Brick By Brick

Eddy and I took a trip to Mexico in the early winter of 2007 in the hopes of finding property to purchase. When we started this process, we really didn't know what we wanted to do or where we would end up but we set out with the intention to somehow earn a living from this investment. For months before we left, we spent hours looking at hundreds of listings online. In the beginning, we were open to any possibility but there were some limitations. We were priced out of the Pacific coast which was fine with me as I spent enough time on the coast to not be a fan of beach living. I was intrigued by the Yucatan but Eddy thought that it was too far from his hometown of Guadalajara. Our internet search resulted in only a few possibilities. A couple of lots were in the state of Michoacan and another was in Jalisco, close to Guadalajara. When we went to Mexico, we spent a few days in Michoacan on Lake Patzcuaro. I had been to Michoacan a few years earlier and had loved the state and thought that I could live there. We went to see the two properties that we had found online. They had spectacular views but were rocky and sloped. Not at all good for small scale farming which was something that had begun to interest me intensely and I thought that it might be a way to make some money. I had never even gardened before but the idea of producing food had inexplicably become somewhat of an obsession. We returned to Guadalajara and booked an appointment to see a property south of the city near Lake Chapala outside of a town called Santa Cruz de la Soledad. Eddie and I had lived in the area for a couple of years before relocating to Canada. The perimeter of the lake is dotted with small towns and a couple of small cities and has become a retirement location for foreigners. When we lived there, I had worked in a restaurant and had a lot of contact with the expat population. The rational part of me knew that the area would provide more opportunities for earning a living but the idealistic romantic me really wanted something a little more removed from gated communities and the culture of, "English Spoken". After seeing the property, the pragmatic me won out. It was a half acre corn field in the country with no neighbours. It was a ten minute walk from the village and a 10 minute drive to Chapala, the largest city on the lake. It was also close to Eddy's family but the best thing about the lot was the price. With all fees in, it came to just under $10,000 CDN. The seller was also willing to let us pay in installments. We bought it. Construction didn't start for another 3 and a half years.

We returned to Canada and as winter set in, Eddie and I began to teach ourselves new skills. I devoured
everything that I could find on small scale organic farming and Eddie began to take pottery courses. When we were in Michoacan, we went to the workshop of a artisan who made Catrinas, the fancy dress Mexican skeleton ladies and Eddie was fascinated. We had both decided on our future careers and we had years to work on proficiency. When spring arrived, I planted hundreds of seedlings and we bought a kiln for Eddie. We spent the next 5 years honing our skills. Every summer, my garden became larger with more diversity and Eddie's Catrinas became more and more polished.

We bought a house with a large sunny backyard so that I could plant more and Eddie started to show his Catrinas in local galleries and at craft shows.


We also started a major renovation on the house that we bought. It was a run down clapboard bungalow in a less than desirable part of town. At the time, there were government incentives and refunds for making your home more energy efficient and we took advantage. With our first refund cheque, we were able to start construction in Mexico.

We found a builder in the Santa Cruz de la Soledad in a very round about way. I liked the towns Facebook page and crept on the other fans. I found a gay local and he worked for a woman who owned a property management company in Ajijic, a couple of towns over. It turned out that this was the same woman who had purchased a restaurant that we had opened in Ajijic in 2005 and had almost immediately regretted. We ran in for a few months and managed to sell it...at a loss. This fellow, the gay local, Victor, had a brother who was a builder so Eddy talked with him and we decided to use him. Of course, we had worked on scores of variations of the house and in the end, decided on a very simple structure with two guest houses, a studio and a garage. We drew the final design on a piece of graph paper and emailed it to Ramon. A few details had to be worked out. The property sloped and we had to work around that. We received weekly video updates and that is basically how the place was built. Just as construction was starting, Eddy found 13 large wrought iron windows online. They were in bad shape with no glass but were really cheap so we bought them. Ramone stored them at his house until they were ready to be installed which was about a year.


After the first burst of activity, progress slowed down because we ran out of money. Ramone went to work on other projects until we came up with some more cash then he'd work on our house until the money ran out. This went on for a couple of years until we opened the cafe.

The cafe was an unexpected godsend. For a year before the cafe opened, we had been renting (during off-hours) a cafeteria style coffee shop of a friend. This coffee shop closed at 5 pm during the week and was closed all weekend. We rented it Friday night, Saturday and Sunday and ran a pop up vegan organic cafe. After a year of running the pop up, which we called "Veganerific", my friend, the coffee shop owner suddenly closed the doors. As it happened, about a month earlier, I had had a meeting with a couple, Lenka and Don, who were regulars at the weekend pop up and had expressed an interest in opening a full time vegan cafe with us.

When the coffee shop went out of business, I immediately contacted Lenka and Don and set up another meeting. We were all on the same page and were ready to move quickly. I then contacted the landlord and secured the lease. I had a couple of cooking classes booked (I started giving classes eight months earlier) so we had to wait to renovate the space which gave us time to get the business details and the menu worked out. After that second cooking class was finished, we all swooped in and with the help of a couple contractors and a painter, pulled off an extreme makeover and were open four days later.

Eddy and I worked ourselves to the bone at that cafe and in return, the cafe funded the construction of the house in Mexico as well as the renovation of the bungalow in Canada. When we had our first meeting with Don and Lenka, we had committed to two years. At the start of the second year, we were unsure what would happen to the business. We all wanted to see it continue on as a vegan cafe but had no idea how that would happen. After all, a vegan restaurant should be owned and operated by a vegan and I knew all the vegans in town and no one was stepping up to the plate. Then Brynn came along. On one particularly busy spring day, I jokingly asked a client if she wanted a job. She mentioned that her sister just moved back to town, was vegan and had worked in restaurants for years. I asked her to send her in. Brynn showed up a couple of hours later with a resume which I didn't bother looking at. Why would I? She was vegan, super bubbly and experienced. I hired her. After she had worked for us for about a week, I told her of our plans to move to Mexico and that we would like to sell the restaurant. She was game and we started to train her to take over.

We funneled money to the property in Mexico and because we were working so much, we hired contractors to finish the bungalow. We put the house on the market the first week of October. We had our first offer two days later which fell apart then a couple of weeks later, the second offer came in and stuck. The house sold. The buyer was a young single girl. It would be her first house and she had nothing so we also sold her most of the contents which saved us from having a garage sale.


Brynn was buying the restaurant, our house (and furniture) sold and the house in Mexico was almost ready to move into. All we needed was a vehicle to bring us to Mexico. Our little rusting Tracker wouldn't do so we started scouring the web and used car lots for a pick up. Time was running out and the stress of turning over the restaurant, getting the three dogs ready to travel, packing up the house, reserving hotels, dealing with the contractor in Mexico, saying good byes and looking for a vehicle were too much. Just three weeks before our departure we were ready to settle on a SUV then we found a Dodge Dakota quad cab that checked out with our mechanic. It was exactly the kind of truck that we were looking for so we bought it and gave the Tracker away.

That brings us up to right now. We leave for Mexico around the 8th of December to embark on the life that we have been planning and dreaming about for the last nine years. Our intention, when we returned from Mexico 9 years ago, was to work, save some money then move back to Mexico. We saw it in a very linearly. The last nine years have been anything but. We had no intention to buy and renovate a house, to open another restaurant, to become vegan, to plant a seed or form shapes from clay. I never once considered that I would be teaching people how to cook vegan food or that Eddy would be selling out at craft shows in Toronto. When we started this stage of our lives, we were different people.

Stay tuned! We'll be blogging the next stage.