Friday, February 20, 2009

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE DON'T HAVE WATER?

Monday night was a true beach circus.

I'm not even sure exactly how to explain it all. This house has two water underground reservoirs plus a water tank on the roof that requires a pump to fill. All I know is that mid afternoon, we had no water. Yeah- no water for flushing, cleaning, etc. El zippo.




I heard that our side of the city was temporarily shut off due to construction, and I also heard that the main water pipe was damaged by the construction workers. Same hassle regardless. Thanks to our good friend, Carlos, who is also our Go-To-Mr.-Fixer, that water problem was pretty much under control by 11:00pm.
I am constantly amazed by the resourcefulness and absolute ingenuity of the local folks. They can fix anything. The water job started at 6:30 pm, and night was approaching. I'm thinking, Oh, shit, were' going to have all this equipment and tools strewn all over the front of the house, they'll need to come back sometime in the next few days to finish...this is going to take forever... Boo-hoo for me. And also, I could not have been more wrong.

Anyone that really knows me, knows that I like a neat and tidy living area. I can't stand clutter, dirty stuff, etc. I'm always looking at my surroundings, and if it doesn't look pleasing to my eye, I'll fix it until it does. I'm constantly sweeping, wiping, dusting, and rearranging. I know Bob secretly thinks I'm crazy, obsessive, and overly-dramatic. I blame this curious condition on my Peri-Menopause. I wasn't always like this... but that's another post or two!!)

ANYWAY... So in my mind, I'm thinking there's going to be a big truck that suctions water and stuff, maybe a water truck to fill up our wells, also a cement truck as well as several workers. Wrong again.

Three men and a 12 year old showed up. Of course, Bob and Carlos had to go out and buy big long tubes, water faucet gadgets, and more hardware things that I have no idea what they were. The guys started by moving these two huge cement slabs that covered this large square tunnel that went about 35 or so feet down into the ground.

As it got dark, they rigged up a lighting system because one guy had to descend the deep, dark hole. That in itself was amazing as the ladder that they had in the tunnel did not reach to the top, and so he had to kinda straddle down several feet using only these tiny foot holds. I was fascinated. I didn't think his legs were long enough. They were, and this guy was a trooper, and after he was down in the bottom of this well, the men on the ground lowered two big long tubes, a skinny and fat one, and also a short tube. They rigged up some sort of a suction system with the short tube tied to a long rope, and the man underground was jumping on the fat tube to make it sink further into the ground while at the same time bringing up all kinds of sediment and rocks in the short tube. The skinny long tube was rigged into the fat one to eventually bring up fresh ground water. They went down another 20 feet or so .

Anyway, 5 hours and almost $2000 pesos later, we had water. Well, we sorta had water because the next morning there was an issue with our city water well, which Bob and Carlos had been working on until yesterday afternoon. More parts were needed, and I did a quick run into Cd.Colima yesterday early am. Now, we're almost home free as we will be checking the water tank on top of the roof today.

Below are some pictures of our "Agua Men" :









































Today, we're discussing what to do to resolve our pigeon problem. Carlos found five nests including one with babies on top of the terrazza roof. Needless to say, baby bird nest is still there and so is Momma and a few friends. The Momma's cooing to the youngsters is lovely, the dropping are not.
Tomorrow is our boogie-boardin' beach day. YEAH!!!! The waves are high and strong in the afternoons, "real riddin' waves", as Bob calls them.
Bye for now.

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