For those who have been following this blog series on natural building in Mazunte, and are still waiting excitedly for the commencement of this work, I have good news: There has been some substantial progress on Julia’s property near Bahía de la Luna. So that awesome retaining wall, that I specifically came down to help building, can finally be started! (Yeay!!!) But wait … Yes, I know, unfortunate as it may be, we are reduced to waiting another while. But let me go a step at a time.
VIT – Very Inconvenient Topography
Although Julia’s land sports many advantages, such as nearly undisturbed nature, beautiful birds singing in the many trees, and being a mere stone’s throw from a secluded little beach bay, it also has its downsides. The most important one is quite literal: on her property everything goes down, sometimes very fast! The immense grade of the land makes it impossible to find any leveled spot to set up even a small tent, not to mention any structures. For this reason, we had to make some preparations: Stephane and I built two small terraces along with a number of paths navigating the steep terrain. This is where I would pitch my tent and install a small kitchen. We also dug a composting toilet, set up a showering spot with good drainage, and cleared a bit of an area to allow a small photo-voltaic system harvest some sunlight.
Digging through the very sandy soil was not hard at all. Making sure it would not pour down the hill was a bit more so. We had to create little baskets using the surrounding vegetation to hold the soil in place, before we compacted it down. The most beautiful part of this work was that in all our digging we did not come across any plastic bags, polysterine, rusty metal, or broken glass. The entire hill is free of any garbage! Not very common in Mexico.
Starting Work
A couple of days of hard work later, we were practically ready to start the actual work. All we needed were tires, big ones and lots of them, to create the first course. The tires in turn required dirt to be filled with, and some space on the bottom of the hill. Tires could be scored from the garbage dump, no problem, but before we could start scraping the mountain for dirt, we needed to comply with the legal requirements.
At the corresponding governmental office in nearby Pochutla we were given precise instructions: first Julia had to change the use of land from forest to residential, then we had to get the approval of an engineer for a retaining wall, and finally the permission for such a wall had to be gotten from the office. All these details took their merry time, so while Stef and I were preparing the camping situation, Julia took care of the paperwork. The engineer liked the idea of using rammed-earth tires for the retaining wall, but he insisted that we had to respect the road, leaving six meters instead of the five, suggested by the office.
A Hill, a Ditch, a Road, and a Gully
The conditions we found the site in were the following: Julia’s land is coming down at a steep slope, with a massive head-cut of over three meters being desperately held together by a few trees on the top. This is the most fragile part of the property, where every rain takes huge bites out of the land, eroding it continuously. This is where we want to build the retaining wall to prevent any further damage.
Under this head-cut is a winding dirt road leading up the mountain, with a gully on its far side and posts protruding from it, marking the edge of the road. Although it is clearly meandering in a natural fashion, the engineer pointed out that officially this road is supposed to be straight, just as the edge of the property. Consequently, we have to comply with this written word, and construct our wall in the same straight fashion. We agreed to follow this mad sounding suggestion, and Julia got her permission to build her retaining wall within three months. Finally we could start pounding tires.
In order to have a straight line created, and since we needed a good amount of dirt anyway, we ordered a back-hoe to scrape a straight edge into the hillside for us. It was not easy to get him out to this remote location, but once there, he completed his work in a few hours. He dug a beautiful ditch wide enough for a large tire, and piled the dirt along the road. Meanwhile, we took careful measurements from the posts in the gully, as the ones on the other side had been washed away or buried during the last rainy season: six meters for the road, and a 1.2 meters for the tire with some gravel behind it for drainage. Building the wall, we would place pipes between the tires to lead any water accumulating behind it out through the wall. Things were finally coming into shape and we were psyched!
Starting on the lowest point, and using the widest of our tires, we leveled sufficient space in the ditch, put the tire in place, and pounded it well. For me it was the first tire I’ve pounded in almost two years. Just as we declared it well compacted, leveled, and done in every aspect, things took a dramatic turn.
More Bureaucracy on the Horizon
Just as we were relishing in our great achievement, talking about how much easier it would be now to continue now that we’d gotten things rolling, a group of locals approached us. Informing us that they were from the local office, they told us flat out that we should have consulted them before starting construction. As it turns out, the six meters for the road were not enough. Instead, they were talking about ten meters, as this is the main street of the town, which is supposed to be paved one day.
Just to put things into perspective, the road in question is rightfully main street, as it is the only one in town. However, once it makes its way from the paved road far away down the steep hills to the ocean, it passes by a few dispersed houses, a cemetery, and eventually a beach hotel, after which there is not a single occupied house before or after Julia’s property… but there may be in the future.
What was even more upsetting is their unanimous view that the upper edge of the theoretical road is actually up on the hill we’re trying to save, needing to be scraped out more. So we should kindly call our back-hoe operator again, and have him cut deeper into our hill (and pay him if he so desires), so the community could have a nice wide avenue leading up the hill. Naturally, this kind of work will take longer, leaving us with an even taller head-cut, having to build an even higher retaining wall.
Of course we didn’t commit to anything, except for further discussions with the proper officials, this time from the local office. The ironic thing is that Stef and Julia had just been at the town-hall assembly last Sunday, precisely to get to know the movers and shakers of the community. There, they talked quite a bit about Julia’s land, and the wall she wanted to build, and nobody even mentioned that there was a local office they had to consult.
So to avoid problems, the construction had been put on hold, again. Tomorrow we have an appointment to re-measure the property, this time with the local office. Then we’ll see further. For now, there is an ugly ditch in the mountain side, littered with old tires, and a pile of dirt, making any access a challenge. Not a very desirable situation… Not to mention that the clock is ticking on the building permit, while the work load is just increasing.
“When are we gonna finish this wall?” exclaimed Julia. “I’m more worried about when we can get it started,” responded Stephane. In any case, we will probably have to remove that beautifully filled tire, which will be just as much work as it was filling it.