I had this wild idea to check for last-minute flights to Europe and ended up finding a $150 flight from Cancún to Madrid. Getting to Cancún wasn’t easy, and figuring out how a French girl would get from Madrid back to France was another complication. But the deal was just too good to pass up, so I casually told my boyfriend, “Oh, by the way, I might be leaving for Cancún tomorrow morning to catch a last-minute flight to Europe.” This led to him booking a flight for mid-September to join me for six weeks of motorcycle travel around Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Even though I’m still here, the $150 flight has vanished from the search engines. It might pop up again at the last minute, so I packed my suitcase just in case I had to leave in a hurry.

Update: I did make it to Paris, but I had to pay for an extremely expensive flight. Sigh.

In the meantime, we’re busy getting everything in order around the house, which is more complicated than it seems. First, there’s the house itself. Our chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese need to be fed while we’re away, even on Sundays when the handyman isn’t working. So, we arranged for him to come more frequently but work fewer hours each visit. Then, my boyfriend is worried about leaving the house unattended at night. Although I’ve always been against having a night guard when we’re home, for a month, it might be helpful.

There isn’t much of value inside, but breaking a $500 French door to get in would be really annoying. Plus, once broken into, the house would stay open until we return and hire someone to fix the window. Another option is to leave the door unlocked, but that risks people walking in and taking things like a bottle of vodka or our nice bed sheets.

I don’t think anything will happen since we live here year-round. Some properties have been broken into, but those are usually vacation homes whose owners only visit for a couple of weeks each year. Our house will still have the handyman working eight hours a day. My boyfriend will stay a few more days if I have to leave in a hurry to organize everything.

Then there’s the land development. The half dozen workers we have are on contract and not paid daily, so whether they finish in a day or a month, they get the same salary. They aren’t doing much, just keeping the land tidy and building some flower bed frames with stones for the roundabouts. My boyfriend wanted to start a water tank project to collect rainwater while we decide on a well or water pump, but the caterpillar we hired wasn’t suitable for the job, so that’s postponed for now.

Lastly, dealing with bureaucratic issues has been a nightmare. Since getting my signed authorization to split my land, the council has asked for more paperwork. At the office of forests and protected areas, I’ve been stuck for six weeks. Every time I went, something was missing in my file. They never called to let me know; I had to keep going back.

I cleverly requested permission to “split my land” without specifying that it would be into 100 plots, to avoid more scrutiny. Meanwhile, my architect kept giving me maps with errors. After calling him incompetent, which wasn’t my smartest move, he refused to complete the maps. So, I hired a new architect who did the job. However, I suspect the previous architect called the protected areas office to inform them about my project because they suddenly asked for the 100 maps I didn’t have. FML. Pardon my French.

The new architect sent the maps a week later, but we were still worried they’d ask for something else. Thankfully, they only found one error, which we corrected, and now they should be processing everything. According to them, I should get the approval “tomorrow.” But I’ve been hearing “tomorrow,” “next week,” and “as soon as possible” since April. This time, I’m choosing to be optimistic since one person there seems genuinely willing to help.

That helpful guy, a lawyer, offered to underwrite all our plot sales and help smooth the process. We hired him because we’ll be in Europe for the next six weeks, and things have been moving a bit faster since he took over.

From the start, public offices recommended specific people for each job, always giving me one name per profession instead of a list of approved individuals. I suspect these recommended people are friends who give them a cut. So every time, I went with someone else, which made things more complicated.

Anyway, this time we’re doing things their way because we need to move forward.

You might have noticed I’ve been a bit quieter on my blog. I don’t want any of those officials to Google me, though I can’t confirm if they have since Google Analytics doesn’t track city locations in Guatemala. I just don’t want my file to gather any more dust because I’ve been too vocal here.

That’s it for now! What’s new with you?