My friend Carla brought her gardener to me to dig up some concrete in my patio so that I can put in a garden. I showed Jose what I wanted done and he started hammering away about 10.30am. On one side the concrete was about 10cm thick, which was hard enough, but on the other side he found 2 separate layers for a total of about 20cm. Power tools are pretty rare amongst the workers of Playa, so Jose was working with a large hammer and a chisel, just banging away to break up the concrete. I kept him supplied with water and cooked him bacon and eggs, but other than that he worked hard all day.
He left at 5.30, and still has a few more hours to finish. But we discussed the costs, and this is what he's charging:
5.5 m2 of concrete removal at $A6.59 an hour (!!!!!)
10 large bags of black soil $A36.60
Plant 6 trees with fertiliser $10
Removal of a small tree stump $3 - the stump was about 5cm diameter
He will dig out all the rubble and bag it up, and I need to pay for a ute or small truck to remove and dump it - probably about $20. Then he will clean the whole area and make sure the plants are growing strongly.
It's looking like altogether it will cost me not much more than $100. I can't even imagine what it would have cost me in Australia for such heavy manual labour. But they seem very used to it here, and happy to do it to earn whatever they can. Yay, I love Mexico! Photos of my new garden coming soon....
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