Jul 4 - trip to Merida
March 15th through the 21st of this year (2007) we made the trip to Merida - armed with the stack of printouts of the homes we wanted to look at and thinking the five full days that gave us would be adequate to conduct our search. . And as we were arriving late in the day on the 15th, we had requested the agent meet us at our hotel the following morning. .
After a few misunderstandings at the desk the next morning, we ‘finally’ found the agent, Omar, waiting in the lobby for us. . (luckily!. .as the person behind the desk had given Omar the wrong room number to ring, and had told us no one had been asking for us. .) We had been unsure of what to expect in this agent and were pleasantly surprised to find the eager and polite young man had a ’stack’ of his own of (printouts of)Â potential homes to show us. . from old colonial style (in town homes where the action is), new homes near the golf course, homes with a bit of land to them on the outskirts of town - to homes in the nearby ocean-side town of Progreso and the surrounding areas. . .
Eagerly we hopped in his car and away we sped (and I mean that word literally) . . I thought ‘alto’ meant stop. . obviously not. . lane markings mean nothing. . but there was no congestion of traffic or loud honking of horns. . traffic flowed smoothly, in and out of the slower vehicles and along roads that were well maintained, and efficiency of motion by all drivers - it seemed. . . . We spent that day looking at homes in the Merida area, as our son Scott and a friend would be joining us the next day, and we intended to start searching the beach areas then when they could be with us. . .
We quickly learned lesson number one in the way of Mexican Realty listings. . . square footage of a home ‘includes’ all patio areas along with the interior size of a home. . . What we had expected to be a large estate of a home on the outskirts of town turned out to be a quite small (interior) two story home with large expanses of tiled patio. . .beautiful - yes - complete with pool and lush yards, but not the room inside the home that we wanted. .(at this point of our search, we had included the possibility of a home in or around Merida)
We exhausted ourselves and Omar that day. . . he drove us all around the town, showing us the sights and the area north of Merida that was booming with Americanized stores and restaurants. . . along a huge expanse of new and modern highway that led out of town to Progeso and the numerous other small towns located along the coast. . Scott would be coming in that evening and we waited in the lobby of our hotel for him to arrive. .
