A Cozy Retreat in Guatemala: Week 5 Journey

A Cozy Retreat in Guatemala: Week 5 Journey

This is the fourth part about the slow conversion of the land I bought in Guatemala and my new life here.

It’s the weekend as I write this, and the house is finally quiet without the construction workers around. It’s such a relief to rest my back, stretch out my legs, moisturize my hands, and just do nothing. This past week was exhausting, and we’re completely burned out. It’s 6:30 PM and my boyfriend has been asleep for over an hour already. That’s how tired we are.

Goodbye to the black plastic roof cover (fingers crossed for no rain). The car was making a weird noise, so we took it to the mechanic. Here, they fix cars with just a piece of plastic and a bit of rubber, which is amazing. You learn to make do when the nearest car dealer is 300 miles away, and shipping takes forever. What was supposed to be a 30-minute fix ended up taking about four hours.

Meanwhile, I went out to buy some plastic tiles for the roof and a couple of doors for the future guest rooms. I managed to forget my checkbook there and didn’t realize until a couple of days later. Or maybe it was the workers in the house… Either way, I had to make an extra trip to the bank to find out that, luckily, no checks had been used. However, withdrawing money without a checkbook was impossible despite having my ID and fingerprints in the bank’s system. Since it’s a company account, no debit card is allowed either, so we have to write personal checks to the workers, complicating the company’s accounting even more.

We started work early this week to build a wall to divide the living space into two guest rooms. Since half of that space is still our bedroom, we confined ourselves to just a bit more than the size of the bed until the wall was up. The bathroom door used to be in the second room, so we had to remove it, close the hole, and make a new door in the newly created corridor.

This meant noise and a lot of dust—more dust than you can imagine. From the deck, it looked like the house was chain-smoking cigarettes.

We hadn’t planned to change the roof just yet, but a retired American expat came by and showed interest in buying our plastic roof cover. He had just moved into a house with a leaking roof and was in a hurry. We were happy to sell it to him, and the sale covered one-third of the expenses for the new plastic tiles.

The thatched roof was rotting in some areas, and dust and debris would fall off, making it a nightmare to clean the house. These rotten parts were also where insects and bats nested, so we got rid of it all. We kept the healthy parts and put on the plastic roof. It feels like camping under the stars, which I quite enjoy. We did it ourselves because the workers were occupied with the room-building and excavation project.

We also painted the house white with lime wash and dug a new septic tank because the old one was a dry toilet that had to be removed for the new room’s excavation. It was a busy week, to say the least.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how happy I was with my deep freezer, which had a full lamb inside. It turns out the lamb’s sharp bones had caused a hole in the freezer’s bottom. When we noticed the temperature rising, we knew something was wrong. The store said a technician could come in two weeks, but we didn’t want to waste a whole lamb and $200 worth of food. We called another technician, who said the bone hole wasn’t the issue; the freezer was faulty. Now we’re fighting with the store to get the repair money back. They claim the one-year guarantee doesn’t cover it because of the bone hole.

There are some good news bits.

1. We managed to save the palm trees that were uprooted for the new room. They are now planted on the beach and mark out a line for a petanque (French bowls) field, which is a nice addition and a way to use the excavated ground.

2. While excavating, we found remnants of Mayan clay artifacts.

3. Our hens welcomed two new members, and we found a second egg! Initially, I thought they were traumatized and not laying, but it turns out they prefer laying outside the nests we made for them, laying eggs in hidden spots. Now, it feels like an Easter egg hunt every day, trying to find the eggs before another animal does. We keep an ear out for a hen making noise before laying to know which one to watch closely.

4. I love the color of wet concrete and am considering ways to preserve this look with a coat of burned oil or something. Otherwise, the concrete will dry and look gray and sad.

5. The most delightful news of the week is that the very first little plant in our herb garden has started to sprout! Guatemala is known for its amazing soil quality, making plants grow twice as fast as elsewhere due to the perfect climate. I hope the hens won’t eat the plants!

I hope your week is going well. Have you written to Santa yet? Don’t forget, you can win $100 in the giveaway I am co-hosting!