a length of clear plastic tubing up his arm and into his mouth to aid with the consumption of a beer or two.  

 

Richard and Linda Grierson

Halloween or All Hallows Eve is still a relatively unknown tradition in Mexico. The dress-up, trick-or-treat customs originated in Europe and the British Isles and were brought to North America by settlers. Eventually, the traditions found their way into parts of Mexico via television and stores like Walmart, Sam’s Club and Costco. Immediately following Halloween are two very important Mexican national celebrations. 

 

November 1^st, Día de Los Inocentes honours children, and November 2nd, Día de Los Muertos, honours adults. In Mexico, the rituals and celebrations venerating ancestors can be traced back about 3000 years to the Olmec, Aztec, and Maya civilizations.

The Día de Los Muertos celebrations include building private altars using sugar skulls, marigolds, favourite foods and beverages of the departed.  Some families leave a pillow and blanket outside the door to provide a resting place for their loved ones. In many settlements, people have picnics at the gravesite of their family members, including the departed in the feast. 

The holiday is celebrated joyfully with food, music, or parades with elaborate costumes in the bigger cities. The emphasis is on honouring the lives of the dead, rather than fearing evil or malevolent spirits.

Flowers being delivered via UltraMar for Day of the Dead

Our traditional North American Halloween merriments are small in comparison to the Día de Los Muertos celebrations – but various North American and European symbols such as witches, pumpkins, vampires, bats and black cats are slowly permeating the Mexican festivities. 

 

We have recently started to participate in the Día de Los Muertos rituals. We have a small altar in the kitchen, decorated with photos of our parents, flowers and candles and mementos. Just something to remind us of those special people. 

It is a fun time of year with the costume parties, and a contemplative time remembering our family members.

Hasta luego

Lynda & Lawrie

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What a Beautiful Noise! Daily life in Mexico.

A man on a motorcycle slowly cruises past our house. He is singing a Spanish love song at the top of his voice, oblivious that we are eavesdropping from our upper-floor deck. The sound is beautiful, haunting. We frequently perch on this street-side deck with our feet resting on the aluminum railings, our toes wiggling a hello to passing friends.  With a morning cup of coffee or an evening glass of wine in hand, we are watching and listening to locals. 

We are voyeurs!

This island thrives on noise, music, and laughter. 

Early in the morning, the honking of a bicycle horn lets us know the tortilla vendor has started his route, followed by the whine of motorcycles as they whiz past depositing teenagers at the college, and still later we hear the squeal of brakes, slamming of car doors and laughter as kindergarten students arrive at school. 

Walk through any neighbourhood and you will hear the overhead noise of a rooftop alarm system, the family dog, peering over the edge, barking at anything or anyone that infringes on his territory.

As the day progresses, the sounds change. 

Every vendor or delivery person has their own signal to let customers know they are nearby. Want freshly squeezed orange juice? Just wait for the beep-beep of the moto horn outside your door. 

 

Need a 20L bottle of agua purificada?  Two blasts from a truck’s horn and the squeak of the suspension – and you know the Cristal delivery truck has arrived. 

The deliverymen for the small portable bottles of propane have a recorded song that reverberates from a speaker: Zeta Zeta, Zeta gas. 

 

The cheese salesman sings a short refrain offering queso queso as he balances the large wheel of cheese on his head. The knife-sharpener tootles a set of panpipes, trudging through the various neighbourhoods. 

 

Businesses like Super X-Press and Chedraui hire car-and-drivers with loudspeakers to cruise the island advertising the weekly specials. The municipality uses a similar method for advising islanders of upcoming important public events. 

 

The really intriguing part of this boisterous culture is the number of parades that take place annually, complete with music, costumes, decorated floats, and hundreds of marching participants. 

We have many photos of Christmas parades, the Night of the Kings, Carnival parades that happen nightly for a week, political parades, Independence Day, Revolution Day, cowboys riding to the bull fight-ring, caged lions and tigers complete with loud music advertising the circus, numerous religious celebrations, and national holidays.  

 

 

 

 

Then added on top of the parades are the five or maybe six annual fishing tournaments, and a music festival that attracts islanders and visitors alike – the noise level just keeps increasing.

And then there are times when the noise is a bit too much; the over-loaded mufflerless dump trucks racing to catch the last car ferry off of the island, the poorly maintained city garbage trucks that blat and grind and wheeze along the roads like old men struggling with a bad case of gas. 

 

Some businesses, like Farmacias Similares, seem to have a corporate policy of annoying the general public with exceptionally loud music piped outside for everyone to enjoy from early afternoon until late at night.  Even our favourite store, Chedraui Super Store, has earsplittingly loud music blasting from the stereos, competing with in-store music, announcements of today’s specials, or requests for a manager to call the service desk.     Oh joy!

The ocean-side view at our island home.

We grew up in a relatively quiet country, Canada, where noise is quite strictly regulated. We have lived on country acreages, in rural homes, and in a converted warehouse-condo located on Beatty Street in Vancouver, BC.

Living here is similar to residing downtown in a big city where the ambient noise level is ever-present, but with a lot fewer people creating the noise - that beautiful noise. 

When it all becomes too much for us, we can retreat to the ocean-side of the house and listen to our favourite noise of all; the sound of waves sliding in from the Caribbean Sea, swooshing up onto the beach, slowly receding, and gently pulling the white sand back into the ocean.    

 

Ah! Joy!

Hasta luego

Lynda and Lawrie

 

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Wood-fired corn tortillas – little cakes!

Restaurante Kinich in Izamel, Mexico.

Soft words float in the semi-dark hut, curling towards the ceiling with the drifting wood smoke. A gentle rhythmic sound filters between the words: pat-pat. Pat-pat.  Pat. 

Perched on small stools near a low, wood-burning fire, three dark-haired women chat amiably while they hand-make corn tortillas. 

Is this a scene from a previous century?  No. It is present day at the Restaurante Kinich, one of our favourite places to eat when we are in the pretty colonial City of Izamal. There is nothing like fresh corn tortillas, hot off the griddle! Tasty!

 

In Mexico, the dietary mainstay of most families is the tortilla made from corn, white maize.  The national average consumption per person in Mexico is 120 kilos, or around 264 pounds of tortillas per year; presumably, adults consume more than the national average, babies and toddlers considerably less. The versatility of this popular food is endless. They are used for tacos, flautas, burritos, and enchiladas, used as utensils to scoop up food, and, when necessary, used as a small plate. 



My sister Valdine in 2008 at Tortilladoras near our house

When we first moved to Isla Mujeres, there were several tortilladoras scattered around the island neighbourhoods, making fresh tortillas every morning. By seven in the morning, the delivery boys could be heard honking their bicycle horns, advertising the fresh hot tortillas. 

My sister Joann, who lives on Isla during the summer, likes to purchase from one of the smaller establishments two or three tortillas at a time - completely confounding the clerks. 

Sister Joann in the new Chedraui Store

“How much do we charge?” They wonder.

Eventually, Joann decided to buy the normal amount and give the unwanted remainder to someone else to enjoy. I’m sure they still chuckle about the “Crazy Gringa.”

With the arrival of the large Chedraui Super Store on the island, we were concerned that the smaller establishments would disappear. 

A year down the road, and they all seem to be doing well, even though Chedraui sells a kilo of tortillas slightly cheaper than the government-subsidized rate.

 In the very traditional method of making tortillas, the corn kernels are cooked with lime to remove the husk and then ground on a stone slab, a metate, with a grinding stone, a mano. Next, a little water is added until a soft dough is created.   Once the texture is perfect, a golf ball-sized portion of masa harina dough is shaped into a flat, thin pancake about six inches in diameter. Then it is placed onto a hot griddle or a wood-heated comal to be quickly cooked on both sides.  

In the commercial tortilladoras, the pre-processed grain is purchased in large sacks, often truckloads at a time. The corn flour is treated with calcium hydroxide to release the niacin in the corn and to make it easier to digest. The dough is quickly stamped into thin circles with a machine, and a conveyor belt takes the tortillas to be cooked over a gas flame. Efficient! And still very tasty.

 

However, the best tasting tortillas are the ones cooked over a wood fire – like at Restaurante Kinich. 

But if you have ever eaten at Deysi and Raul’s El Charco Restaurante on the island, you have eaten fresh corn tortillas made to order by Raul. 

Pretty darn tasty too!

 

 

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It’s mine! It’s all mine! Retired in Mexico.

My eyes slide sideways, furtively glancing around. Is anyone watching me? Then my hand reaches out and snatches the bottle of Smuckers Carmel Topping. Then another. And another. And I reluctantly stop at four bottles. With trembling hands, I quickly back away from the grocery-store aisle, rushing towards the check-out to pay for our liquid contraband.

Wait! Maybe I should buy the remaining six bottles as well?

I am tempted to run back and clean off the shelf, or at the very least, stack dissimilar items in front, slowing down the eventual sale of the residual bottles. It would be a disaster to run out of our favourite caramel topping, necessary for our morning cappuccinos. 

Overcome with indecision and trepidation, I grudgingly leave the remaining six bottles of Smuckers Carmel Topping for the other eight hundred thousand inhabitants of Cancun to enjoy.   So very thoughtful of me.

Back on Isla Mujeres, we miserly add the bottles of caramel flavouring to our hoard. Our cache currently includes eight boxes of Twinings Darjeeling Tea, twelve bottles of Santa Rita 120 Sauvignon Blanc wine and six bottles of Paul Newman’s oil and vinegar salad dressing. Amongst our friends the Santa Rita wine from Chile is a highly sought-after commodity. It is a tasty white wine that is relatively inexpensive. Despite our pleadings to the contrary, the local Chedraui grocery store manager typically orders one case at a time! Lawrie frequents the grocery store on a regular basis, picking up a few items here and there. Whenever he sees a new order of the Santa Rita, he is quick to snatch up a handful of bottles, adding them to our cache.

Then, once our supply is secure, he calls other friends on their cell phones to let them know the store has replenished the Santa Rita wine. Clever man.

When you live in a foreign country, strange things happen to your personality. Hoarding becomes second nature. Flavours that we crave are sought out, checking with other North Americans to see who has seen a particular item. Where? When? Was there a good stock or was the store about to run out?

At social gatherings, our conversations are laced with pithy stories of locating and obtaining flavoured treats. Our visiting relatives look upon us as slightly weird, off-balance perhaps. Obsessive. 

They made disparaging remarks like: “Do you always talk about food?” We stare at them, defensively muttering: “Maybe. What concern is it of yours?”

Comparing notes!

We never mention to outsiders our friend who has dozens of Lindt chocolate bars lining the door of her pantry refrigerator. Enough to last the winter season in Mexico.

It’s a deep, dark secret.

On the other hand, our winter friends understand our needs. They frequently offer to ‘mule’ items to us in Mexico when they return for the season. “What can we bring you?” They ask, fully understanding what it is like to fixate on an item that is over 5000 miles away. October and November become a precursor to Christmas when bags of our favourite salty Dutch licorice arrive, tucked in ones and twos into the suitcases of returning friends.

Hah! Let others scoff at our obsessions. At least someone understands.

As for the location of our secret hoard …… my lips are sealed.

Hasta luego

Lynda & Lawrie

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