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So now that we have a back yard, I have planted some trees and shrubs to make it look nice and pretty.  Of course I’m not done yet, but I thought I would give you a short tour of the plants that we have so far. 

This is our lime tree.  You can see on the left side on the far branch, there are two baby limes that are growing.  The tree is only about 18" high and we only have 3 limes on it so we’re not quite ready to break out the blender and whip up margaritas any time soon.  However, as long as you water it, the growing season will last all year long so maybe next year will be the year of the margarita! 

This is my calla lily (called "Alcatraz" in Spanish).  Normally I hate lilies, but this is the only one I like.  I think it’s because it doesn’t small as strongly as other lilies do.  It also reminds me of my first Mexican home in Oaxaca.

And here is my pride and joy!  My pineapple plant!  It produces small pineapples (about 8" big) and this one will be ready in a few weeks, when it turns yellow.

I also have a pot of beets, but they’re not really that exciting.  The beets are part of a vegetable co-op program here.  You buy a planter of beets, celery, carrots, whatever and then when you eat all the veggies from your plant, you bring them back to the stand and you get a new one for $1.50.  If you kill it, you can still go back and get more.  It’s a really neat project and I could really get addicted to it, if I had enough room for 7 pots of veggies.

You probably noticed in these pictures as well as the last that there is a wall all around the back yard.  This is very common in Mexico. It’s there for security and privacy–just think of it as a cement privacy fence! 

So there’s the start of my gardening task.  Hopefully I will have more flowers and stuff to plant soon!

I promised I would post pictures of the house and here they are!  I wanted to wait until we had grass rather than just a Zen garden of dirt and rocks.  We are still missing living room and dining room furniture so I am just going to show the photos that we have from when we first looked at the house, plus a few others.

Here is the outside of the house.  The main black gate has a door for people to go in and out of and it also opens in two halves so that you can pull the car and and you don’t have to park on this street (and don’t worry, there’s room for a 2nd car!).  I am sure that Paco is very happy with this because in our apartment in Salina Cruz he was just outside in a parking lot and dogs would come and pee on the tires.  It’s also very secure because we can bolt the doors so no one can get in or out without a key.  The house is made of cement and cinder blocks.  You can see a black plastic thing sticking up from the roof (on the left side).  This is our water tank.  It ensures we have a supply of water and also gives us water pressure (which isn’t half bad).  If for some reason there is a water shortage, we also have a cistern in the parking area.  You’ll also see our electricity meter on the right side on the white wall!

This is the other side of the main gate.  Paco fits inside quite nicely and you can see on the bottom far right there is a metal bolt-thing that we use to pull up and down and that lets us slide the door open.  The other nice part about our "cochera" is that there is enough shade that it keeps the car relatively cool.

This is the kitchen.  It has stainless steel countertops and a nice new 6 burner gas stove.  On the opposite side of the kitchen is a huge pantry and our fridge (we had to buy that ourselves).

This is the living room/dining room area with the stairs going up to the second floor.  It’s the reason why when we talk on the telephone right now that it sounds like we’re calling from a tomb.

This is one of the 3 bedrooms we have in our house.  They are pretty much the same.  They all came with huge closets. The master bedroom has an ensuite bathroom.  There is another bathroom on the second floor and a powder room on the main floor.  The second bedroom is my office and the third bedroom is the ironing room right now and we use the part of the closet for storage and linens.  Once we buy a second bed, it will be the guest room.  So you’ll have to help yourself to the towels!

This is the bathroom.  Exciting isn’t it?  The master bedroom has an ensuite bathroom, there is another bathroom on the second floor and a powder room on the main floor.  This does not include the bathroom in the servant’s quarters (which is currently being used to store our car topper and other stuff we don’t use too often).  Notice the pink accent wall.  Ugh!  This is my biggest complaint about the house.  Every room has a pink accent wall AND pink ceilings!!  My friend tells me I live in "La Casa Rosa" which is a bit of a play on words because in Argentina, La Casa Rosa is Presidential Palace.

And this is our back yard!  It’s so green and pretty!  There are stairs that go up the back of the house to get to the hot water heater, servant’s quarters and laundry room.  You can also see a small alcove where we store our garden hose and BBQ.

So!  There you have the grand tour.  We are also conducting in person tours, however you’ll just need to call/email ahead and let us know you’re coming.  Oh yeah, and let us know if you want the top bunk or the bottom!

We left Canada on April 30th and spent 3 days driving to San Luis Potosi.  The first two days were about 14 hours of driving each day with brief stops for gas/bathroom and a stop for a quick bite to eat.  We left Laredo, Texas at 8:30 AM and drove to the Puente Colombia which is about 20 miles west of Laredo.  Puente Colombia is a much smaller crossing so there’s less traffic and it’s a lot easier to get across.  Laredo is like the Windsor-Detroit crossing and Puente Colombia is like the Sarnia-Port Huron crossing.  It’s worth the drive. 

Crossing the border was pretty uneventful.  We arrived at the crossing at 7:45AM (which was actually 8:45, Laredo time,  because Mexico didn’t change to daylight savings with the US) and we had to wait until Immigration opened at 8:00AM.  Of course 8AM was “hora mexicana” and the immigration officer didn’t show up until about 8:30.  After this, we had to wait until 9AM for the Banjercito office to open so they could issue us our temporary car import permit to bring Paco back into Mexico.  Once we had the permit, we put the sticker on Paco’s windshield and crossed through customs. 

Mexican customs operate on a red light/green light system and as it turned out, we ended up getting a red light.  I was imagining that the agents were going to tear our car apart and leave all our boxes in the parking lot for us to re-pack.  Fortuantely it was just a few quick questions about what was in the boxes and the topper and we were on our way. 

We arrived in San Luis Potosi 8 hours later.  The most painful part of the drive in Mexico was the 2 hours from Matehuala to San Luis Potosi.  The highway is a 4 lane highway with a grass or cement median and it’s VERY flat and you can only go 80km an hour on it!  Of course there were lots of people passing us (driving well past the speed limit seems to be a pasttime here) but being foreigners, we had to stay within the limit.  I swear I thought I was going to go crazy!  We finally arrived in San Luis at about 6PM.  We drove to our house, pulled off the topper and dropped some stuff off before heading to our hotel. 

The next day we bought a bed and a fridge and we were pretty much ready to move into our house.  We were just waiting on the electricity connection.  My friend was helping out by sending the request for the connection and we were expecting it to be connected the following day.  As it turned out the technician from the electricity company came to our house the next day but was confused by the address and assumed that our electricity was already connected–even though it wasn’t. 

The next day my friend called the electricity company and they explained that even though it was the mistake of the technician, they were going to have to send a new connection request and I would have to wait another 5 days.  After many calls and visits to the electricity company’s office, we finally got electricity the following Tuesday (1 week after we arrived) and we were able to move in.  

Don got his work visa, we got electricity and telephone all on the same day.  In Mexico, this is pretty close to winning the lottery because the chances of that happening are about 1 in a million. 

We’re still waiting for our internet to be connected, but on the whole we are getting settled in quite well.  I know how to get to 3 different grocery stores, WalMart and Home Depot.  We have already tried out the Syrian restaurant down the road and Dairy Queen is opening about 4 blocks from my house!  We still need to figure out water delivery and establish our Saturday breakfast restaurant but we’ll figure that out soon.