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For the first time since March 2020 we will be welcoming international guests this coming week.
Spain has been a bit of a hotspot, and we still have perimeter confinement around the provinces in Andalucía, but if you travel directly into our province, by air, there are no restrictions.
So, this coming week we have a chappie from Jakarta arriving and a couple of folks from the Isle of Man. I suspect they will have some connection to the Moto GP next weekend, but to be honest I don’t care. Heads in beds, money in the bank and large olorosos all round
We’ve got several international reservations on the books for the Summer, but assuming these two go ahead they will be the first of the year. I’ve been in communication with both sets of guests, and feel pretty confident they’ll both be arriving when they said they will.
Maybe I should present them with a plaque, or a scroll, or something on the patio
TBT, I’ll be happy enough if I simply manage to get the apartments ready, they’re pretty disgusting right now with dust and crap that’s blown in.
Add in the famous, or from our perspective infamous, Jerez dampness which makes mould appear in places you simply don’t expect, it’ll be a bit of a chore.
When I moved to coastal Mexico, I was shocked by how quickly mold and mildew grew on things. It isn’t just the high humidity, because I came from the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver Island, where it rains all the time and I never had mold issues.
Then I realized it’s the combination of heat and humidity that creates that situation. On Vancouver Island, it’s usually cold when it’s rainy.
But even in a place where it’s not that hot, but you have a closed up, heated house, not much air flow (like behind a mirror), and damp conditions, the mildew and mild problems can happen.
We have actually been reasonably busy since last April, as we are near the airport and we have been able to accommodate quarantines. A family moved in today for a two-week isolation and another two weeks while they wait for the completion date of their new home.
We’ve also been able to get some work done between guests, so our place is better now than it was a year ago. I’m feeling pretty hopeful these days.
The apartments are aired daily when empty and there is no heating in use. We do everything we can to combat it, but now it’s just a reactive process, inspecting all areas between guests.
Our problem is endemic in Jerez, a combination of a high water table and for most of the year, high humidity. Like many older buildings here, rising damp is the issue and there isn’t a practical or affordable solution when the walls concerned are hundreds of years old.
Walk around our barrio and you can see the effects on lots of buildings, flaking paint and plaster up to around a meter from ground level. Tiling or stone cladding works from a cosmetic perspective, but sadly that just forces the moisture inside.
A host I know here thought he had the solution. He lined the internal walls with plasterboard leaving a 100mm or so gap. It certainly looked good and for the first season after his refurb he got decent reviews.
A year or so down the line, I noticed guests complaining of a “damp and musty” smell and can only imagine what it was like behind those plasterboard walls! I did suggest to him at the time that he’d need to vent the space behind the plasterboard, but hey ho, he knew better.
Anyway, one set of guests cancelled last night so just the one this weekend. You never know, we may pick one up but I doubt it. At least it was the shorter stay of the two!
Yes, the rising damp is a problem in Mexico as well. They call it salitre here.
I have almost none in my house, as I tarred my foundations well when the house was built (you’d think they’d do that with all homes here, considering they are aware of the problem, but they don’t) and the only place it has appeared was where I had a drainage problem one rainy season and a little lake of water was sitting against my house.
Once you eliminate the source of the moisture, you can deal with the salitre without it coming back, but that’s more or less impossible with an old home where the foundations were never sealed to start with.
The other problem I notice in Mexico (at least in San Miguel de Allende and Mexico City is that foundations are not buried very deep. Neither are sewer pipes.
Further north, we have to put both foundations and utilities down below the frost line so they won’t heave.
I feel the same! And (relevant to a different thread) my early bookings are a fair number of ‘local’ bookings which I was heretofore suspicious of ; but it is families housing visiting family members who plan to meet them outside & distanced, for the first time in a year. Heart warming. This is one of the joyful things & it reminds me we can be more than a tourist destination.
