Accomodations

After a week at Jose Luis', with the chaos of all the Surfers coming and going from his home, Todd and I decided we should probably give him some space and get a hostel in the city. As everyone filtered out over Sunday and Monday we all exchanged emails, added each other on Facebook and Couchsurfing, and made very loose plans to look for each other further down the road in Central and South America. By Monday night, Todd and I returned to the hostel I spent two nights at back in January, Casa de Gladis.

Todd carries with him a little tarp like contraption called an Origami that acts as a lean-to-like tent for the both of us to feel like we have a home in. For $40 pesos each ($3.50 USD) we camped out in the back patio of the this hostel and propped up our new set up. That night we went out with some friends and I ended up running into a woman, Mercy, who I volunteered for back in January. This opened up interesting situation for the week to come.

Edelo, the art house/cultural center I volunteered at, is a large house with a kitchen and courtyard where they host art shows, drawing classes, and concerts for locals and travelers. I had remembered in Mercy's office she had a bed which I thought peculiar. When I ran into her we spoke in Spanish about her renting her apartment to me for $1,000 pesos per month ($80 USD). I told her my friend would have to be able to stay there as well, so the price went up to $1,600, but she warned me she had only one bed and a large couch.

I've noticed this is quite common in Mexico, or at least here in San Cris, to rent out your apartment for a month or two to travelers as a way to bring in extra income. My biggest observation is that Mexicans tend to be even more capitalistically minded than Americans, probably because there is far less regulation which is both great and can be a problem. Everything and anything can be for sale anywhere if you can do it. Police may hit venders up for a bribe if they are doing something particularly out there, or if a gringo is trying to set up a loose vending stall, but I think all that's factored into the costs of capital.

To continue the story, what I believed I worked out with Mercy was that Todd and I would rent her apartment from her for $1,600 pesos for four weeks. When we actually sealed the deal Todd was uncertain if he'd be staying in Mexico past two weeks, so I thought I'd worked something else out where he'd only pay two weeks with the possibility staying on for the last two weeks as well. It turns out my Spanish in these negotiations was not so good.

We loved the space. It was much closer to town than Jose Luis', it had three rooms, an outdoor space with the kitchen and bathroom each separated from the rest of the house. Our first night we made a grand dinner excited to have a kitchen and place to store bulk food, and afterward Mercy came home. We were a bit confused, but after realizing we would not have the place to ourselves figured we could still make the situation work.

Two days later over breakfast I was talking with Mercy and learned she had a friend coming in from France who would be staying there for the month of March. When I said four sounded a bit crowded she looked confused. Apparently my bad Spanish didn't convey that Todd would have the option to stay on another two weeks, but that he would only be there two and then gone. This didn't at all work for us, so by the end of the day Todd and I just decided to move out then and there. We talked with Mercy and explained the confusion in its totality and clarified how the original deal was not what we'd thought and that we'd like to give her $200 pesos from the total we paid but get the rest back and move out. It fortunately ended well.

That was the basic excitement for the weekend. He and I moved out that day with half our money refunded, the other half to be picked up Monday since it was such an abrupt change. A friend of ours, Carrie, was also coming to town from Tuxtla, the capital of Chiapas two hours away, so we set up camp in her hostel for the rest of the week.