My Favorite Color is Clear

We received a water bill today, and that along with the fact that Terry has had a touch of turista lead me to write this. First of all, the bill comes from JAPAY and it comes in the mail. The mail gets delivered at some undetermined time in either the day or night and getting delivered means it will be somewhere. Example: it is attached to the front door, slipped in a crack in the door somewhere, put through the window in the front door, you find it lying on the floor, outside the door on the sidewalk, or you may not find it at all. In other words, we have no mailbox as such. ...but that's another story. JAPAY stands for "Junta de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado de Yucatan". 

JAPAY bill

Essentially, JAPAY is the state of Yucatan public source for water. 
Well, all the stories you hear about not drinking the water in Mexico are true, but untrue. Here's why as it relates to the Yucatan. The Yucatan is flat. It is a vast, permeable limestone base. The limestone acts as a filter as such, but everything that seeps through it goes into the water. It does not kill bacteria, unfortunately, and therein lies the problem with drinking the water. Now, to carry it one step further - there is no real septic system in the Yucatan as we know sewer/septic systems in the US. Waste does not get piped away to arrive at some treatment system on the south side of town. Waste gets piped away and lands in the filtering limestone base underneath us. There are no "nasty smells" in Merida. We have been to other parts of Mexico where we smelled human waste...a non-tourist part of the state of Nayarit comes to mind. So the limestone base is a really good natural filtering system to make the water clear and beautiful...just doesn't rid it of any bacteria. I mean, think about all the beautiful cenotes in the Yucatan. 
The water that JAPAY provides, ie, the water that comes out of the faucets, has no smell at all and it is clear...just like the stuff you would swim in at the cenotes. But, you can't drink it. However, it is pretty cool because think about this: Why should you pay for chlorinated, flouridated water that you are going to bathe in, wash clothes in, water your garden with, etc.? The JAPAY water bill for one month was 125 pesos...about $10. That's pretty cheap! Now, it would be cheaper, but something we discovered ---- the water gets to us through kinda a gravity-fed system. It comes through the pipes and when needed, gets pumped to the tinaca...or the house tank where the water is stored. The pump comes on about once every 5-7 days, I guess. 

The Pump

Our tinaca is located up on the roof, and when we checked it out and followed the lines, since they are all visible, we realized we are supplying water from OUR tinaca to our neighbor next door!  We decided since he is an entrepreneur of sorts he may be bottling up water and selling it to his Merida business associates.  

Rooftop Tinaca

Terry walks to the corner of Calles 70 and 63 and buys Agua Cristal in 5-gallon jugs. There are two guys that man the Agua Cristal (they sell cerveza too!) station and they love to sleep on the job. They now have a thing going where either he, or one of the hombres, slaps the counter to wake up whichever one has the turn to go get the water. A 5-gallon jug of Agua Cristal costs 22 pesos and lasts about 2-3 days...we drink it, make ice with it, and brush our teeth with it. Is it chlorinated? I don't know. Is it flouridated? NO. 

Good ol' Aqua Cristal

Do we know what caused the turista....was it the water. Don't know.
One thing we DO KNOW for sure is that the last time we were sitting at Santiago Parque, the fountain in the middle of the park became the water fountain for a group of boys and girls about 4-5 years old. Terry and I laughed when we saw each of them take turns cupping their hands and dipping into the big open fountain that birds use for bathing, and take a big slug of water. We looked at each other both saying the same thing: 

"Do You Think They Are Going To Have Turista Tonight?"