Bill and Devi's Wild Ride!: February 2016

This is all pretty darn exciting, and being here beats Bill Face-timing me with video to see what progress was being made - although that was pretty awesome, considering he was down here in Mexico and I was in the states! Every day we are at the lot, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day and there are ALWAYS questions for us and decisions for us to make....again, mostly in a foreign language!!

East side of the Casita - "the front"

The roof!

West side of the Casita - "the back"

Most of January the casita roof was drying with supports inside holding it all up. The electrical was being done in the casita and the palapa, but the majority of work was happening in the palapa. We had to finalize where we wanted all of the appliances and counters. I was super nervous about the measurements for the appliances which we had purchased back in November, as once the concrete is poured it's quite a mess to change things. Mexico has adopted the U.S. Black Friday sales to bolster their economy and luckily we found out about it in the nick of time. Bill frequents a little shop in town called Fayla's - he's quite friendly with the owner Estolfo and stops in for a sample of his latest tequila every now and then and to chat it up a bit. I guess Bill was telling him about the house and he told us that the very next day the big, once a year, sales weekend was starting all over Mexico - it's called "El Buen Fin." I told our friends Cathy and Mike about it, since they are also building, and the four of us took a drive into Cabo to hit up Home Depot and see what was what. Boy did we get lucky! We saved a ton of money and bought our refrigerator and stove at Home Depot. At Costco we bought a washing machine and a couple of rocker/recliners for our office area. The Home Depot delivery fee was $95 but we found out we could split it with our friends since they would be delivering to our storage units which were right next to each other. Cathy and Mike had secured a storage unit in town to have a place to store things they were buying for the house. We followed suit and it's been great having a place to put things when we find a good deal. We've been frequenting the consignment stores in Cabo as well, and purchased a fun couch and coffee table for the palapa area.

I was a little concerned that our Home Depot stuff would actually make it to us in Los Barriles. Delivery was supposed to take place in about 10 days but 3 days later I received a call that the truck was on it's way and should be there around 3:30. I had an appointment but let everyone know and Cathy, Mike and Bill headed up to the storage unit to await the delivery. After about 2 hours of waiting and no truck, I called again and found out they were indeed on their way. One of the little problems, though, was that this storage unit, like many things in Mexico, was difficult to find. I told them it was across the street from the Pemex station (gas station) on the left, and after the 2nd tope (speed bump) you turn right, just before the Baja Cactus taco stand...go down a little alley and we would meet them there. Again, this is in broken English and Spanish. The gang went up to wait at the restaurant to get refreshments and waited, and waited, and waited. At dusk they finally went home. Once it was pitch black around 6:45 I got a call in Spanish that the truck was in town, at the bank, and they couldn't find the storage unit. Cathy and Bill zoomed up to meet them on the quad - at the bank and directed them to the storage unit, and guess what? All our stuff was on the truck, woo hoo!!

A field trip was scheduled with Pilar (our builder) and Leo, the artisan who was heading up all the work in the palapa, to go up to the storage unit and take some good measurements. Phew - that was a relief for me as I didn't want to be the one responsible for screwing that up!