...Uhhh, it's very nice but we prefer a house not on a corner....

I guess it's been a few days since I posted anything. I'll provide a general update then a few sketches of things I've run across.



The whole rental/purchase process has gone from a little frustrating to barely tolerable. The vulturous market for houses here makes the process sort of frantic, with people rushing around answering cell phones like they were marketing tract homes in a hot Las Vegas development. I don't really understand some of the tax-related aspects of the transactions here, and they make me uncomfortable.

As a result of all this, and a close call with renting a dreary bad-karma-laden house we've take to calling the Little Shop of Horrors (LSOH), we have revisited the whole advance commitment to an immediate arrival here after the California house sale closes.

I couldn´t sleep for hours last night when I awoke around 1:30, paralyzed with the realization that we couldn´t go with the original plan, but unable to replace it with any better. Finally a different scenario began to materialize, where we complete the house sale (probably couldn't stop it anyway) and leave in the Xterra loaded with nice camping gear for....wherever. To arrive....whenever. And stay....however long.

Probably first to Wyoming to see my sister for a while. Camping along the way wherever. Then maybe scout some Sunbelt locations for possible semi-retirement or work/live in the States. Then (I guess) cross the border to Mexico, and on the Guadalajara and...wherever. Staying at places along the way a day, a week, a month....

We have to store the things we were going to ship to Merida, and if we decide to live in Mexico as our adventure unfolds, I will go back to California, rent a car, and get the stuff approved for a Menaje de Casa (Mexican immigratrion shipping document) and arrange the drop off at the shipper.

Yesterday when I was walking the neighborhood of LSOH when I came upon an old man working on the worst piece-of-shit car I´ve ever seen anyone devote effort to. It would have been an emabarassment in a parts junkyard. He was under the hood, shirtless in the hundred-degree heat with black grease and oil almost up to his shoulders. I felt so bad for him, and his pathetic struggle. I didn´t have the heart to photograph him.

Today I walked to a wonderful neighborhood San Sebastian, and from there to a tiny interesting neighborhood Vicente Solis. I think if we ever do make it here to live, these are the kinds of places where we need to house-hunt. Centro is just too much of everything - prices, noise, traffic, preening ex-pats, dirt...

The photo below from Vicente Solis shows what house demolition looks like here. Looks like fun work to do in tropical heat and humidity, no?




Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf