Category: Culture

We really looked forward to getting more involved with hands-on charity work in retirement, and now that we are there, one of the charities we most enjoy working with is Villa Infantil.  The Villa is a local orphanage run by some Mexican nuns. They have a nice compound on the south side of the lake, about one-half hour from our house. There are about 35 children at the home. Every one of them has a heart-breaking story, but in most cases it has the happy ending of them being at the Villa.  Our parish helps by (among other things) collecting supplies and groceries once a month, running an annual fundraiser, and holding a party for those children who have a birthday each month.

We attended the birthday bash this month. The event began with Mass in the chapel, where we got to enjoy the children singing and high-fiving Father Basil as he processed to the altar. At the end of the Mass, the children orderly exited one row at a time under the watchful eyes of one of one of the Sisters. One of the youngsters, Santiago, gave us a guided tour of the premises. The younger children were thrilled with some large marbles thoughtfully provided by a volunteer; some of the older kids played games like t-ball or catch with an American football. Once the lunch was ready, the kids took their seats and we served them hamburguesas with potato chips. We all sang Happy Birthday and ate cake, then each child with a birthday that month got a set of presents again provided by volunteers.

You’ll never see kids happier with a toy, a game, or a ball and a chance to play catch. Whatever joy those children felt, I bet all the volunteers would agree with me that we had “the better part.”

I thought about titling this post “leaks and dirty leakers who leak them” (apologies to Al Franken) but then I realized some might mistake the topic for something which goes on far too often in Washington, DC, and that’s not the case at all. No, today I am covering the neverending story which often accompanies life in the tropics: leaks during the rainy season.

Most people know that a tropical deluge can represent several inches of rain in a single day, followed by more of the same the next day in the rainy season. We’ve had several nights of rain in a row recently. We have a mostly flat roof, with a gently sloping surface that feeds run-off spouts which let the water fall directly next to the house; since we have no basement, there is no need to worry about flooding a lower level.  The roof is treated with a water-proofing cover that resembles asphalt paper, and the more decorative sections (like the cupolas) have a painted stucco exterior over a waterproof fiberglass material covering the brickwork.

Over the course of time, that constant flow of water wears down the waterproofing, and cracks form, letting water into the house.  This is not the major crisis it would be north of the border. The interior is brick and stucco, the floors tile; there is no wood, baseboard, or wallboard to absorb moisture, be ruined, and require replacing. So the key is to sop up the rain and get the crack sealed; too many leaks in the row are nature’s way of telling you to reseal the whole roof.

So I am sitting at the table, surfing the web one morning, and I hear the pleasant hum of rain outside.  But in among the rain-sounds is an occasional “thump.” It sounds closer, and not at all natural.  Unless you consider the sound of water dripping from your ceiling onto a custom-made Spanish leather storage chest “natural.” Yes, we had a small leak above the windows in our cupola, which was dripping on the furniture. It was in such an out of the way place, we even developed some mildew,

since we did not discover the leak until several rainy days in a row generated enough moisture for it to leak down into the ceiling and fall. We called Jorgé the repair guy, who dutifully patched the cracks and resealed the cracked areas of the cupola.

 

 

 

 

Several more days of rain revealed more cracks, and more repairs. Now we have been two rainy days without leaks, so perhaps we are done. We’ll re-evaluate whether to replace the entire sealant on the roof when the rainy season ends.

If you have ever had a serious roof leak, or worse yet water in your basement, you know what a drill it can be. Leaks are a fact of life here, but more of an inconvenience than a major deal.

When my dear wife and I travel, we often play a game where we look at some small, out of the way hamlet and ask “where do they get their groceries?” Sometimes the answer is just around a corner, where we pass a general store, but often there is no obvious answer.

Here in Mexpat land, there are several obvious answers. First off, we have mega-chains like Costco and Sam’s in Guadalajara. We also have traditional supermarkets, including a Walmart here in Ajijic and a Soriana next door in Chapala, and another called Mega near Guadalajara. All of this retail infrastructure would be very familiar to any visitor from NOB. While prices at these retailers are good, they are not the budget-friendly option in Mexico. Places like SuperLake stock the usual local foodstuffs but also exotic imports–at a mark-up–for the expat crowd.

Next there are the small specialty stores: the butchers, the bakers, the tortilla-makers. These are generally small shops run by families and marketing a very specific product. Again, not unlike the American market 50 years ago, but here the small retailers were never run out of business like they were so often in the States. Today in the States, these small shops are usually high-end or boutique retailers, while in Mexico they are budget-friendly providers.

 

 

 

 

 

One variation on the specialty shop is also one of the more unique retail operations in Mexico: the “guy-with-the-truck.” We can track the Dairy Guy, have heard rumors about the Beef Guy and the Fish Guy, and we absolutely rely on the Coffee Guy. These entrepreneurs load up their specialty wares and stop at specific locations on specific days, where you can walk up to their trucks and purchase your food. Somewhat like the food truck movement NOB, but for the raw ingredients, not finished meals.

Another retail form are abarrotes, literally grocers. These are mini-general stores, usually run out of the first floor of the home or even a room in the family’s casa, and they stock the usual suspects: things in constant demand by locals at very low prices. They are ubiquitous.

Finally, the most important retail operation in any village or town is the tianguis, or market. Usually set for a given day and deconflicted with neighboring towns (so if you miss your tianguis, you can take the bus down the road and visit the next village’s tomorrow), tianguis are a melange of fresh fruits and vegetables, snacks, toys, electronica, carry-out meals, pets, you name it. The tianguis is as much a social event as a shopping trip.

 

 

 

 

 

The tianguis is a cross between a farmer’s market and a county fair. It sprouts up once a week, transforming the street in the process. Wonder how the stalls get the power to run their cooking or entertainment devices? If you enlarge my photos, you’ll see an multiplug stuck into an extension cord leading up the stone wall. Somebody climbs a pole and hacks into the overhead electrical wiring!

 

 

Here in the mile-high-desert-plain-beside-the-lake, we have a dry season (November-May) and a rainy season (June-October). While we are in the tropics, we don’t have a proper monsoon, just regular weather patterns with fronts that bring consistent rains.  Many rain storms happen in the early evening, as the storms blow north across the lake and attempt to scale the mountains which hug the north shore communities. For you weather geeks, it is called orographic precipitation, and it happens often enough here to be local legend.

So for expats around Lake Chapala, May and the dry weeks in June are the most uncomfortable.  It is desert-dry, and the sun can easily cook up 90 degrees. Many year-round expats plan their “vacations” or visits back NOB during this time. We had visited lakeside during this period, but coming from DC and only being here for a week or two, the dry heat seemed a relief in comparison. This time, we were here for the whole hot, dry mess. As Don Henley put it, “stuck here in limbo, tryin’ to say sane, ‘tween the end of the summer, and the coming of the blessed rain.”

 

 

 

 

 

We have neither air conditioning nor heating; they just don’t build many houses here with either. We arrived in February and brought along a bed-size heating pad, but we never used it: not cold enough. The hot/dry time got to us, mainly because it was so relentless. You could not escape the sun/heat during the day, although it did cool down at night. We eventually succumbed and bought a swamp cooler, a fascinating device which looks like a portable air conditioner but is just a water tank, a pump, and a fan.  The pump pushes the water from the tank in front of the fan, where it evaporates, cooling the air which blows out of the unit.  The air is not cold, just cooler. The unit is effectively a “humidifier” since it works exactly opposite those de-humidifiers some of you may have NOB. Swamp coolers have long been used in very dry areas; where the humidity is already high, they do not work.

Over the course of the dry season, the mountains get progressively browner, dust builds up, and it gets hotter… “yeah, but it’s a dry heat.” The lake level begins to fall as more of it evaporates in the very dry conditions. Sometime in May, you start to hear the shrill cry of the rainbirds, which are not birds, and have nothing to do with the rain. Rainbirds are incredibly loud insects (cicadas, I believe) which emerge at the end of the dry season and set out making a racket.  They are loudest initially up on the mountains, but by the beginning of June you can hear them singing nearly everywhere during the day.

Adding to the sun, arid heat, ebbing shoreline, and the rainbirds, May is when local farmers start burning their fields to prepare the soil before planting once the rains hit. I use the terms “farmers” and “fields” advisedly, because they cover a gamut of situations from large, industrial berry fruit operations to locals planting in their backyards to ejidos planting corn and pasturing cattle on the mountainsides.You can smell a faint hint of smoke anywhere, and sometimes see the fires burning in the mountains at night.  Lucky us, this year was also a record-setter for fires in the nearby Jalisco forests.

Just about the time you start to think that 10 and 1/2 months of perfect weather are not good enough to make up for all this, one afternoon you spy thick, ominous clouds coming over the far side of the lake. They seem to rush across in the afternoon, and then stall at the foot of the near-side mountains, like tired runners with a final hill to climb before the finish line. As they slowly climb they get darker, and begin to rumble and crackle. The deluge begins, all is forgiven. Happy Rainy Season!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A musical interlude, before we commence the blogging:

I know I am too old for teenage rebellion, but there is something about getting a new vehicle which just requires dipping into The Who’s “Who’s Next” album for a golden oldie.

We spent the last several weeks investigating our automobile options. We knew we wanted a new car, as my Toyota FJ is 11 years old, can not be nationalized for Mexico (damn that NAFTA), and is a hot deal on the stateside resale scene.

The new-car buying experience is similar between Mexico and the States. You work with dealers, in big showrooms with lots of salesmen, and they offer a standard suite of models with trim/option packages. So far so good. Now for the differences.

New car prices in Mexico are set by the manufacturer on a monthly basis and are uniform across the country. No haggling, no imaginary MSRP, no “INSANE” labor day sales. The only way you can change the total price is by varying the options or by using dealer provided financing (which is relatively new here). This is nice, since we didn’t need to wonder whether the dealer across town had a better deal.

At least in our area, the dealers were all in Guadalajara. In the States, it seems like every small town has a few car dealerships, who are often big fish in the local business community.  Does not seem to be the case here. And that’s important, because in Mexico, when they say “you should use the dealer for all maintenance”, what they mean is “…if you want to maintain your warranty.” That’s right, any unauthorized (i.e., non-dealer) maintenance, or any missed maintenance, VOIDS your warranty.

Now you may think that the warranty is not a big deal, but maintenance is a major factor in your Mexico driving experience. Roads here vary between normal pavement to cobblestones to dirt streets, often with massive potholes, accompanied by roadside livestock, cyclists and mopeds which pass on all sides, and of course, random pedestrians. Even if you are very alert, you’ll face the ultimate Mexican driving challenge: the topé.

 

Topés are a cross between speed bumps and the Czech Hedgehog. In place of frequent police radar traps,  these silent sentries pop up everywhere to slow you down. Sometimes they are a series of rumble-strips on steroids, or metal bumps which rattle your frame, and the always popular undercarriage scraping raised platform.  Sometimes they are foreshadowed by warning signs, sometimes not. Sometimes old, worn

topés are left in place, and they no longer work, but you don’t know that! In general, the poor roads, erratic traffic, and topés = double your maintenance costs.

Sorry, topés brought on a rant, back to cars: dealers here don’t seem to be the cutthroat experience of the States.  Apparently sales staff are NOT paid on commission, and are not necessarily expert on their product. Just-in-time inventory is not quite.  We went to one Subaru dealer who was selling still new 2016 models because they had not received any 2017 models, and yes, this was as the 2018 models were coming out! When we asked about the turbo option on another car, we received the following answers: yes, no, never, of course, and finally, yes. Yes was correct.

We were looking for an SUV, and preferably a manual transmission with a sunroof.  This is the unicorn of new cars, and we quickly realized we needed to compromise.  Like in the States, manual transmissions are less than 5% of new car sales, and generally not even available on most models. Now if you know me, you know I love my manual transmission, but it was clear that requirement needed to go. Judy had a 2008 Subaru with a continuously variable transmission (CVT), but that really did not satisfy in the acceleration department. We did research, and learned that the CVT’s had become much more responsive; I also ran into Volkswagen’s dual clutch transmission, which intrigued.

We test-drove the Hyundai Creta, Kia Sportage, VW Tiguan, and Honda HRV. We found some models did not have cruise control (?), or lacked a turbo, which we found necessary for automatics. It came down to the Kia and the VW, and we ended up selecting the VW. There was only one left in stock: a special edition Wolfsburg.

We were taken on our test-drives and met with the dealer’s/sale staff accompanied by Spencer Shulman, who runs S&S Auto, a local car retailer who also serves as a buying-service for expats. Spencer also completed all the paperwork, helped us transfer money to the dealer (all electronically), got the car registered and plated, and delivered it to us.  He will also assist us getting all the maintenace done. He was also invaluable in explaining how dealerships work here, what is and is not available.

You’ll see us driving our VW with Jalisco plates back in the States sometime. We’ll be passing you, maybe even on the left!

My second set of observations on expat culture here in Mexico may have as much to do with being retired from Washington DC as anything else. Let me explain.

Washington DC may be the nation’s capital, but it is also the “type A” capital of the world. The DC metro area is full of very highly educated, very dedicated professionals set on making a difference. Everybody is in a big hurry, and few people suffer fools lightly, if at all. Making policy is the name of the game, and it is a competitive business.  There is a degree of insularity which resembles that of a company town, but in the big-city way that New York is a company town for fashion and business, or LA is one for entertainment.

In social situations in DC, I found it generally took about a minute for the “what do you do?” question to come up. Being at a social event was like speed-dating: 30 seconds to make a determination whether the stranger you just met was important or interesting enough to talk to. Even people who retired in the region tended to keep “in the game.” Former officials kept their titles, and were understood to be waiting the next round of administration changes to get back “in the game.”

People really seemed to identify who they were with what they do/did. (Note: I am told by friends from NY and LA it is the same there…sigh)

Fast forward to retirement and move 2400 miles southwest.

Here, I know how many kids/grandkids people have, where they have traveled, what pets they have, or where their favorite seafood restaurant is. At most, I hear something like I was a teacher, or a banker, but rarely any details. There are a few folks who take “border promotions,” meaning they now claim a more prestigious job title than they actually had.  But in general, nobody cares. Partly that’s because what you used to be is irrelevant to your identity as an expat. Partly it is because our (collective) circumstances are so different, what we each have the most in-common is our commitment to live the expat lifestyle. That first conversation between new expat friends is inevitably about something you like to do.

Unlike the increasing trend in the States to live among like-minded people, expats end up being thrown together socially, if not literally.  If you live in a gated community, there might be some less mixing, but the property costs may be low enough that it is still not as extreme as NOB. If you live out among the locals, you’ll quickly notice that most properties have a high wall, and behind that could be an enormous hacienda or a series of tents, all in the same neighborhood!

Out socially, expats do tend to flock to certain restaurants and bars, but not segregated in any way. As an expat, you’ll acquire friends from all political stripes, from anarchist-to-nationalist. You’ll meet libertines, libertarians, librarians and Rotarians. While most of these folks have settled views that aren’t amenable to change, the fact we are all strangers-in-a-strange-land makes everyone just a little more accepting. Oh, if you want a debate, you can get one on any topic, but there’s a sense that you don’t push arguments too far here: no sense “harshing the mellow” in paradise.

I would like to think being among the Mexican people has something to do with it, too. They are among the most easy-going, friendly, and welcoming people on the planet, and that has to rub off on the expats. Even with all the vitriol during and after the recent US election, which offended the Mexican people’s pride, I have not heard a harsh word directed at the expats. As one local told me, “we (Mexicans) are used to crazy people in charge, you gringos not so much.”

 

The last stop in our normalization process sent us to the offices of the Secretaría De Movidad, the Mexican equivalent of the Transportation Department, which also runs the equivalent of the stateside DMV, or the BMV, depending on where you live.  Wherever you live, it is a visit most people dread, since the bureaucrats who process drivers licenses are universally considered some of the most inept and/or incompetent on the planet.

(Note: not intending to insult any of my former state and local government colleagues; just making an observation. While I am on thin ice, may I take a moment and request that my Washington, DC-based friends join me in fighting the use of the phrase “the Dee-Emm-Vee” to refer to the Washington metropolitan area?  I hear it with increasing frequency on local radio and TV, and it needs to be crushed as quickly as possible.  It is Washington, or DC, or NoVa if you live on the correct side of the Potomac. Why would anyone want to borrow such an odious acronym? What’s next, a new car called the Edsall? A new dirigible called the Hindenburg?)

Sorry, end of rant.  The SDM complex is in Guadalajara, and we arrived on a recent Tuesday after the long Semana Santa holiday. That detail is important, since the government offices had been closed for two weeks, creating much pent up demand for licenses.  We entered the building and got in a long line, which naturally stretched out into a central courtyard under the tropical sun. The line crept forward, about ten people at a time. A man with an official looking lanyard was giving advice on the testing procedures, and offering to sell a quick look at “sample” test question for a few pesos (free-marker capitalism at work). After about an hour, we worked our way up to the first guard official, who was controlling access to the office.

When he let us pass with a cursory glance at our paperwork, we were in the entrance hall, where four officials were set up to review our paperwork. They ensured we had a valid visa, copies of our passports and US drivers licenses, and a bill or other document attesting to our current address in Mexico.  When they approved, we were let into the main office through another guarded doorway.

This room held about 70 plastic chairs which were numbered, and we were directed to take a seat at the very back. One at a time, the applicant at the front of the room was called forward to the next available official, and the rest of the room got up and moved forward one chair. This went pretty quickly, and within 30 minutes we were being processed, but the musical chairs approach was a sight to behold. According to Francisco, who accompanied us through the process, they used to give out numbers, but people would pay others to get a number for them, so they made it a more physical process. I will admit it was quite orderly, and even when too many people were let in the room by the gate guards, everybody quickly re-established the queue.

Once we were called forward, a nice official took our paperwork and entered it into the computer system, then had us verify it was correct. We were asked our blood type, whether we wanted to be organ donors, and what was our current phone number. Next we went for photographs and fingerprints, which took about 5 minutes, and soon we were in line for the written test.

Most of the people getting their first licenses were very young.  If we had been 60 or over, we could have skipped all the waits and gone straight to the front of the line, but we waited with the young people. We had some fun conversations with Mexicans who spoke excellent English and had been through the same process in the States. Finally, our turn to test came up.

The written test is just ten questions on a computer kiosk, but you must answer all ten correctly. Make a mistake, and you either have to take a training course or come back to retest in two weeks. They show you a video or a road sign and give you three choices for what you should do, or what the sign means. We asked for the “examen en ingles” and both Judy and I were routed to kiosks for the gringos where we were supposed to get an English-language version.

The key word here is “supposed,” because we were dealing with computers, so of course, things started to go wrong. On my computer, one side of the screen read “El pregunto no requiere un imagen.” The other side had three answers, in English.  Hmmmmm. It took me a minute, but I figured out that the left side said “No image was required for this question” but how was I to answer without a sign or question? When the official initialized my test, he simply hit the forward button, so I tried that.  Now I was on Pregunto Dos, with the same “no image” on the left and three new answers on the right. Not good.  I hit it one more time, and of course, the same result: Pregunto Tres, new answers.

I looked up from my kiosk (a no-no) and saw Judy with a similarly perplexed look.  We gave each other a shoulder shrug. We could not talk, nor could we get the attention of the officials who were administering the test. Judy later told me she decided the “test” was fixed, so she started hitting any answer just to get through it. I started waving my hands over my head and said “Una Problema!”

This got the official’s attention, and he was none too happy, not so much with me, but at the distraction from his well-planned administration of the test site. He came to my kiosk, grimaced at the screen, then started re-initializing the test and downloading the English language images (a-HA!). I pointed at Judy, and he went to her kiosk to effect the same fix. However, I was still on question three! So I dutifully answered the rest of the questions. The screen told me I got seven out of ten correct, and the test was done.  Oh-oh.

I got in line to see the official proctoring the test, and when my turn came I started to explain “only seven questions” but he waved me off and said “no, no, ok.” He stamped my form and sent me on my way; Judy got the same treatment. Somehow we “passed.” We got in line for the driving test, where a name check and our US licenses got us past the requirement. Now we just had to pay at one window, then wait about 40 minutes at the second for our final license.

All told, about four hours, not including travel time. Francisco, who we retained to assist us, was able to accompany us throughout (except at the test kiosks), which greatly improved the experience. It was a typically Mexican experience, with high and no-tech abiding side-by-side, long lines but orderly movement, and everybody invariably polite. We just heard the Mexican government is introducing an online registration system that will reduce the experience to just the written and driving tests, so perhaps we experienced this particular bit of Mexico just before it passed into history.