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Showing posts from April 12, 2009

We Broke Ground

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We broke ground on our own lot and anticipate being able to move in by September!!! This has been a long process by American terms but not very long by Mexican terms (by the time we move in we will have been here over one year). Prior to leaving the States we had a one dimensional drawing and an idea of what we wanted. We began obtaining referrals on local contractors and getting bids on what we wanted back in September, 2008. Soon after this we learned that our 'drawing' was confusing as we received bids that were $60,000 different in price (even though we had photographs of similar construction ideas). PJ then began to teach himself Google Sketchup in an attempt to clarify in three dimension what we wanted. In late December, early January, the depressed state of the U.S. economy finally made its way down here which resulted in already built home prices coming down and construction labor costs reducing. We then sought revised bids from the few contractors we wanted to retain f

Semana Santa

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The Wednesday through Saturday before Easter Sunday where most Mexicans take a vacation and head to the beaches for camping, family time, drinking, relaxation, and fun. San Carlos is a popular destination and our town at least doubled in population. Our beaches were packed as were our streets. Us locals do all our shopping by Wednesday and hunker down at our homes and wait this time out. Most of the local businesses close and every available space is taken by revelers and/or opportunistic folk. This convenience store remained open but would only allow a certain number of shoppers inside. The doors were locked and people waited outside in a line until they were allowed in. You do not even try to travel our roads in the evening as going the 3 mile distance of our entire main drag can take up to 3 hours. We did ride through the beaches (and came across this rattlesnake) and our main drag on Thursday night on our new ATV. We walked our main drag on Saturday night with friends and were the