Or a least the weather is, over the last week or so it has become quite humid and temperatures have been up in the low 90’s. many of the restaurants have closed for the season. But little by little those of us who stay year round are locating more restaurants and hotels that will give us a day pass for use of their swimming pools with purchase of food or snacks.
The construction next door continues. It began about 2 months ago when my landlord bulldozed his small house to the ground and began rebuilding it. Construction starts every morning at 7 except Sunday. (Mexico has a 48 hour work week, but there is talk for dropping it to 40 hours in the next few years.) It is a concrete brick and cement structure about 12×24. All the work here is labor intensive such as the cement is mixed in a wheelbarrow and moved around by buckets, including climbing a flight of stairs with cement filled buckets when they poured the roof. The jefe on the job must be a very contented worker as he sings (quite loudly) while working.
While this has been a fascinating project to watch it has been a bit difficult to live with. We have electric cords that power their tools draped down the stairs for us residents to maneuver through, but that is minor to living (and breathing) the dust. They are constantly drilling and sanding the cement. There have been a couple of days when the air in my apartment looked like a grey fog. And then that fog settles on furniture, food, the cats watering dish, everything. But I think the end is in site. There is a new toilet waiting to be installed and yesterday the kitchen sink was installed. I shouldn’t complain, I have friends that lived next door to a 3 story condo being built over a 3 year period. I’m grateful that this is a small project and my wonderfully kind landlord will have a new home with his family.
I was worried about the Ceiba tree in my alley. The roots of which are massive and long ago spread out into the alley up rooting some of the paving stones, have been buried under sand and gravel during the construction, but a dump truck came last week and the sand and gravel were shoveled in went away. This tree is massive, looking at it from the alley it is clearly 6ft wide at the base. It has branches larger that most full grow tree trunks. It is truly majestic and this year I think it is more lush and a deeper green than I have ever seen it before, earlier it had a fruit or seed pod hanging from it, only a few. I was told they would open up and a cottony like fluff would blow all around. I never saw that, just one day they were all gone.
Signing off KO
Zihuatanejo 