House tour

On Sunday I went with a friend on a tour of six different Mazatlan houses, ranging from a downtown historic building to an architect designed family home. I want to show you some photos to give you an idea of what we saw.

This is the front of the old house in the historical centre.  It's two houses in from the Malecon walk along the ocean.  This house dates from 1865 and has original tile floors and restored walls.  By law these houses cannot be remodeled, only restored.  You'll see the owners have been very true to the past in restoring this house.

The entry and dining room with stairs going up.  The ceilings here are at least 20 feet high.  The kitchen is a nightmare, not updated at all. But it leads out to a lovely secluded patio.  You can see the ancient tiles here and the lovely doors.  If I lived here I think I'd spend most of my time on this patio.

Upstairs there are several bedrooms.  Here's one example with its sweet little balcony.

And to give you an idea of the age of this home, check out this balcony that overlooks the street.  If you click on the photo to enlarge it you'll see just how old and decrepit the wooden railing is.  I was almost afraid to stand here.

In stark contrast to this home was the architecturally beautiful house in El Cid.  The young architect who built it for his brother has achieved a serene space that integrates the outdoors with the inside.  It is really lovely.  The house flows around a two storey light filled courtyard and all the rooms have views of trees and sky.

You can see that the ceilings are very high here as well and there's a sense of huge space.

Here's the entry with its curving staircase and a railing of glass.

Here's a light-filled bedroom with two lovely balconies off of it.

Both these houses are very Mexican, but what a contrast!

An abandoned car

A few days ago on our morning walk down to the park at the end of our street we came upon this car abandoned in front of the vacant lot on the corner.  It's obviously been in a crash!  Both airbags have been deployed and the drivers side windshield is cracked.  There are fibres from something that may be a tree embedded in the crumpled steel.  One wheel is cockeyed and it's hard to see how it could have driven very far in this condition. The two front wheels have been driven up over rocks so it's clear that someone deliberately left it there.

Yet nobody on the street heard anything; nobody knows anything.  Our detective work leads us to think that there were two people in the car when it crashed into something big and tree-like, then limped it along to where it could be parked, then got out and walked away.

The odd thing is that it's been over a week now and still it sits there.  We law-abiding Canadians are amazed that it hasn't been towed or confiscated or examined by anyone.  Is that what you do if you're in an accident here?  Just abandon the car?

Now we're wondering how long it will sit there, interfering with traffic turning onto our street.  I'll keep you posted.

Callie's Mazatlan visit

Highlights of my six-year old neice's visit to Mazatlan. 

A visit to the pinata store

  

Exploring the wall art in el centro

  

Meeting iguanas and dogs on Stone Island

  

And chosing a treat from a wheelbarrow full of candy

They headed back to Vancouver today but I think everyone had a good time.

Family and the Plazuela Machado

Since Thursday we've had visitors here--my brother and his wife and their little girl.  They're only here until Tuesday afternoon so we're giving them the whirlwind tour.  Friday we spent the morning at the beach, made a sand castle and followed it with lunch and a swim at the Luna Palace.  In the afternoon we headed down to el centro for the monthly art walk.  My brother (who's maybe even more of a photo geek than I am) spent his time taking pictures of the old walls and buildings.

We ended up at the Plazuela Machado just at sunset.  We attended an art opening in the Angela Peralta Theatre and Callie got a little treat from one of the carts.

Later we had an al fresco dinner at one of the restaurants that ring the plaza.

Today we headed out to visit the Hacienda las Moras.  It's wonderful to share these special places with them.

The sidewalks of Sabalo Country

 

One of the first things you have to develop when you come to Mexico is the skill of radar in your feet.  That's because the sidewalks here are lethal.  They're not like the smooth, level and clean sidewalks in Victoria.  These sidewalks are patched together, all angles and steps, sometimes with rebar sticking out, and sometimes non existent.  

Here in Sabalo Country (our neighbourhood of Mazatlan) the sidewalks are the responsibility of the owner of the adjacent land.  So if the land belongs to an absent owner no sidewalk is built and pedestrians just trip through the dirt and garbage, or else take to walking on the street.

Then there's the fact that garbage is put out on the sidewalk at any time.  Some people have little metal baskets like this one to put the garbage in but others just drop it on the sidewalk for pickup.  Pickup takes place three times a week but at completely irregular hours so garbage is always waiting.

 

 

  

Then there are the gates.  Many people have gates that open into the front courtyard where they park their cars (like in the photo above).   Often when they go out, they just leave the gates open so pedestrians have to walk around, again heading into the road itself

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Not many Mexicans walk around these streets, they're most often in cars or on motorcycles or bikes.    It's the Norteamericanos like us who walk around and now I see why most of them walk in the street. 

All of these photos were taken in one stroll down our street. It's all part of the adventure of living in a Mexican city I guess.  

The halfway mark

Today, February 1st, we are half way through our time in Mazatlan.  It's gone by very quickly and we find the days flying by.  We have slipped into a relaxing pattern to our days that incudes taking the dogs to the park, shopping for food, going for walks, meeting friends, studying Spanish, reading, gardening, (this a view of part of the patio).....

We're also going to the beach (although not nearly as much as we were at first), cooking, drawing and painting, going downtown, cleaning the house, doing laundry, taking photos, volunteering with the dogs at the pound, going to the library....  Well, really it's not that different from our life on Haliburton Hill (except for the warm weather part).

Harry is more content with things than I am.  If find I'm really missing some of my women friends and spending so much time together with "husband" is a challenge at times.  I'm glad I have my oil painting group on Fridays so we can have some time apart.  I've met some interesting women (this is Wendy beginning a painting)....

... and Harry enjoys chatting with some of the guys who live on the street.  Mostly we've met English-speaking people though and that's a bit of a disappointment.  But I think that until our Spanish becomes more fluent it's too much of a struggle to communicate.  We did go out for lunch the other day with two Mexican women, Maria and Violetta, who volunteer with the conversational group.  Their English is about at the same level as our Spanish so we lurched back and forth between languages and enjoyed ourselves.  But even so there is a big cultural gap that we're not yet capable of bridging.  And it's hard work.  We came home exhausted.

February brings a visit from my brother and his family and Carnaval in the middle of the month and then there's still March to experience.  There's still lots of time to enjoy our winter in the sun, but it's really just living a normal life.