WHAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING
Jim and Mindy Phypers now live in a small village (called a "ranchita") in rural Veracruz, Mexico. It is located about half way between the capital of Veracruz, Jalapa, and the Gulf of Mexico and the port city of Veracruz. Jim's failing health necessitated a move to a warmer, more temperate climate. Financial pressures also figured into our decision to sell Solar Haven and move south.Our village lies in a beautiful green valley with a large river, the Rio de Pescados, flowing through to the coast from the slopes of Mt. Orizaba (elevation, 17,340 feet).
The population of our town is about 900 with many many many more cows, burros, chickens, oxen, horses, and dogs.
The town is about five blocks long and two blocks wide plus several houses sprinkled up the slopes of the valley, including our rental house.
Most of our neighbors are "camposinos" who work in the fields. Many know how to build a house and have most likely built their own, first with bamboo or sticks and later with cement blocks... Everyone has their kitchen outside on the patio and cooks with wood...
Everybody knows everybody, of course, and support and care for each other in a most wonderful way. There is a community loud speaker with announces birthdays, who has what for sale at the moment, and upcoming events. Most of our food comes from a neighbor's yard or pasture. Prices for food are half of what they are in the United States, and of course the food is very fresh and organically grown. Everybody has unlimited free water from an irrigation canal above the town.
We can buy almost every thing we need either in town or in a larger town five minutes away. Most services are available locally as well. We have been able to get almost anything fixed for a song--stuff no one would repair in the states. To purchase big ticket items like appliances and electonic gear, Jalapa is a 35 minute drive on a four lane freeway. We have a Costco there plus Home Depot, Sam's Club, Office Max, Walmart, and the "Chedruai" (the Mexican equivalent of Walmart but better).
The people are very warm and friendly. They laugh and smile a lot...
The kids are adorable. Here are the kids from one family standing at our gate...
None of our neighbors speak English. A few have worked to the United States but were never able to learn the language. We understand why. Learning Spanish has been very diffiuclt and a full-time occupation for these past five years. Mindy does pretty good now--Jim still not so hot.
We have adopted four dogs (or did they adopt us?). It was impossible to watch them starve to death on the streets and not take them in - Bingo, Pippen, Brindle, and Norman. We love them. We brought our old dog Ty and our cat, Ghost, with us from the United States. Ty passed away last year at almost 16.
Our little town is the "old Mexico" with the traditional ways and customs very much intact -- including fiestas...
and parades...
and pinyatas at birthday parties...
and lots of fun and good eats...
and big "cinceñera" parties to celebrate a young lady's coming-of-age at 15...
Most of our shopping is done in a large air market called the "Mercado" in a larger town five minutes away. It is open seven days a week though on Thursdays, it swells to three times its normal size as vendors from towns all over the area bring their goods and produce in to sell. We also buy meat and veges from our neighbors.
It gets hot in the afternoons in Summer at our latitute of 19 degrees and elevation of 2200 feet (around 100). We can easily cool off, however, in our big river three blocks away or in a lovely creek which runs down a side-canyon just five mintues drive from the house. With it's many pools and waterfalls, this creek area is easily one of the most beautiful places we have ever discovered. Here is a picture of Mindy heading down the trail to our favorite pool...
The water in the creek comes from a spring near the top of the canyon rather than a water shed. The creek therefore runs all year and is not effected by periods of low rainfall.
We keep in touch with the world and maintain our website with a satellite dish installed in the back yard. We are the only folks in town to be connected to the Internet or to own a computer for that matter. Three of us in town have managed to pick up a cell phone signal from a nearby town using a high-gain antenna on a tall mast. No land lines were ever installed here.
We have kept our vintage Airstream trailer which we brought with us to Mexico and lived in our first year here. It has made a fine guest house...
Our Airstream is now FOR SALE. It has recently been refurbished with new flooring, curtains, and painting.
For the past four years, we have made many videos of our life out in the boonies in Veracruz. Have a look on our "solarhaven2" channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/solarhaven2
Before starting to make videos, we maintained a blog of our life in Mexico...
2007 BLOGS - CARRIZAL and CHAHUAPAN
PLANS
After living for five years in Veracruz, Mexico, Jim and Mindy are still planing to build "Solar Haven 2" based on the same ideals of living simply and sustainably as the original SolarHaven in Arizona. It will be somewhat more modest in scope. Since there are no protective covenants or building codes in Mexico forcing us to build as large a house as we did in Arizona, the house can be much smaller. There is also no need for heating or cooling living so far south in Mexico. The house will be about 500 square feet and most likely be made of native stone which is so plentiful where we live. Veracruz is not wheat straw country. Having the bales trucked in from two states away would be prohibitively expensive and using all that gas to transport them is anything but environmentally friendly.
Living in the tropics means so much more living can occur outdoors. The entire kitchen can be outside on the patio (Mindy will of course continue to do most cooking with the sun) and we can sleep outside much of the year. No heating or cooling is necessary--this is the tropics! Electricity will be provided by solar panels, inverter, batteries, and a back-up generator for periods of cloudy, rainy weather during Monsoon and the dead of Winter. Water is easily heated by the sun in a black storage tank located on the roof.
We have been looking actively for land to buy for quite awhile now. Sadly, however, all the land in our area is "Ejido" - which means basically that it belongs to all the people. There are no legal documents of owner ship whatsoever. Without a legal title to any of properties we have liked, we can not borrow money to buy them. The large Spanish haciendas were broken up after the 1910 revolution. Ownnership became a matter of usage by the people. If a family has farmed a plot of land and/or lived there for generations, the land is considered theirs. We have also tried to buy two different houses in our town. The situation is the same -- no papers.
We are therefore staying put in our little rental house (which we like very much) and are in the process of making improvements such as a secondary roof over the main one which is just sheets of tin. The new roof is made of palm fronds and bamboo and will add much needed shading and insulation for the house and patio areas. We plan to install our solar electric system as time permits.
©Jim Phypers 2012
