We have ended our brief US layover after a great stay with Bob’s sister and brother-in-law in Iowa. While there, we were also able to connect with our mothers on Mother’s Day and spend some time with Bob’s parents. After a leisurely couple of days (though we did have a bit of time in the basement as a bad storm passed through) in Glidden where we changed out our winter clothes for summer garb and met with the CPA who had helped us with our tax filing, we headed to Des Moines for a night with one of our nephews before catching an early flight to Dallas, then Mexico City, and finally Merida.
Merida is the capital of the Yucaran, the Mexican state in which we will be staying for our current house sit. It has a population of approximately 980,000. We arrived at about 6:30 pm, and it was a 104 degrees. A bit of a change from Iowa and Scotland! We had the lovely proprietress of our inn pick us up at the airport which made for a relaxing entry into the city. (Just for a bit of drama, however, after having traveled back and forth between Canada, the US, and the U.K., our bank decided that trying to withdraw money in Mexico was a no-go. Luckily, we were able to fairly quickly resolve the issue.)
We stayed one night in Merida at the Casa Catrina before our home owners picked us up on Friday. We only saw a bit of Merida before our noon pick up but hope to get back during our 3-week stay.
Our house sit is actually in the little fishing village of Chelem (population of just over 5,000) about 6 miles from Progreso. We will be caring for 2 cats –Puurcy and Squeak, as well as looking after a beachfront home with its own pool. Chelem has a number of restaurants and a couple of small stores as well as some fruit and vegetable stands. we will be drinking bottled water and disinfecting our fresh produce while we are here and trying to get use to buying things for much, much less than they would cost in the states.
More on all of that and Chelem, etc. later.
Peckish Travels 