I looked out the window and water was pouring off our roof by the bucket full!  Yikes! Phil climbed up our 21 foot extension ladder to the roof and reported the roto plas (water cistern) was overflowing…again, the second time in two weeks. Friends, these types of things feel stressful because the process in dealing with them is completely unfamiliar! In this case, we have never had a water cistern so the learning curve, while simple feels huge. 

Now water and bathroom problems seem to follow us around, through no fault of our own.  For instance, our first week in Mexico when our sink fell off the wall. You can read about that here :0)

But this was super concerning because we pay for water and it was coming off the roof (where our Roto Plas cistern sits) in sheets. Typically our water bill is only about $3.00 a month and we would like to keep it that way!

Communication is a little time consuming…I immediately called our landlord (well actually I pulled up google translate and typed a message, copied and pasted it in Whats App).  Yes, this is a thing. Every communication takes twice as long because of the language barrier.  Google translate is often incorrect so I have to repaste it in google translate and go from Spanish to English to be sure I didn’t say something stupid like “our roto plas had a birthday or I ran over the iguana.”  

When I ordered a strawberry cheesecake using google translate it came across so weird the person taking the order said, “ma’am, I speak English, can we please talk in English? I didn’t even bother to look at what I said but it must have been waaay off!

 When she replied I copied and pasted her reply into google translate and then to the roof to let Phil know “the plumber is on his way.”

screen shot of google translate

Pretty much all our non-english communication is done this way! It can be time consuming…but it’s worth it!

What happened?

Well, I believe God was warning us that there was a problem with our water and caused the shut-off float from the street to go awry.  What was wrong with our water?

 THERE WAS A DEAD AND ROTTING IGUANA IN OUR WATER CISTERN 

mexican iguana

This is what we have been showering in and the water we run through our Birkey water filter for cooking and drinking. Thank you Lord for our Birkey!

Can you just go with me for a minute?  We had been showering in water that had a dead, rotting iguana in it. (shivers)

The iguana in the Roto Plas was only about 4 inches of dead rotting, stinky lizard flesh…do I hear any screams yet? Imagine me jumping up and down and screaming…that is my mind thinking about this.

 I Antonio, the plumber, told me (in spanish of course) “Celeste, your roto plas smells very bad.” and said very firmly, “Felipe, this water is contaminated, and both cisterns must be emptied, cleaned, and refilled.”  How much? $800 pesos…or about $40.00, whew!

 So Felipe and Antonio were on the roof for a couple of hours yesterday and today, in the hot sun and 90+ degrees, washing out the cisterns (2 of them because they are connected), refilling, putting the right connections on. I wonder what our water bill will be?

We tend to see Antonio about once a month for something water-related…what will be next????