Imagine Mérida

Becoming Expats in the Yucatán

Two words that sound so lovely: “your keys”

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We don’t have a finished property to visit and enjoy, but we do have keys, which is something. We have keys that open something of ours in Mérida! Those two little words: “your keys,” “Estas son sus claves.” Ahhhh. Tell me more about my keys. I cling to those keys, even though I can’t touch them because they’re actually in someone’s drawer in Mérida.

The word loses its beauty power when they’re your keys, their keys or the other person’s keys. Sometimes, the word can be ugly and brutal. When we were house-hunting, the real estate agent very often didn’t possess the keys to places he was showing, and there are no lock boxes like you’d see in the States. (Something about attitudes regarding keys and ownership, we were told.) Often, a team was sent just ahead of us to get the keys, and when someone failed to connect, we’d be left waiting on the curb. “No tenemos las llaves.” Grrrrrr. Not a pretty phrase at all. (Is llaves and claves interchangeable, or is Google Translate messing with my head? No matter.)

I actually have a bad history with keys in Mérida. We stayed at one place that gave us two keys, [Read more…]

The unphotographable rooms of Mérida’s Centro

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Beams overhead in a Centro home in MéridaHere we are, our first chunk of free time since we closed on the property, and we don’t fly south. We drive north. If I had known in the summer that I would have closed on a property shortly before New Year’s, our plans would have been very different this weekend.

So here we are at an inn on Cape Cod, waiting to celebrate New Year’s, and marking Paul’s birthday. It’s drizzly and cold outside, but we brought our books on haciendas and casas to stimulate our imaginations. Sitting by the fireplace, we need to think through our plans for Casa Nana.

As I’m poring though these very professional and beautiful photos, it strikes me that they’re of limited use.

“Your looks are laughable, unphotographable,” goes the old song lyric, but when I say Mérida’s grand-scale homes in the Centro can’t be photographed, I mean it as a compliment.

My last trip down, I visited the home of a favorite blogger whose renovation tales I had been following closely. I saw (studied, really) every photo taken before, during and after her fantastic Henry Ponce project. I saw it as a good way to train my eyes to look at a “ruin” and see its potential. But when I arrived [Read more…]