Two Tall Blondes, a Fat Cat Named Whiskey and a House on a Hill in San Pancho...
 Eileen Pierce - PVNN
| | Eileen Pierce tells the story of how she and her lifelong friend Tory came to purchase a small house on a hill overlooking the small fishing village of San Pancho Nayarit and turn it into an enchanting vacation getaway with spectacular views that's known today as The Inn at San Pancho. | |
Tory and I, friends for three decades, had been sitting on Don Roberto's lower veranda for 10 minutes. The real estate broker and The Don were old friends, their rapid fire conversation in Spanish was full of laughter and bold exclamations neither of us completely understood.
"So, what do you think," I asked Tory, watching another real estate agent and his clients standing on the side of the house hungrily taking in the view. It was spectacular.
"It's a no-brainer," she answered, barely glancing away from the swaying palms, the giddy, sparkling sea, the mountains swathed in jungle.
I turned to The Don and, with a heart as full as a ripe mango, announced, "We'll take it!"
If you ask me how long it took to decide to buy Don Roberto's house, I'll tell you ten minutes. Tory would probably say a half hour. But neither of us would argue about the fact that it had been a decision made with our guts, not our heads.
A day later we plopped down a hefty deposit and flew home.
"Did you check the water pressure?" I asked Tory somewhere over north central Mexico.
"No. Did you?"
"No," I admitted. "What about the electricity?"
"What about it?"
"Well, is it wired for air conditioning, 110 or 220?"
"Who knows?" she said.
"What were we thinking?"
Tory smiled. "We weren't...we were too busy looking at the view."
Careless buyers, you might think, as I'm sure some of our family and friends did. We were two tall blondes on a search for yet one more great adventure. The word "crazy" did slip out of some peoples' mouths, while others used the euphemism "brave."
But they hadn't sat on Don Roberto's veranda on a sunny January morning wrapped in blue sky and sweet breezes watching hawks sail by at eye level. The house was a concrete block, plain and rather small with a one bedroom apartment up, a second one down.
The splendid view, like a chic black evening gown on a dowdy old lady, was far too good for it, and the location, above the pueblo on a gentle hill, was perfect with shops, restaurants and San Pancho's lovely mile-long beach a short, easy walk away. As Tory so wisely said... "a no-brainer."
We found our contractor Beto through friends of friends, met him on a jobsite in Sayulita. He did not speak English, but had a natural sense of proportion, an eye for the curve, a longing for vistas, a self confidence that demanded perfection and commanded a loyal group of 17 Mexicans who seemed more like an army of worshipful warriors than a construction crew. No kidding, the guy is amazing.
What did Tory and I know about building? A bit. My dad was a contractor, and my brother, who owns his own construction company, built Tory's house in the Berkshires. Of course, having a genetic link to contractors is about as helpful to building a house in Mexico as a how-to guide for walking on water.
An emotional mid life tsunami swept Tory away to nursing school, and I stayed behind with my fat cat Whiskey, a fistful of pesos, and Beto, who had drawn up the plans for our house in a lined Daffy Duck notebook.
Trust is a strange thing. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. Mostly, as a couple of therapists were quick to point out, I had "trust issues." But for some reason, Beto, who looks and swaggers a lot like Charles Bronson, instilled a sense of trust in me.
He didn't smile much, and I never really knew what he was thinking, or for that matter, what he was saying. But I'd signed up for the ride and when he told me one afternoon that he needed $26,000 pesos for "concreto y materiales" by the next day, I nodded my head and drove to Vallarta. I brought him the money the next day in a bulging McDonald's bag the bank teller had retrieved from her garbage pail. He scribbled a hasty receipt on a page from the Daffy Duck notebook, and went to work.
Beto demolished the interior of the house, tearing up the floors, discarding the plumbing and electric wiring, smashing the built in beds, the cement sofas and the kitchen counters. He replaced the roof, tore up the tile on the floors, arched the windows and doors, and welcomed Mexico in.
We'd told Beto before we hired him that we wanted four casitas set around the pool. I thought I had made it clear that the pool should go in the front of the house, but one day I came back from the beach and found him excavating in the back. I stumbled across the rubble from the torn up sidewalk and asked as nicely as I could, "What's with the hole?"
"It's for the pool, Señora."
"The pool? The pool?" I sputtered in broken Spanish. "But the pool is supposed to be over there, in the front..."
Beto smiled, "No, Señora, the pool must go here. And we need to talk about the retaining wall."
"What retaining wall?"
"The one you need to secure the pool, Señora."
I knew from the start I would never be able to argue with Beto. For the next few weeks, I stood on the second floor veranda - a spot forever known as my Evita perch - and watched as he brought in trucks of landfill, built a massive stone wall, and as a jeweler would set a fine diamond, placed the pool elegantly in the middle of the hill he had created and secured.
I was to know Beto's true genius several months later when floating around in the finished product, watching the world turn gold in the magic hour, I realized I could watch the sunset and the moon rise at the same time. With Beto, every decision was about the view.
He eventually chose to place two of the casitas one atop the other at the front of the property where they offered ocean vistas and fresh breezes. No building blocked any other, no walls stood in the way, even the palm trees were considered, the graceful arches in each door and window taken into account.
One day, friends who own the Casa Obelisco, a B & B in town, stopped by to see how the job was progressing.
"How are you going to enclose this front porch," Barbara asked, waving an arm toward an unfinished Casita Agave.
"I'm not sure what Beto has in mind," I answered.
"Where is the cistern going?" she asked a few minutes later.
I shrugged, "Don't know...But I'm sure Beto's got a plan."
"How large will the deck area around the pool be?" she wanted to know.
"Listen," I finally said, "I have to be honest, I've turned the project over to Beto."
"All of it?"
"Yeah."
"Probably a good idea," she finally said, laughing. "I mean what the hell do we know about building a house in Mexico?"
In the beginning, Beto suggested we hire one of his crew to sleep on the job site, guarding the building materials that were piled up all over the place. He chose Geronimo, a friendly member of the crew who greeted me with a smile whenever I saw him.
I discovered from another guy on the crew that Gero loved gardening. A smiling gardener seemed like a good plan. I asked Beto how he'd feel if I hired Geronimo. Beto assured me Gero was one of the best workers he had, but he wouldn't mind one bit if I wanted to offer him a job.
Gero showed up with his wife and niece for the job interview. He's been here ever since. He is my Gero (pronounced "hero"), planting, repairing, maintaining, and caring for the Inn at San Pancho. Beto visits now and again, and recently built an enchanting round casita, our fourth, with a perky palapa roof and wrap around windows with... what else? ... spectacular ocean views.
 A co-owner of the Inn at San Pancho, Nayarit, Eileen Pierce is a former staff writer and columnist for the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, MA and in the last few years was the PR/Marketing Director for the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA. The co-author of the 2005 Fodor's Guide to the Berkshires and Pioneer Valley, Eileen continues to freelance for various publications, including the Boston Globe and BanderasNews.com. |
Vallarta Weddings
Vallarta Living | August 2009 
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