Carla Zarebska

Carla Zarebska has moved to Merida from Oaxaca bringing with her a private stock of her famouso Guadalupe book and a very lethal chicken heart Mescal. I highly recommend them both. Carla now has her own website and here is an interview of her as well.

About the Guadalupe book:

Carla Zarebska, Jaqueline Robinson López, Translator Alejandro Gómez de Tuddo, Photographer From an original idea by Basilisco Long before the arrival of Hernán Cortés, birds, serpents, the sun and moon, and human sacrifices figured prominently in the rituals and daily spiritual life of the inhabitants of today's Mexico. In the early sixteenth century, Roman Catholic missionaries began arriving in the area of Tenochtitlan--Mexico City--to convert the native Mexica to Christianity. The priests met with limited success until 1531, the year Juan Diego, a poor Mexica, first encountered the vision of the "Heavenly Lady," now known as "Our Lady of Guadalupe." Guadalupe is a lavishly illustrated history of Mexico's religious traditions. Touching briefly on the pre-Columbian decades of many deities, Carla Zarebska devotes most of the book to the post-colonial centuries of Catholicism, the Madre of modern Mexico, and the traditions and legends surrounding her. Primitive drawings and black-and-white photos from the early twentieth century depict natives honoring the Lady, and full color photos and paintings commemorate events and individuals from Mexico's history, including the Virgin Mary's appearances to Juan Diego. Over a dozen pages offer the story of Guadalupe's appearances in the native Nahuatl accompanied by the English translation.

David Sterling

David and his partner Keith came to Merida in 2003 and opened los-dos a cooking school. Los Dos is the first school in Mexico devoted exclusively to the cuisine of Yucatan. Featured widely in magazines such as Condé Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure and Gourmet, and on broadcast television such as Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen channel and with Rick Bayless on PBS, Chef David Sterling’s Los Dos school has become a “must-do” destination in Yucatán, along with the spectacular Mayan ruins and many natural wonders.

I've only heard rave reviews of the school and Chef David. I rely on his website reviews when recommending restaurants in Merida. He's kinder and gentler than me. Maybe that is because he is from Oklahoma and I'm from Texas.....

Keith Heitke

Keith and his partner David came to live Merida about two years after us. They also came from NYC. We just moved around the corner from them. Keith is the owner of Hacienda Mexico. They also find the time to renovate houses. They do very fine and beautiful work. Keith also finds the time to host the Merida House tour to benifit the Merida English Library.

Hacienda Mexico Luxury and Unique Properties focuses exclusively on prestige properties of utmost quality, or those with all the potential to be so. Potential buyers can look at a select list of homes that appeal to their lifestyle instead of wasting time scouring many listings of lesser quality. And for potential sellers, our team and infrastructure ensure that your home is seen by the right people people who will turn into buyers of your property because of our enthusiastic and infectious belief in the value, beauty, and salability of your home.

Here is an informative interview with Keith from Yucatan Living.







Tanja & Eben

Tanja Tibaldi and Eben Lenderking are living part time in Merida and part of the time in Morocco. They own this hotel in Morrocco. They bought and sold the hacienda Santa Maria Acu. And we renovated a small house for them on reforma which they sold as well. They currently own an old house around the corner from me called the Water Sellers House which has one of the largest gardens in centro.

Jeremiah Tower

We met Jeremiah when he came to town from Cozumel to buy a house. That was a couple of years ago when I thought I'd try my had at selling houses. I was a little to sucessful at that and it led to my selling 6 houses in two months which led to Josh and I designing and renovating 8 houses in the past two years. One of those houses I sold to Jeremiah. He designed and renovated

Widely recognized as the godfather of modern American cooking and a mentor to such rising celebrity chefs as Mario Batali, Jeremiah Tower is one of the most influential cooks of the last thirty years. Now, the former chef and partner at Chez Panisse and the genius behind Stars San Francisco tells the story of his lifelong love affair with food -- an affair that helped to spark an international culinary revolution. Tower shares with wit and honesty the real dish on cooking, chefs, celebrities, and what really goes on in the kitchen. Above all, Tower rhapsodizes about food -- the meals choreographed like great ballets, the menus scored like concertos. No other book reveals more about the seeds sown in the seventies, the excesses of the eighties, and the self-congratulations of the nineties. No other chef/restaurateur who was there at the very beginning is better positioned than Jeremiah Tower to tell the story of the American culinary revolution.

Party like it's 1999

The first problem we encountered after moving here was that we were young compared to most of the Gringos here. I was still in my mid fourties and Josh in his early thirties. Everyone else was retired except Mitch and Jen. That meant endless cocktail parties. Thank God most weekends found us alone at the beach. But if you went to one cocktail party you'd be invited to 2 more and soon you'd be stumbling from one to another as they backed up on one another. After about a year of saying yes we started saying no. We stopped giving and going to cocktail parties. We stopped going to Nafta parties. We stopped meeting people too. If you moved to Merida in the past 4 years you probably don't know us. More recently we don't even see our friends. Renovating 8 houses in 2 years has taken it's toll. Now we stumble off to bed at 9pm instead of stumble off to our 3rd cocktail party.

How we got here

I discovered Merida while vacationing in Tulum in the winter of 1997 with my friend Anne Ball. When I met Josh in 1998 we immediately started looking for a place to live in Mexico. Our first trip took us from DF to Puebla, Oaxaca, Zijatinejo, Patzcuaro, San Miguel. Oaxaca and San Miguel . It was on another fact finding trip in 1999 that we decided that Merida seemed to be the right combination. A city on the brink, of what we were not sure. Our real estate agents became our first and fast friends. First we met Mitch Keenan who showed us several haciendas like Santa Cruz de Palomeque and Xtephen. We ended up buying a little house on the beach in Chabihau from Mitch and the houe in Ermita from his agent Jen Lytle. But it was the experience of being trapped on a island called Manhattan one September 11th that sent us scurrying through the tunnels as soon as we could pack our bags. We slept on the floor with our dogs for a couple of weeks in October 2001 and then we hired the first couple of guys we met in our neighborhood and started renovations. We've been renovating ever since.

We never thought Merida would grow so fast. It was a sleepy town when we came. We thought all of the gringos were tourist. Most of them were but we met a group of people through Mitch and Jen and the Nafta parties at the Merida English Library (MEL) that had been here for years. There was 1 real estate agent in town for Gringo's and that was Mitch Keenan. Through Mitch we met the newly wed Paula and Don. Through Jen we met the newly wed Josephina and Salvador. And through them we met every one in town. We went to the beach every weekend to escape the dust and rubble. We discovered that not all of the gringo's in town were tourists, some had been here for years.

In 1997 in Tulum I thought how strange it was coming from Paris, via NY, to this land where everyone is always friendly and smiling. After 2 days in Tulum I gave up on trying to contact my business in Paris and I began to relax. After 2 weeks in the Yucatan decided to move here. I gave up Paris and gave the business to my Partner. I stayed in NY and took some courses at NYU. If I had not met Josh I'd probably still be dreaming about living in the Yucatan.