I'm So Pleased...

I'm so pleased with my new outhouse, I could just shit.

Why I Chose This Plot, Part II

Is the title clean? Who am I dealing with?
There was a hotel owner back in San Marcos who, while quite sheisty himself, taught me a lot about how all this works when I started looking at land in earnest. I'm not afraid to name him. His name is Rigoberto, or as my friend Jenny nicknamed him, Rigobusiness. Rigobusiness owned land, houses, tiendas and would sell dial-up modems if he found a good deal on them. His hotel where I stayed advertised wireless internet. A couple I knew staying there paid for an entire month or more based on the fact that there was internet that would allow them to work and make money. When they showed up, they found the internet worked extremely slowly or not at all a lot of the time. They wanted to leave the hotel and even had everything about the internet in a contract but if they left, Rigobusiness only agreed to give back a fraction of the money he would've owed. Besides utilizing Dale Carnegie tactics, which work better in business deals at the sale stage rather than when trying to recover money due to a breach in contract, it seemed like their only option was to go to court. I say to hell with going to court in Guatemala against a Guatemalteco. This should be avoided at all costs. Fuck Rigobusiness, I'm not dealing with him and hopefully not anyone else like him. That said, his hotel was really well done and quiet and the two of us are still buddies.

My scout is Santiago and the land owner was Don Ilario. Santiago is like an angel who fell into my lap. Most gringoes seem to have their 'guy'. Santiago is 'my guy'. He is the Andres to my Terry, the Nicolas to my Shad. He showed me this land as one he has known for a while is really nice. Other gringoes have looked and shown interest but no one ever got it together and made with the cash. I realized where Santiago lived and he said "I want you to buy this land, I want you to be my neighbor." He'd be just below in the village, about five minutes away, and I'll be welcome for tortillas and meals. How can I trust Santiago, besides the neighbor thing? Santiago is the lead builder on Shad's bamboo hotel. Walter, the leader of the other crew, has more bamboo experience, but Santiago is really in charge. Charlie is the architect on Shad's hotel and he picked Santiago and his group.

Little things happen like once I was standing on the rock viewpoint at my place's edge before the deal quite went through. A kid came up and we got to chatting and I mentioned the land. He said something like, "Oh, you're buying the land of Don Ilario?". Everyone knows it's his land. No second or third person can come out of nowhere and say 'hey, that's actually my land, Ilario can't sell it unless I approve' or something worse. The paper's are good. I went to dinner at Santiago's house New Year's Eve and it was quite good. I was speaking to Santiago's father, another Andres, who seemed happy at the whole deal. A real nice guy, he concluded "Don Ilario's been a friend of mine for 35 years". Ilario might run for mayor at the next election. Why would he want to get into any issues behind this land? Why would Santiago, a successful builder and trusted land scout, want to get into any issues behind this land and jeopardize his reputation and Charlie's confidence, especially over a plot only five minutes from his own? The commision is certainly not enough for that. The deal done, Santiago is still a great help and has expressed his interest in working for me. That'll be discussed down the line. I'll hire him if chooses to drop some of his other obligations and take care of my place, or I'll hire someone else and we'll remain friends and he'll still help me out. Meanwhile, I've been threatened (not really) by Shad that, right now, Santiago's responibility is to have his bamboo hotel finished by this May. After that, Santiago is up for grabs and he does come with Shad's recommendation, which is weighty. Serendipitously, Santiago was born about a month after me. All in all, I went on the fact that this deal had Charlie's stamp on it and Ilario is a longtime, respected member of the Tzununa community. He'll be a neighbor, too, just further down the hill. Because this deal has been so smooth, I may have been a little light on all the manner of horrible headache that can accompany a land deal or the acheievement of building permit, power or water thereafter. Suffice it to say things can be sufficiently bogged down in bullshit and added expense. I guess if there's one thing to take away, it's that a good, trusted land scout will help all these other things fall into place.


Is the price right?
If you do enough looking and asking, you get a feel for the real going rate of land. Then, you add or substact based on assets or drawbacks and their added expenses. I got a really nice price per cuerda. Responsibilty for this lies with Santiago as well.


How's the view?
View is important. If you're here on the lake, you should have one. It's nice and different throughout the day and each day of the year. Tourists love it. There are amazing views, awesome views, cool views, and views. Mine is amazing. When I first wrote this, I wrote awesome but a couple weeks later, ready to post this and having more time up there, I have to change it to truly amazing.


___________



There you have my primer on Atitlan real estate. If anyone is interested in a piece land here, hit me up in private, I'll consult. I'm a land scout too now. I'll plant fruit trees, bamboo and cypress and keep an eye on it until you come down.

Why I Chose This Plot, Part I

     I sometimes tell people that the thing I'm most expert in is photography. That's not to say I'm a grandmaster, but in a comparison to my knowledge of other topics, I probably know the most about taking photos. The process of buying land in Guatemala has been such an education that it may now be my number two. I feel that because I've done it once, and had to learn everything it took to get it done fairly easily after finding the right spot, I would be well to do it a few more times as investment if I didn't want to focus on improving my first place, which is well big enough. At this point, I want to stop and touch wood. After finally finding the combination of the right fixer, piece of land, seller and price, the process has been eerily smooth, through to the point of having my building permit in hand and my taxes paid for the year 2014(only six days after the land deal went through). Water and power remain to be connected; both should be smooth and easy as well.


     I've never actively looked for land in the US or any other place, so I can't compare it. Here, it's quite tiring. It's generally hot and sunny, especially in the morning. I joke that you can get two things done per day here. One in the morning, and one in the afternoon, give or take. If you blow one of those looking at land, you've blown one maybe taking a boat, maybe a tuk-tuk, but probably walking uphill and scrambling around steep, rocky, unkempt squares of the mountain. Unkempt isn't a reason to write off land so you have to give due diligence around through the brush as tall as you to try to quickly imagine where a house might go and the degree of impossibilty of constructing in that location. The person escorting you has strong odds of being sheisty and their company can be a drag or can be tolerable.

     Here's how it works commonly, not exclusively. An owner puts it out there in the aether that heshe would sell a certain piece of land if someone was buying. Anyone interested (in quickly becoming a real estate agent) could come by this information easily. You can show the land to all the gringoes you want and if you bring an eventual buyer into the owner, you get paid. For this reason, multiple people may show you the same spot, a great waste of time and kick to the day's enthusiasm. What did Yogi say? You always find something in the last place you look. Most of the properties you're shown are a bust and dealbroken quickly for one reason or another(e.g., no water, too far, too loud, too steep). At that point, you figure out how to most quickly have the scout take you over to the next place and address a new set of measurements and asking price.


     In my assessment below, I could see many gringoes disagreeing with me on a couple things. I was willing to sacrifice lake proximity and view for other advantages and securities. After you've chosen a village, here's what you need to ask for about the piece of land:


How big should it be?
Guatemala deals in cuerdas, which is pretty Guatemala because a cuerda can be anything from a bathroom tile to Lake Huron. I'm joking. A saving grace is that, I think, Guatemala uses the smallest version of a cuerda, 25m x 25m. I was looking for three to six cuerdas. Bigger would've been fine, but price was likely to prohibit. I ended up with six cuerdas, about an acre, which I'm thrilled about. The place is plenty large and spread out, and I hope it always feels that way with way less coffee and a few simple structures. It should be plenty of space for casitas, kitchen, chickens, garden and yoga. What's tricky about this aspect of the search is that a lot of gringoes end up buying up and combining several different properties into one, so that option is always there if you have interest and someone to help do the owner research. There is land open around El Jocotel, but that'll have to be later and hotel owners keep telling me 'don't let it get too big'.


What's the slope like?
People build on almost any kind of slope. Examples are close around. They know exactly how to excavate, refill, and build retaining walls and flat surfaces. It's still a lot of work and it leads to a very vertical life. If you succeed in finding flatter land, you've probably sacrificed your perfectly splendid lake view, and this is what I did. My land resembles the top of the cross section of an airfoil. The upper limit is nice and gentle, sloped, but softly not requiring much excavation to flatten out. This will unearth rocks all of which whill be used in building. I'll put the structures nearer the top, where it's flatter with better view. Garden and trees below. Good spot for chickens fenced in where the neighbor's chickens currently peck through.


Is there water?
Locals always tell me 'Water is the most important thing' or 'Water is the fluid of life' so they like water, too. You pretty much gotta have it. You can do four things here. 1. Tap municipal water. This is the best I think, for price and ease. This is what I'll do. The pipe runs very close to the property and, knock wood, it comes through good and cheap. 2. You can tap for your own water, either into the ground or from a river. This is a nice option, but probably more expensive, if you're digging, than the muni. Smaller surface rivers run dry, but good underwater rivers run all the time, keeping trees nearby lush. Those trees help lead you to the water. Not every place has this option. 3. You can pump from the lake (regionally). People do this, but I would not be happy drinking filtered lake water. 4. You can not have water. This seems like it would become a drag fast.


Is there electricity?
Using the electrical grid ended up being the best option for my purposes. Electricity is cheap here, and it would've taken years and years to pay off a simple solar electricity system that surely would need replacement parts or new batteries not to mention sourcing the parts and putting it all together. A group of three power lines runs about 12 meters from the corner of my property. The power is helpful running certain tools so it would be nice to have power for building. This gets confusing. The electric company has a rule that you can't hook up power until you have a house. The loophole is that the neighbor between myself and the power pole can agree to have an electric counter (that I pay for) put in and and I can 'steal' electricity from that until I have a house up. I'm not sure this will actually work because they don't have a house up either. We'll see. I think it'll be easy, we'll see.


Do you have a right of access to your own property?
This means: are you allowed to walk to your own property? On the mountain, getting somewhere can involve either a public path or going through someone's property or both at the same time. Some properties I was shown would've required leaving the public path and crossing private property to get home. This could be fine for years and years with all your visitors perhaps or the landowner could have a problem and then you have a problem. Public path goes from the village right to the corner of my place then through it. I have no issue getting there. We're talking dirt walking paths here. There could be a bit of a grey area here as to what is considered a 'public trail' and what's private but the people seem to know. There is one more thing. If what's considered a 'public trail' runs through your property and you intend to fence it off, you must provide alternate trail access for the people. My property has an obviously public path running through it from the middle of the top to halfway down the side. Our first work project is to rework the path to the property corner. We'll smooth it out really nice and at each side add a rock seat area for people carrying firewood or bags of crops to rest. There is another trail through my place, but I'm told it's not public. It is well smaller but I know some people use it (and throw their trash on it). I'm very sorry, but people will have to detour around a bit. They are welcome to stop and rest at my resting area. I hope to not have a problem here. I wrestled, and still wrestle, with myself about whether or not to have a fence and what type of fence to build. Even though I waver, I've long since decided a fence was best for the place I want and the visitors I'd like. There's a group of well-intentioned people, neighbor's chickens and chuchos who need to have a reason not to wander in. If a real thief wants in, they're gonna come in but a fence is pretty necessary.


How far is it from a town? How far is it from a road?
In terms of getting materials there, you can build a house anywhere if you have some extra money for dragging materials up the paths to those places by hand. In some places, there's water and power, but i's an hour and a half walk from the boat. Much of your material will come in by truck, so the closer a truck can get, the better. My closest access will be at the road right where Shad's hotel is. It should be about a ten-minute walk up. I won't be super happy watching young and older Mayan men struggle with heavy loads for construction at my place, and I certainly won't be too happy while I'm struggling with them (while carrying way less), but I believe in the project and having a house. Charlie said that relative to being next to the road, construction would cost me 10% more. Maybe I can offset that by always helping out with 'cargando' and I'm thrilled with my location so I'm on board. As I mentioned, Gallo Beer may add tuk tuk access to very near El Jocotel, and if they do this while I still have things to construct, it will ease the labor heavily for all time.


Where is it? Who are the neighbors?
Tranquility was a must for me. Some places were dealbroken immediately for being right in the village. Tzununa is a loud town, be it church music, stereo music, corn grinders or chuchos in the night. I will hear some of it, but my place is just on the edge of the village with a bit of a buffer. I do have neighbors at one edge point of the property. These are Kaqchikel Mayan people. There's a guy Andres and his family of wife and four young daughters. Unfortunately, I did look at four of his properties and did not end up buying. I was worried he'd hold a grudge but I ran into him at the San Pablo Day Fair yesterday and he greeted me warmly. I'll be at the top of the village so behind me is just mountain. It's all people's property and mostly farmed and harvested for something or other. There are people around and passing through, but they're quiet, friendly and often carrying something heavy and going straight home.

As far as visitors and guests arriving to the hotel, I think it's cool that people will be forced to go right through the village to get there. Lomas and the Moon Lodge are not part of the village. Shad will be and we will be. We are in the village. What people have to say at the hill climb required, that's up in the air. I like it and I'll be in shape.


Is it geographically safe?

I just mentioned living on the same slope as the local people. Doing so gives me comfort that no rocks bigger than my house will roll down and crush my own while I sleep or that I won't wake up swimming in a soup of mud and rock sludge barreling down to the valley below. This is where a lot of gringoes throw Mayan caution to the wind and build right in a spot they like in a dangerous valley or right next to a rising lake. Sure, your house may be safe for five years or even all of your lifetime, but there were storms that devastated here in both 2005 and 2009 so the occurence of another couldn't come as a surprise. Tzununa's river is known to jump and carry over to unknown places. Because of property, trees, deception, magic, and lack of easy access to detailed topographical information, it's often really hard to understand the contours of the land, especially in dry season, and figure out what the water will do. Remember, these are huge mountains and a lot of water spills out and when it comes it happens fast.  

Photos on the Way

Thank you to all my faithful readers who have stuck with me through these photo-less times.

In a week or so, I'll be moving up to the new house on my own property.  At that point, I'm commited to finding a way to make some photos of the place and posting them here for everyone to finally see.  I know everyone won't but I wish everyone would come visit.  I'm sure the photos will act as encouragement so please stay tuned another week or so to have a look at my new home and it's surroundings.

When the time is right, when I'm ready, and probably when I'm in the states in May/June, I will get a new camera and resume my photography.  I love photography and miss the activity but there is certainly something to be said for being in the moment without necessarily having the digital proof or needing to show/tell someone.

How to Cook an Egg Sunny Side Up

     I've grown very fond of the kitchen here at the Mirador. Besides preparing and eating my breakfast downstairs in the kitchen, the family here also serves my dinner in there. We're quite friendly. The abuela has pointed directly at me and told me I was her amigo. Yesterday, the abuelo Diego came to check out my land and my house in progress. He waved me off from his own hotel saying 'I know where your land is' so I took off at a good clip in order to see what the old guy could do. He's got plenty of years of behind him, not too many teeth, leather sandals, a machete and a sweet palm hat like mine. He stayed with me pretty well. He's mature in years but still Mayan and I really haven't met one yet, male or female, who can't get around any slope without shocking grace and speed. After that we moved on to the real purpose of our trip, picking oranges from their property. The oranges were delicious, I ate about 11 in two days. I'll use the seed from a good one to plant a tree at my place. Hidden behind the real purpose of the trip is the real real purpose of the trip, making sure I know where their properties are, in general, in case I want to buy one or show it to a friend. Despite this genial relationship, I'm never invited into their kitchen, where the fire is, for a meal.

     My breakfast is often a brunch after doing other things. I get overhungry and try to eat a good amount. Sometimes I think it counts for lunch but then around four pm I get starving and realize I'll never make it to dinner so I eat something. Now I just do it that way normally and at 7:15p when dinner is served I'm always good and hungry again.

    There's a breakfast warmup of a hard-boiled egg and a mouthful of trail mix just as I enter the room. This gets me through the prep, which I do fast and crazy so everything is ready at the same time. Mosh is oatmeal and mosh is one my favorite words to say many times throughout the day. I've been having mosh with banana, papaya, zapote, mango, trail mix, coconut, panella and milk powder. That's delicious, it's super instant and the stove boils hot. This paper should've been titled:

Cooking at hot temperature in Guatemala as a result of cheap, light cookware and gas stoves with no low heat capability.

     The mosh needs constant stirring but I fire up the egg pan with the oil. College classes like Material Properties and Heat Transfer made me look at cooking in a new way. This helped me a lot going from Massachusetts to Guatemala and coming into a drastically new cooking style. Back in Northampton, we used an electric stove with burners that cooked low all the way down to room temp. Mostly, we used cast iron pans. Specific heat capacity is heat capacity: how much heat something can hang onto as a function of volume. And this is quantifiable by material and shape. A 12" cast iron pan, by the time it gets nice and hot, holds onto a lot of heat in its bulk, and it's often the pan that cooks the food, not exactly the fire. My eggs are cooked on a thin, light, blue enamel six inch pan. It has a very low heat capacity. I get the oil pretty hot, mysteriously sometimes crackling, and sometimes not, and I keep the fire hot beneath. If you keep a lower fire, your first egg might be fine, but it might suck every bit of heat from the pan, and when your second egg hits, it splashes down onto a much cooler pan, not crackling and bubbling immediately the way it should. Two eggs is ideal, and remember, I've had a warmup egg, so this makes three all told. Watch the eggs and tilt the pan around to redistribute the oil and uncooked egg. When there is the right amount of liquid still visible, kill the heat. I think this is the crux. Leave the eggs on this pan over no heat for the right cure and now you have no rush to get them on the plate. With cast iron, the pan can't help but continue cooking the eggs and your yolk will begin to firm up. If you killed the heat and put them on a plate, the temperature difference of the cooler plate may halt the bit of cooking that you still need to happen. If you just leave them on the cheap pan for a time, the egg whites cook themselves through and the yolk warms up but is completely runny.

     Thinking back, there was a time when I thought 'What is the deal with sunny side up eggs? I'd like to learn how to cook an egg sunny side up.' In fact, I'd like to be proficient at doing an egg every way. But I think I tried a few times and didn't realize how to do it right, and I inadvertently went back to over easy. I happened on it because of the Guatemalan economy and the way it informs their cooking. Will I get cast iron here? I'm not sure. I love it, but cast iron will be more expensive to buy, heavier to carry, and more gas as the stove takes the time to heat it up. Gas is a heavy tank that needs to be taken up the hill, too. Should I do cast iron or custom-made stove with griddle-top for those eggs? These are the challenges I'm facing. I'll have an egg.