The Story Continues

Sorry being so late with this update. I can tell you Ina is collaborating with a fascinating project called Community Links (you can check what they do at www.commlinks.org), and I'm still teaching at the local university (http://www.udlap.mx/), and that has change our routine, and we're now at the building site only 3 to 4 days a week. Sentimos no haber actualizado hasta ahora. Nuestra excusa: Ina empezó a colaborar con un proyecto bien interesante (que pueden checar en http://www.commlinks.org/), y eso hizo sólo posible que lleguemos a la construcción de 3 a 4 días por semana. Just so you will know where in the world we will be living, go to: En caso de que quieran ver donde vamos a vivir, visiten:
Ver Where's Ina & Manuel? en un mapa más grande With this new pace, the whole month of January was about getting a good sombrero for our ecological house. We made contact with a guy in the city's old district and found great wood beams from old houses ready to be demolished. To be honest, it was not easy to keep smiling after the whole three weeks of hard work that took us to "discover them" from several layers of ugly oil paint. Con este nuevo ritmo, todo el mes de enero se nos fue construyendo un buen sombrero para nuestra casa ecológica. Hicimos contacto con un cuate en la parte vieja de Puebla y encontramos unas excelentes vigas de una casa antigua lista para ser demolida. Para ser honesto, fue difícil seguir sonriendo después de las tres semanas de trabajo duro para "descubrir" las vigas de varias capas de horrible pintura de aceite. In the meantime, don Heriberto, our master builder, continued growing our adobe walls, and Ina took more of that miraculous cactus sap to give a first protective cover to the walls. Mientras, don Heriberto, nuestro maestro albañil, seguía creciendo nuestras paredes de adobe. Ina tomó más de ese milagroso jugo de nopal para darle una primera cubierta protectora a las paredes. For to upper face of the roof we used local clay tiles, which are widely used in this area, and will work good for the water harvesting. They also give a rustic touch to the house. Then, it made sense to use the same material for the floor. Para la parte superior del techo usamos loseta de barro, que se usa mucho en esta zona y que va a funcionar bien cuando colectemos el agua de lluvia. También creemos que le da un toque rústico al asunto. Igualmente, nos pareció lógico usar el mismo material para los pisos. Working with the "techinámitl" (stone boundaries in old Mexican) included encounters with the local fauna (in the photo below). So far, at the end of the journey we like what we have done. Trabajar en el "techinámitl" - el límite del terreno-, en el puro estilo prehispánico, nos dio cuenta de la fauna del lugar. Al final de la jornada nos gustó lo que construimos! Ustedes qué piensan?

Navidad Without Snow

Our best wishes for the Holidays! 2009 may be a good year to come visit your Mexican family!

Al Principio Todo Era Barro

Wanna Blogg? Having you all connected through our travel blog was such a great experience that in a lot of ways helped us stay on the road (but also helped us deal with that departure from the mountains in NC). Eventually, our seven months long journey ended and again, we are giving technology the chance to link us with that part of our lives we miss so much. Getting immersed in our new Mexican life has taken us some time but we are pleased to tell you we are now getting full hands in our dream project of building our own house. The building process may be the main topic of the few following entries for this blog. Hope we’ll not bore you. If it helps, let me tell you, this first casita has been planned as a guesthouse to receive our travelling friends (yes you all!). We are hoping you guys will someday come visit us.

Finding The Perfect Spot

Our idea of living in the warmer country town of Atlixco (an hour from Puebla city) was thrown away right at the moment we stepped on this amazingly scenic spot in Tecuanipan (30 mins from Puebla city, half way to the Popocatepetl volcano). Far away from any crowded city, Tecuanipan, or San Jeronimo, makes it perfect for our intention of living in a small campesino community.

Casita de Barro

We learned that making adobe is very much like cooking mole, that famous Mexican chicken chocolate sauce. Everybody will tell you there’s one way to do it (and often it’s their own way). That's only because the "ingredients" are all different in different places. So, we had to learn the local way. Don Miguel, local adobe brick master with a 30 years of experience, taught us his arts. Here Manuel is keeping the rhythm for the mud to be just right.

At the same time, we started exploring the surrounding areas in order to collect materials we will need later. Oscar, who owns a "nopalera" provided us with some of his best cactus plants and Dulce, the architect helping us with the project, helped us cutting them to prepare the mix we will use to seal the walls.

A big hole in the north side of our land will provide us with a much needed water tank (20, 000 liters) that will be filled with filtered rain water collected by our guesthouse’ roof. We used the method of “ferrocemento” that saved a huge amount of the cement used for conventional tanks. Here, Ina is using our cactus mix (tequila was not added) to seal the walls of the tank. The first weeks were all about adobe brick making. To be honest these were all but frustrating days because of the fact we couldn't make it even closer to the expected goal of 50 bricks a day.

Maybe it was because we had to believe a whole house could be built only with clay sand, and water. Here, Ina, well into the brick making, is adding some of the last 100 bricks. The excavated dirt was used to make the adobe bricks.

After the first 2 weeks, our land looked covered by adobe bricks.

The results, so far...

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