Sayulita Scenes - The Feet Of Sayulita

It's a sight to make any mother cringe but it's reality.  Our kids go barefoot almost everywhere.  They always ask if they need to bring shoes and my favorite response is "just leave them in the car in case you need them".  Even that response gets resistance.

Having grown up in the land of "no shirt, no shoes, no service", the idea that our kids don't actually want or rarely need shoes is a totally foreign concept.  In snow country I must have had easily over a dozen pairs of shoes.  Shoes for every season.  Shoes for every activity.  Dress shoes, running shoes, biking shoes, snow boots, ski boots, tele boots, trail runners, work shoes, softball cleats etc......

Once Trace realized just how nasty his feet were even he was eager to clean them up a bit.

The kids have been pretty much barefoot since they arrived here.  At school the first thing they do when they arrive is shed their 60 peso flip flops.  Upon arriving home they do the same.  Circus and SUP practices are in bare feet.  Capoeira was the same.  They would go barefoot back and forth to the beach if they could.  I wonder what they would think about putting on a pair of ski boots for 6 hours.  It think they would lose it.  The best part of dirty feet is when you walk around the house when the floor is wet from the beach, pool or someone just got out of the shower.  What do you get when you mix dirty feet and water.......mud.

After some clean up

A New Casa In 2017 - How Did We Get Here? Part 1

It is not possible to be brief about this.  How we got to this point is only something that could really be understood by someone who has been through it, sweat it out and felt it.  The journey is generally different now but some still live in the world I will describe.

Spring 2006 was our first visit to Sayulita and Ashley and I both looked at what this little pueblo was at the time and could become.  The town was really starting to be on the radar as a hip, surf destination though opinions differ when this actually began.  We saw what was happening and asked ourselves "Why couldn't we have a piece of this"?  It reminded me a lot of Park City in the early/mid 90's.  Cool town on the rise, easy to get to, great food, vibe and the environment!  An international real estate investment?  Really?  I did not even want to come down here originally to be honest.  Ok, let's look into it.

What we learned is that there are basically three classifications of property here for non-Mexican citizens on the coast.   No, I will not have all the details exactly correct so please forgive my dumbing down of the specifics and omitting official names.  This in NOT an real estate investment lesson after all(disclaimer).  The general classifications we dealt with were.  Ejido, Ejido titled and Titled land in a Bank Trust.

Listing photo from 2005

Ejido land is land without title that only a Mexican national can have in his or her name.  Wikipedia defines it as,

"an area of communal land used for agriculture, on which community members individually farm designated parcels and collectively maintain communal holdings."

This is where we started.  After a second visit to Sayulita, meeting the right people and looking at some properties we decided to "purchase" a property that was the cheapest ocean view in town.  Our investment in a house in Park City, Utah in 2004 had produced some equity and the rates to borrow on it were favorable so our first venture in to Mexican real estate began.

At this time, now 2006, most of the properties in town did not have "title" and were not even eligible to have one.  In other words, most of the properties in Sayulita had not been surveyed and documented in an official capacity and recorded.  Mostly the downtown area and a sprinkling of other properties actually had an official "title".  The rumor mill at that time was circulating that the agency that would do this was moving forward but where exactly and in what part of town this "titling" would begin was anybody's guess.

Listing photo from 2005 from top of property

So, most of the property in Sayulita was what was called "Ejido" land that was only available to Mexican nationals to "own" and it didn't even have a title associated with it.  (Actually, Ejido property cannot even really be owned since it is communal land but we won't get into that here.)   The question is how do you do such a transaction?  Well, you make an arrangement with a Mexican national to own/possess the property in your name.  This person is called a "Presta Nombre".  Since we could not have possession of Ejido property we needed a trusted person to act as the owner in name only and have an arrangement with that person.  What kind of arrangement?  This person would be the name on the documents and would need to allow us to do what we wanted to do with the land like build a home, sell it or grow corn if we wanted.

This is the core of the nightmare scenarios that you hear about investing in Mexico.  People investing in property in someone else's name only to have that trusted person take possession and sell it, occupy it and possibly leave the foreign investor with nothing.  Our choice for a "Presta Nombre" was the person already acting in that role for the previous "owner" of the lot plus she was employed by several friends.  She agreed, a fee structure per year for her services was set and we did a deal for the property with the owner.  At that time, 2006, prices were high and looked to be going higher so we bought at the height of the market.  We had our piece of Sayulita.

A New Casa In 2017 - Final Design

So what is this place going to look like?  Below are the plans and elevations.  As I do updates this will be a reference to follow as things get done.  The lot measures about 30 feet wide by 100 feet deep.  There will be three levels.  Bodega, Apartment and Family Living.  The bodega level(not shown) will be identical to the apartment level as far as footprint goes.  It just will not have living space.  We are only allowed three living levels so we do not want to waste one of them on a walkout basement.  I am just fine having a "man-cave" that we can lock things away in and shut the door.

The Family Living Level will have a master with two bedrooms sharing a bath, laundry/pantry, kitchen and living area.  The large X in the plan is actually an open to the sky interior courtyard that will help with air flow and light.  The living room ended up being shortened by a meter or so due to a HUGE tree that we did not want to remove or risk damaging.  The plan incorrectly shows a garden in front of the car which has since been removed to allow entry into the bodega level.

The lot is steeply sloped so the lower two levels actually hold up the top floor Living Level.  The computer rendering on the right isn't exactly what we expect to achieve but it's what the program kicked out.  Lots of things to figure out like keeping it secure.  Ashley's big desire was to have a very indoor/outdoor living style.  If we close it all up to lock it up then we lose that so we have to figure out a way to solve that.

Roosters - Neighborhood Sounds

Almost three years ago we move across town from the hill on the north end of town called Nanzal and began renting a place on the south end of town just off the Punta Mita Highway.  We gave up our ocean views and sunsets for next door neighbors, easier commutes to school and work and level walking distance into town.  The North end generally is full of nightly rentals, larger accommodations and less traffic.  The South end is generally more local.  The sites and sounds of life coming from local residents neighborhoods vs  the sounds of life coming from nightly resident neighborhoods is totally different.  One of the biggest differences is what animals you hear.

When you live where we do now you can generally get a good idea what time it is base on whether you can hear the local roosters.  If I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and do not hear any crowing yet then I know it is not 4:30 am just yet and have time to get a couple hours more sleep.  The crowing can be deafening sometimes.  I just attributed it to living in a more local neighborhood where so many roosters and chickens roamed free.  Over the last 6 months or so, several trees have been removed from the neighborhood that we see from our back yard.  I never was able to see any of these buildings before and then suddenly they were there.  One of them is a full fledged Rooster Condominium complex.  I always knew there were roosters and we see them everyday but I had no idea that most of the roosters that I had been hearing for so long actually had accommodations.  Am I surprised?  No, not really.  It just kind of confirms what I may have suspect all along but just couldn't see it.  Sounds like "Home".  The complex pictured is on some appreciating real estate.  I wonder how long the owner will keep it that way.  Times are changing.

Trace's New Ride - McLaren 2015

We came home one night from circus practice as usual and Trace asked if I had seen the "Corvette" in front of our neighbor's house.  I looked out the window and nodded that I had seen it and continued to do whatever I was doing at the time.  Little did I know Trace's Corvette was actually a McLaren.  To tell you the truth I had never heard of a McLaren before and Trace had not either.  Trace is the automobile fan in the family.  We are not sure where that comes from but he loves fast cars.

The owner was visiting our next door neighbor and was very willing to tell us about it and let Trace sit in it.  Amazing machine!  The price tag on this particular model and year was in the several hundreds of thousands of dollars!  "You can buy a house or you can buy and live in this car" I said to the kids.  They chose a house.

A New Casa in 2017 - Week One

It has begun!  We came back from Semana Santa break and saw that a back hoe had been working on our lot.  Exciting stuff and glad to see our deposit money at work.  We removed a large tree on the lot a few months ago and it brought a bunch of natural light and totally changed the feel of the property.  Excavation has been done back to a point to accommodate the large retaining wall for the lower levels as well as footing locations.  In the photo, the height of the existing cut will be the floor level of our family living level.  This level will be just above the building to the right.  Better learn how to climb stairs again.

An adventure in Portugal - April 2017

As we have mentioned many times, Semana Santa in Sayulita is crazy with Mexican nationals from inner Mexico so we always try to leave during that time.  This year our friends suggested we go to Portugal and rent RV's.  We really had no business going because we are building a house using cash but I cannot pass up a chance to travel,  and then throw in camping and I will do whatever it takes to make it work.  So I took two weeks vacation in April which gave me the whole month off.  I knew we would need standby travel time on both ends.  I could write a small novel on us getting to Lisbon but will spare you and me.   With standby travel you do not even being to think about flights until a day or two before.  I needed to know routes and backups so I started about four days before planning how four people were going to get from Puerto Vallarta to Lisbon.  I became so overwhelmed because there were so many options.  Delta at that time did not fly to Lisbon which sucked for us.  We can fly on hundreds of other airlines for a very minimum price so I had all of those choices.  I could also get us anywhere into Europe on Delta and take a European airline, train or bus to get to Lisbon.  But we first had to get out of Mexico.  I also didn't want to pay a fortune for airfare. I had hundreds of scenarios so I finally had to make a chart to figure how in the hell we were going to get there.   I also knew that the plans could change within seconds so I needed it all in front of me.

My color coded chart.  Each country had a different color as well as each mode of transportation.

I soon learned that every form of transportation from anywhere in Europe to Lisbon was either sold out, way too expensive or took too many days.  I had already given us four days to get there and we had to pick up the RV on April 10.  It also didn't help that we were traveling during Spring Break and during the week of a serious shit show of rain, tornados and cancelled flights for Delta. Flights broke down and we had choices to make the could either make or break us including throwing Amtrak in the mix as well as spending the night in either Grand Central Station or the Train Station in Philly.  Ozzy not being comfortable with either decision.

So, to get to Lisbon we flew Puerto Vallarta to Minneapolis, spent the night at the Raddison Blu attached to the Mall of America for two nights.  I have been wanting to take the kids there because of the awesome indoor amusement park so this was perfect.  We stayed there two nights because we were flying TAP Air Portugal out of Boston on April 9.

Testing out our new selfie stick

Boarding passes for TAP

We did it.  We arrived in Lisbon on schedule, met up with our six other travel partners, and Ubered to pick up three RV's.  After being awake since the morning before, spending five hours getting the RV's, shopping and finding our first camp site, Amy and I headed back into Lisbon to see Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds play at an amazing music house.  Dave Matthews is by far my favorite musician, so when I learned he was playing in Lisbon the same day that we arrived I bought tickets.  He played what I think was the best set list I have ever heard from him and I have seen him many times.  I was so happy!!!

Dave Mathews and Tim Reynolds

Beautiful Venue

 Peneche

Nazare

Alex was crazy about the pine cones.  I think it may have been her first time seeing one.

Amarante

Porto

Ereceria

This is unfortunately a post that was begun but never finished.  It was just too big an undertaking to do once we got home and eventually got back to.  So, we will put it in the blog just because though the stories are no longer fresh, the photos are so good we need to be sure our adventure to Portugal was included in the blog in part.

Semana Santa 2017

We managed to escape the crowds in Sayulita for Semana Santa again this year.  I kept up on the social media posts talking about the crowds but more importantly about the substantial volunteer effort that was organized this year to handle a holiday crowd.  This aerial shot of the beach during the holiday break was taken by Curt Barter gives you a good idea of just how packed it can get.

Circo de los Niños 2017 - Behind the Scenes

The Circus de los Niños program the kids have been participating in once again had their annual series of shows in March.  This is the program's big fundraiser production.  With the exception of  summer the kids train eagerly 2-5 days a week with the program.  This year's performance, the kid's 3rd, was spectacular as usual.

The amount of time and energy all the children, organizers, trainers, volunteers and parents need to put into this show is totally nuts.  This year's commitment was bigger than year's passed which I complained about often since it dominated our lives week after week after week. So much so that the kids had to give up their other interests and activities.  This session "Circo" did not even have space for new children to join the program.  Waiting list only.

This video follows the final practice days leading up to the performance and the action during performance week.  Really kind of enlightening seeing things behind the scenes.  Once spring break is over the kids will be back at it for 10 more weeks of Circo before summer vacation begins.  Such is life in small town Mexico.


Making Of_Sueño de una noche de verano_2017 from Monique Voyer on Vimeo.