Sunday, January 28, 2007

Casa Del Sol And The Temple Of Woohoohoo---

I googled the name of a house I remodeled down in Akumal, Mexico, and it was indeed on the net. Man, I could spend another year trying to pull memories together and get them all on my hard drive, so that I may share them with my neices and nephews after I've been conked on the head. Here are three photos out of many more. Clink on the link below and it will take you to a real estate rental add...
Casa Del Sol





This is truly a really cool house. Really cool people came down and did some magic on this really cool house. Some pretty cool people stayed in this pretty cool house at one time or another. Cool huh?
I flew down to Cancun and spent ten days making plans and drawings and trying to get a handle on the local building scene. I was in the middle of building a really cool pool house with a roof that looked like a turtle shell, and had to get back and finish it.

Then I came down a second time with a coterie of people and we totally redid this house in about eight weeks.

It was hot. It was crazy. It was alot of fun.

The first few weeks I worked with maybe twenty young Mayan boys. I don't speak Spanish. We needed to repaint the whole house all white, inside and out, before the "artists" arrived to paint colors right over the white (they wanted the white to come through their washes).

I learned to say "todos blanco"! and do big gestures to get stuff done. The poor Mayan boys were very confused when others arrived and starting painting over their newly painted white walls. After awhile, they accepted everything, like they had all run off and joined the circus.

The remodel was insane. We only had a short window of time. Everybody had an opinion on everything. Everyone was right and all had to compromise. There was a biting fly biting ankles and making all our feet swell up. Like I said, a LOT of fun.

What I wanted to tell you about is just a moment in a crazy excursion. Just a freckle on a funny face. My arrival and subsequent falling into bed the first night of my second trip to this house.

There are moments in one's life that are just plain silly. Here is one of those.

I arrived in Cancun in the late afternoon and decided to take the local bus out to Akumal. I had the money for a taxi, but I figured I'd save it for beer or something worthwhile. The bus was as one would expect, hot and dusty and full of locals heading home, with the bus stopping way more than I had hoped for or expected. They dropped me off way out on the highway, which was fine, except that it was now dark and there was no moon whatsoever. None. Luna nada, if you know what I mean...

Which meant that I had to almost grope my way down a badly paved road, trying to remember where the house was by its position in reference to the lagoon and the ocean. I was carrying a backpack suitcase, and it was full of sheets for the house I had snuck in from the States--meaning it was HEAVY.

I walked two hours in the darkest of nights, feeling the edge of the road with my feet, looking for lights on in homes and condos along the way to tell me I was generally not too lost. I made two loops around a loop, passing the house twice because all of its lights were off and I simply walked right by it. When I figured it all out, it must have been 10 at night. I had landed about 1 in the afternoon. The bus and my walking had taken their toll, and I simply wanted to sleep it all off.

In front of Casa Del Sol was a small Casita where Hugo and his wife Rosa and their little son Raul lived. They were the caretakers and maids and cooks and hosts of Casa Del Sol. Their job was to look after everything and everybody who rented the house. They were either asleep or gone, because their lights were all off too.

OK. So all I had to do was walk into the carport and find the ceiling fixture, where I knew the house key was hidden from the last time I was here. Easy. Just walk into a pitch black carport with an eight foot ceiling, reach up into total blackness and find a small light fixture suspended in that blackness and then feel inside of it for the key. Sure, not a problem. Just walk back and forth waving my arms into the blackness trying to feel for a light fixture on a twenty by twenty foot ceiling. I mean, not a problem, just walk and walk and walk back and forth in the pitch blackness, waving my arms above my head, putting them down when my shoulders ached and raising them again, trying to run into a small light fixture suspended from the ceiling in the total darkness...

Very simple, this plan of mine. Just go to a corner of the garage by feeling your way there, then methodically walking back and forth like a type-writer, from one wall to the next, back and forth with both hands waving in the pitch black spaces above my head, keeping my search pattern as perfect as I could, back and forth, like a type-writer, waving my hands in the darkness until I bumped into the light.

Just basically taking off my shirt and swinging it in the air, trying to catch the damn globe to cause it to break, hoping to hear the shattering of glass to tell me where to look for the key that would let me in and allow me to sleep

Easy right?

It was now 11 o'clock at night. I know this, because the guy who pulled his car into the driveway and caught me swinging my shirt at the ceiling told me so. He also told me Hugo had been up the whole time, but had been frightened of my grunting and talking to myself, and had snuck down the street to get him and the two of them had come back to see who the heck was lumbering around in the carport like a wounded bear.

ME!

It was ME!

And I was taking the master suite, thank you very much.

9 comments:

slaghammer said...

Wow! It rents for only $4000 per week. I would go there in a heartbeat if not for the fact that I can eat at Taco Bell every single day for two thousand years for that kind of money. Regarding your flailing in the pitch dark, you have to think like a bat, it’s all about “echo-location.” Start in one corner of the dark room and run random patterns as fast as you can while screeching at the top of your lungs, listening closely for the echoes. If done correctly, you will eventually throw up, pass out, and wake up the next morning.

Scott from Oregon said...

Ahhh, but take ten people and you pay four hundred bucks a week. So for a two week vacation with flight, you are looking at 1200 bucks... maybe 1500...

That's less tacos.

Anonymous said...

I wanna take a holiday in that room.

Seriously, I can just see myself lying on that bed all day long, reading whatever book I feel like reading, sleeping when I feel like sleeping.

Just me, a few dozen books and that lovely room.

slaghammer said...

That means at three meals a day, I would only have to give up 73000 meals at Taco Bell. Your argument is compelling.

CS said...

That's a great story and a beautiful place. Slaghammer's echolocation suggestion reminds me of the wild teachers parties my mother and her husband used to throw in our house back in the woods - one drunken guest said his policy was to just drive through the pasture and woods as fast as he could on the way out, shortening the drive time and decreasing his chances of having a wreck.

whimsical brainpan said...

Nice house! I would have loved to have seen the look on your face when those headlights hit you.

Shanilie said...

Hi! Thank you for the comment you left on my blog and for visiting. I have to say, when I first uploaded you blog I was a little skeptical at first by the picture ....but after I read along I realized not to judge a blog by it's display picture :)

Thank you for sharing the experience with your mother. I am glad that she is able to watch the show and enjoy singing to the familiar songs. Very touching.

Anonymous said...

You get any kind of discount? Mail coupons to Nashville, TN.

Anonymous said...

the house kinda looks like crap, you're proud of that?!?