We Live in a Forest.....

View up our hill from bathroom window

There are advantages in living on top of a 8500 ft mountain in the middle of Mexico.
We live in a micro climate, it can be sunny and hot in centro Patzcuaro, drive home and the temperature drops 20 degrees.

During the rainy season which is ending, or has ended we get more rain up here than down town.

It is colder up her than in town.

We burn firewood to keep the house warm, usually grinding up at least a cord for the November to March cold season.

During December it's not unusual to have the fire going most of the day and all of the evening. I have noticed that this year I am wearing a sweater most of the day, which is something I rarely did in the years before......must be the global warming catching up to us up here.

Our house is insulated on the roof, 2inch hard foam boards, then plywood, then tongue and grove 3/4 inch boards, then shingles, then roof tiles.

We have 4 ceiling fans in house, which have probably been used a total of 2 hours in 14 years that we have had the house.

Needless to say we do not need air conditioning.

Living several kilometers outside of town we just can't bop down to the centro for  a cup of ice cream or a cafe' Americano at will. That's why we have an cappuccino /espresso machine here for the morning cappuccino and afternoon espresso.

Lot's of things have changed since we first moved into our completed home years ago. We first lived in the small house attached to the garage during construction. At that time the only communications we had was via  satellite telephone. We were out of range for cell phone service, no telmex landlines, no Internet, so pretty much we were on the satphone once or twice a week for minutes at a time. The problem was that satellite phones were and still are kind of expensive per minute rates.  But when that is all you have you have to make do with checking in with friends and family on some limited basis and talking very fast.

No more sat phones, now we have Internet, voip phones with California phone numbers, a couple of lines, an extension to friends and family, Internet provides news and entertainment, emails and such, from our first Internet connectivity where the speed was 386K down load and 128 K up load we are running 10 to 15 meg down and up load speeds nowadays.

Living in the outskirts also meant that we would have lots of power failures. Especially in the rainy season when lightning strikes were plentiful, we sometimes were without power for a few days. The last few years those days have dwindled down to an hour or two maximum.

Living in the forest surrounded by trees is devoid of the city noise and light pollution. We regularly see the bright starts and milky way standing out in the night sky. We can hear the whistle of the trains as they come into the edge of Patzcuaro and through    Tzurumutaro.  We also hear the loud cherry bomb kind of noise explosions that Mexicans are famous for, as they set them of in the Centro.

 We always know when there is some kind of a holiday or festivity in town.

View from Living Room

 Although we are close to town, especially when you consider some folks have to drive half an hour or so to get to Patzcuaro, we are fortunate that we can run down to town if we really need to.
The main highway fronts our property about 500 meters down from the house, so we still hear the occasional loud truck and and even more surprising car crash now and then as the road starts an gradual turn very close to the boundary of the property.
 So, that's the charm of living on the outskirts of the population and surrounded by a forest of pine trees.....