DryStoneGarden

tenacatita, mexico

Beach front property in Tenacatita, Mexico, south of Puerto Vallarta. I like the juxtaposition between the permanent stone foundation and the more transient tent and palapa. Tenacatita has various parties making claims on the beach front property, so no one has been willing to invest money into developing it. Some day, no doubt, a developer will line the beach with condos, but in the meantime it’s a winter home for migratory Canadians. I have a few photos of walls from the area below.

another beachfront wall at tenacatita

A lot of the walls and foundations throughout this part of Mexico are made of mortared stone, in situations where we would just use concrete in the United States. From what I can tell, it’s not that anyone has a particularly high regard for stone; it’s just cheaper and easier to gather stone from the hills, instead of buying concrete. The stonework is done without particular attention to craftsmanship or detail, and the stone itself is often just glorified rubble; the mason grabs a stone, spackles on some mortar, and reaches for the next one.

puerto vallarta, mexico

The funny thing is that it started to grow on me. The area doesn’t have high quality stone — the high end stonework at the resorts was always tile and thin facing-stone shipped from some other region — but the masons manage to work with what they have. They usually mix at least two types of stone, and frequently add thin bricks, too.

puerto vallarta, mexico

I am too much of a square to have ever thought it would look this good, but it does.

puerto vallarta, mexico

This arch is almost completely made of brick, the corners are mostly brick, and the flat faces of the wall are mostly stone. It’s a sensible way to build when you don’t have quality stone.

Tags: mongrel stone

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under stone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.