Our Bacalar home

After a day of happy camping in Cocalitos campsite in Bacalar it started to rain. It rained and it rained, for three days. It was, apparently, the tail end of hurricane Arthur which was demoted to a tropical storm after it hit land. We survived in our tent. We didn't know anything of the severity of the storm, other than it was pissing down and Sofia was getting frustrated at not finding anyone in the street to ask about houses to rent. But when the storm abated we found a very nice single storey concrete house (or "casa de material" as they are known - to distinguish them from wood panel houses with palapa - palm frond - rooves). We are two blocks from the market and four from the laguna.

Curiously our house has no number - we are technically the white house on the corner of Avenue 9 and Street 32 but if you want to find us try Google Earthing us at digital latitude of 18.6846306008, and longitude of -88.3902665106. Our house has no hot water (you don't need it here - the shower can feel hot enough with cold water in this climate). We have drinking water in the taps, but it tastes a bit off so we use bottled water. We cook with a gas cylinder. We have ceiling fans throughout but an additional fan is necessary to sleep at night, and to stir the air up enough to keep the mosquitos from landing. The two bedrooms have hammock hooks for two people each, and many people round here use them instead of beds in true Maya fashion. The kitchen sink is a bit low for me, but then it is built for people of Maya height, not for Europeans. We share the house with various little semi-transparent geckos and we have a resident stripy lizard by the back door. We've learnt that if you don't wash up at night, by the morning you will have an ant trail removing any crumbs quite efficiently to some nest outside.

Another feature is that we have no letter box. The other day a man from the electricity company on a quad bike hand delivered a bill, giving us a shout when he was outside. The great thing is we have no junk mail. But we do have the PROPAGANDA: cars or trucks with speakers or sound systems mounted on top or at the back. When we first got here I was invariably woken up by some jaunty ditty about buying such and such. Or more bizarrely "Liverpool, es parte de mi vida" (Liverpool it is part of my life). As an Arsenal fan I hate to admit that it is true. Liverpool is indeed part of our lives. Liverpool is in fact a department store and they handled our wedding gifts (thank you everyone!).