We eat a lot of good food in Mexico. Los Arbolitos is no exception. They have restaurants all over Mexico. We’ve eaten at their restaurants in Guaymas and Nogales. The one here in Hermosillo has been the best so far. Tonight I went with a shrimp taco and the shrimp mignon. Both were incredible. That and the Dos Equis made for a fine dinner. Gabby and I discussed our next business: Donkey Donuts. Coming January we hope to have the first branch open.
Today has been fairly productive so far. We started out at Telmex to get our business line and internet. Not the fastest process in the world, but we got it done. $799 pesos monthly (about $65), which I thought was pretty cheap for 5mbs internet.
We met with a contractor to get some sheetrocking done and to paint the entire interior of the pharmacy. We gave them two days to complete the job and half of the money up front. So hopefully we seem him again.
We looked at three homes yestetday. We liked all three. The one above was on a golf course. It was a great location. We also looked at the golf club. It was awesome. The men’s bathroom had a private smoking room and bar. YES please.
The one above was the newest of the three. It looks as though no one has ever lived in it. It is in a nice gated community in a nice part of town. It’s the most expensive and therefore my least favorite.
I forgot to take a front photo of the house we like most. It’s in a neighborhood that we like the most. We met the next door neighbor who seems like a nice guy. The house has three bedrooms upstairs, a large office downstairs, with two living rooms and a large dining room. It also has maid’s quarters. It would be nice to have full time staff at home!
The drive home from Hermosillo is generally enjoyable. The scenery is beautiful. Here’s a photo I took last week while stopping along the highway to let the dogs go the bathroom.
Finding a house in Hermosillo is no small task. The difficulty mostly is finding homes for rent. There are a few online, a few in the paper, and a few we have found just driving around in neighborhoods we like.
We cleaned out the garden the other day and planted our fall crops. Lots of iceberg lettuce, romaine, spinach, cabbage, and a variety of radishes. We gonna have some good salads soon.
We have a great carne asada tradition going weekly with Senor Mateo y Dana. Normally we go to El Sinoloense, but sometimes we make it ourselves. Tacos are such an equisite thing. We enjoy every bite.
We have not been to the garden in a number of weeks now. So today we were able to find all sort of treasure. Our melons have done really well this year. We pulled some onions, chives, and various peppers as well.
The melons make a refreshing juice.
We woke early this morning to get things done around the house. As it turned out, we didn’t need to go to Hermosillo this weekend, but will resume our weekly trips next weekend. We planned to have repairs done on the vehicles today. Fortunately we have great mechanic who comes to our house whenever we need.
Today I had him:
1. change the fuel tank sending unit on the SUV (he had to remove the tank to get to it)
2. oil change
3. change the upper and lower seals on all of the fuel injectors (6)
4. change the wheel bearing on the front passenger side of the Passat.
5. change the spark plugs on the Passat
To add to the benefit of him coming to the house to do this work, he also doesn’t charge much. He spent the entire day here and charged less than what most mechanics charge for two hours.
We just found out we have to go pick up the Mazda in Mexico today as Yun’s parents are going out of town. So much for avoiding the border crossing this weekend.
We have been really busy over the course of the last month. It was about a month ago that we finalized a deal to purchase a pharmacy in Mexico. Yun’s brothers run multiple pharmacies in Sonora which do really well, so we thought it would be great to try this endeavor ourselves. The location we purchased is pretty small and is in a bus depot. Despite the size, we benefit from constant flow of traffic 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
We have been traveling down to Hermosillo (the capital of Sonora) every weekend and intend to continue doing this for the rest of this month. In October, we’ll each take a week off to be there for the opening week – we hope to open by October 1st.
The weekends have been productive. Last weekend in particular. After securing the location and negotiating an agreement for the existing inventory, the next big step for us was to obtain the State and Federal permits and various other requirements. As it turns out, starting a business is more difficult in Mexico than it is in the US.
Last weekend we obtained our federal tax identification, which in itself allows us to conduct business. The process seemed fairly intimidating. It included plenty of forms, interviews, finger printing, and retinal scans.
After the madness of getting the permit to have a business, we then had to meet with the health department to secure our permit to sell medication. Things were a bit anticlimactic at this point because we ran into some problems. However, over the course of the next week those have all been worked out. We are beginning to appreciate the importance of having connections in Mexico. What we could not accomplish ourselves, someone was able to accomplish for us in a matter of minutes.
These are exciting, but extremely busy times for us. When not working on the pharmacy, we still have some final steps to complete on the house. The vehicle we bought a couple weeks ago has now been finished and looks and runs great. This will help immensely with what we spend on gas. Both of our other vehicles are 6 cylinders and average about 19mpg between the two of them. The new vehicle allegedly gets 30+.
Another great accomplishment in the last week was to secure our manager. She is someone we’ve known for years and is willing to relocate to Hermosillo. She is trustworthy and has a degree in business with experience with this sort of thing, so we’re really happy we were able to get her. With her help, we’ll be able to hire the rest of the staff and get all of the final details resolved. There is a lot left to do. But if all goes well with this one, we have two more locations we might be able to secure within the next 12 months.
