Casa de Chacala

It all started in 2002 when we ran into an old friend in La Manzanilla, a small west coast Mexican town. We had not seen her in about ten years. We had dinner together and she told us about a small village she had just come from, it was an hour and a half north of Puerto Vallarta, and very beautiful. She and her partner had been helping build a techo (an addition to the roof of a house) for one of the villagers, which the owners could then rent out to visitors. She was also involved in the library and a scholarship program for the children.
In February two years later we visited the village and fell in love. It had little in the way of amenities, a few palapa restaurants on the beach and a small store for groceries but not much else. The streets were broken cobblestones and mud but the beach was the most beautiful beach we had ever seen.
To our great surprise our friend was also there. She showed us around and introduced us to other North Americans. We had a great visit and thought about buying some land to build a small house on. Several North Americans cautioned us, it is very difficult to buy land here they said much of the land is not secure. There is another type of land but you have to go through a bank to buy it and that is very lengthy and expensive.
We didn’t have much time, but made some contacts and said we would be back at Christmas time. And back we were with our minds made up. Our first contact was a local Mexican woman who spoke English. She said she would ask around to see who had land for sale. She came back a few days later with information about a piece of land above the town which was in the fideicomiso part of the village. This meant we would have to go through a notary and a bank to buy it. As we believed that was the safest way to buy we were interested. Well, to cut a long story short, it is difficult, lengthy and expensive to buy this type of land, but we did it, with the help of our Mexican friend.
The lot is in the jungle above the town, with little access. We are about a five minute walk to the beach and have very few houses around us right now. We were concerned about water and electricity, but were assured we would get both of these as we were part of the town. Of course the fact that the town doesn’t have enough water already was not apparent at this time. We went through the lengthy process of finding a builder, interviewing two or three. When we got back home we found communication with all of them was nearly impossible. We eventually settled on a builder who was recommended by our Mexican friend, she was working with him on another house and said he was doing a good job.
Our house was started in July 2005 and to date, with a few exceptions, things are working out.


Exceptions:
Our builder was worried about getting a solid foundation and had a large backhoe on the lot for 61 hours clearing volcanic rock to about six feet below ground level. We were not sure we wanted to have our house in a hole in the jungle with everyone else looking down at us. Luckily we had a trip planned for the end of August and managed to persuade the builder to build the foundation up again to ground level and fill it in. We will have a five foot set of steps at the front but we can live with that. We had a number of meetings with our builder and the electrician/plumber to try to communicate our plans and ideas, which were hard to get across in Spanish. We also had to decide a lot of things quickly because they were working so fast. So off we went to Tepic to see what was available and price stuff out.

Shopping for tiles and plumbing supplies in Tepic was a blast. Tepic is becoming a cosmopolitan town, with a lot of new cars, many of them driven by women, and a good combination of shops and markets to buy household and building supplies.

Needless to say Rick’s Spanish is improving rapidly as we meet few English speaking people in this part of the world. My Spanish, not so much. I think I will do better when we can spend more time there and I am not in school.

The first floor is coming along quickly and had the ceiling put on this week. We are hoping to get more photographs this week, and will add them as they come in.