Last weekend we visited Izamal, a small town about 40 minutes west of Mérida. Izamal is known as the “Yellow City” and true to its name, the town is as yellow as can be - right down to the signage on this stadium.
Viewing an entire town in monochrome makes for an interesting afternoon (see more of the town here).
Last month we moved out of our run-down house in favor of rented accommodation (we are now dryer, cleaner and more rodent free - thanks for asking).
One consequence of this move is that our garden has been severely neglected. In our absence, it has taken advantage and is now out of control like a wayward teen.
This is eight weeks ago:
This is today:
Rainy season in the tropics. Who knew?!
It hasn’t been raining much. Most afternoons clouds roll in, promise rain, but never deliver. It’s like they have performance anxiety or something.
Finally after a week of repeated failures, it happened. Two days in a row no less! Since then, nothing. We return to lives of lowered expectations.
One thing we miss from our former lives in San Francisco is good deli meat. What we wouldn’t give at times for a few slices of top-quality speck or sopressata. This craving led us to buy this book and embark upon some meat-curing projects. Pictured above is our first attempt at pancetta.
It started out simply enough - just cover some pork belly (thank you Mercado Municipal) in a curing salt/spice mix and refrigerate for a week. After that we had to roll the belly and hang it in a 55°F room for two weeks - no small feat in the middle of a tropical summer. We ended up solving the problem with an ice chest, a block of ice, and a schedule of changes each morning and night. The result? Fantastic!
We cleaned up the living room today and collected all our lotions in a single pile. We have quite the arsenal.
Most are various forms of mosquito repellent. They are applied in a regime that escalates throughout the day as the threat level intensifies. Right now its nearly 7pm and we are entering code red. It’s time for the biggest gun we have - Off cream.
Since moving in, we have been surprised at what litte waste we are generating.
We started composting and have two bins going, one for kitchen scraps and one for leaf mold. In our tropical climate, the compost is decomposing fast, and after three weeks, a rich black soil has developed in our big blue bin.
In addition to composting, we now shop for almost all our groceries at the central market located a few blocks from our house. We buy a selection of fruits and veges that get placed directly into our Mexican-style shopping bag with zero packaging. What packaging we do aquire (a bag of chocolate mole sauce for example) tends to be thin, flimsy plastic that gets reused at least once before heading to the trash.
At the end of each week, we create three small bags of waste. One contains glass bottles to be recycled, one is food scraps that cannot be composted, and the third (the smallest) is everything else. It’s pretty amazing how much less waste we produce through some minor changes to our daily habits.
Like elsewhere in the tropics, when it rains, it rains hard and the streets fill with water. Luckily, the sidewalks are two feet above street level so you can still get around (albiet on foot and only along the length of your block)
Tetris anyone?
Best of all, the city lies on the gulf of Mexico, with stunning vistas of endless aquamarine. (Translation: There was no shade on the beach, so we stuck to the cooler shady streets before giving up in favor of lunch)
