Introduction

What better place to build a cottage or home designed for alternative energy such as solar and wind power than on a Caribbean island!

So rather than heading for some secluded valley or ridge top in the mountains to build your vacation or permanent escape, give some thought to heading south of the border to an island in the Caribbean sea! Come to Cozumel, Mexico to get off the power-grid!

(Important Note: The source of some of the pictures used on this site is Google Earth. They have a wonderful service, and we highly recommend you sign up for it, so you can directly explore Cozumel island for yourself in amazing detail: Go from here. )

If you are not entirely sure what home power is, you can find out here:

Home Power Magazine

About Cozumel

Location: As you can see from the Google Earth pictures, Cozumel is a beautiful island about 430 miles (692 Km) SW of Florida, just 12 miles (19 Km) off the coast of the Yucatan penninsula, and about 60 miles (97 Km) SE of Cancun, which is on the NE tip of the Yucatan.

Climate: The climate in Cozumel is milder than Florida with temperatures in the 70s F for most of the winter (dry season) and high 80s to low 90s F in the summer (wet season). Most days year round are partly cloudy with beautiful, puffy cummulous clouds floating gently by on the wonderful sea breezes.

Key Attractions: Cozumel is a emerald island surrounded by the deep blue waters of the Caribbean ocean. In fact, the island sits right in the middle of the Caribbean Current, which is known further north as the Gulf Stream. The water here comes from the deep ocean to the south and warms to 85-88 degrees in the summer. In the winter months it is a little cooler at 76-78, but still very nice to swim in. The seawater is very salty here, supposedly the third saltiest in the world after the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake. As a result, you are very bouyant when you swim and SCUBA divers need a little extra weight. The water is also very clear most of the time with visibility ranging from 40 to 200 feet (12 to 61 meters). A snorkeler can float over the bottom in 40 feet of water and see everything on the bottom. Drifting with the Caribbean Current, it feels somewhat like flying over a meadow, except for all the colorful fish!

To find out more details about Cozumel, go here:

Cozumel My Cozumel

Come to Cozumel

Location Information about Cozumel and Various parts of the Island

The following picture provides a more detailed idea of where Cozumel is in relation to the Yucatan Penninsula, and some key island locations.

The City of Cozumel is located under the red dot in the picture above, and you can see the transversal road going east from town, as well as the roads that go north and south from town to the hotel zones. The light blue water is shallow, only about 20-60 feet deep in most places. Where the color turns deep blue ("azul cobalto" in Spanish), that marks the location of the underwater "wall" or cliffs that drop off sharply all around the island except to the north where the shallow water extends a few miles. (Cozumel is sort of like a Texas butte in the middle of the ocean.) The deep green is Cozumel forest or jungle, which is the source of the Cozumel's fresh water and the water wells for the city water system, which you can see in the next picture. The two yellow arrows at the bottom of the picture above indicate how the deep blue Caribbean Current splits around the island and nourishes the coral reefs.

Hourly ferries run from Cozumel directly across to Playa del Carmen on the Yucatan Peninsula. Playa is midway between Cancun to the north and Tulum to the south. A new international airport is planned near Tulum and Playa. The Cozumel international airport runway is under the red “ Cozumel ” label. The airport is operated by Mexico, but the American military can use it and the harbor at any time because Cozumel is part of the North American defense treaty between the US, Mexico, and Canada. The airport was built as part of this defensive treaty in WWII. Unlike many parts of the US and other parts of Mexico and especially along the US border, Cozumel has very little crime. Many people here do not lock their cars. That, may not be wise, but it is true. While some minor burglaries and other petty thefts do occur, they are not the norm here, nor are they violent. Yes, once in a while we have a murder, but it is usually a love triangle between locals, or at least it was before 2008 when the murder rate was less than 1 per year on average. Since then due to drug gang disagreements, there have been 10 murders (as of July 2011). This may be a sad fact, but we all believe we are safer than in many US cities and towns (compare the crime statistics).

(Special Note: If the last paragraph does not sound believe-able to you given all the negative media attention Mexico receives now on almost a daily basis, don't just take my word for it: Read this blog.

And here are some additional articles on the subject from the past few years: This is a good one: Mexico Under Seige. Or consider this: If you hear of riots in the streets of a major US city, would you be worried about visiting a small town or a national park many miles away in an entirely different part of the country? Most people would probably answer "No." Well, that is a pretty good analogy to the current situation in Mexico. In addition, by virtue of the fact that Cozumel is an island, we are naturally isolated from a lot of what happens even in Cancun and Playa del Carmen 12 miles across the open ocean. Here is an article about the relative safety of Mexico in the San Franciso Chronicle. In addition, most businesses are very positive about their investments in Mexico according to an issue of Business Week magazine, and have no interest in leaving. Cozumel has been called the safest community in Mexico by TopMexicoRealEstate. )

The point is that maybe you are just fed up with all the political and economic problems in the US, and the apparently uncertain future of the US economy. If you have a couple hundred thousand USD saved up, you can work over the Internet, or have a great idea to start a small business in the Cozumel tourist industry, maybe it is time for you to consider "early retirement." Just keep in mind that, yes, you do have to have a reasonable amount of money even to survive and be happy in "paradise." And since this is a very different culture, there is a pretty steep learning curve for the first couple years. Anyway, read on, give it some thought. If you have questions, there is an email address on page 3 where you can get some answers.

The residential development of Mariposa Estates is one of only a couple developments in the forest of Cozumel. El Cedral is a little hamlet and a former Mayan sacred site and ruin. Some modern Mayan people still live there, along with some Mexicans. In spite of what most people think, the forest is very beautiful and not full of nasty critters, and the mosquitoes are only a problem a couple months of the year. Watch this short video to see for yourself. And check out Cozumel Forest Fountain Interlude too.

Most of Cozumel is covered with beautiful forest. The forest is filled with beautiful tropical hardwoods such as salam, jigo, and chichen trees. The Chaaka and sapote trees also grow here. Chaaka means “red” in Mayan (its bark is greenish red) and is a medicinal treatment for burns and rashes. The sapote tree sap is used for rubber and gum, but it also has small fruits that taste a little like dates. There is a Mayan pyramid in El Cedral that has been dated to 2000 years old, but may be older. The entire southern part of the island from Mariposa Estates across to Punta Chiqueros is covered by low “walls” about a foot high called “petkots” in Mayan, as can be seen in the next picture. Though archeologists think they are “field walls,” there is another theory that they are remains of Mayan foot trails. They run roughly north-south or east-west and pass near old Mayan wells (cenotes and chens). Since it is known the Maya people built roads by putting down a layer of rocks covered by crushed coral and shells mixed with sand (called "sascab"), this explanation is also likely. Thousands of Mayans once lived on Cozumel, and after 2000 years, the rains washed away the sascab. The petkots in northern Cozumel are from later period, are about a meter high, and have a slightly different compass orientation. During the height of the Mayan civilization, Cozumel was a very sacred religious site, and it was known to the Mayans as the island of fertility. Pilgimages to Cozumel in dugout canoes from the mainland occcurred annually (one such voyage was recreated in 2009.). Cozumel was to the Mayans what the Vatican is the the Catholics.

This petkot is mostly buried in leaves, but it is an example of what the Mayans built. Petkots are be found every few hundred meters (300-400 feet) all over the southern part of Cozumel. They are in a rough grid formation that runs mostly north-south and east-west, and most are straight as an arrow. It must have take many man-years to built them all, and it was done without the aid of a compass.

What about home power in Cozumel?

As you can see from the first two photos above and some on the following pages, most of Cozumel is densely forested. In fact, very little of the island has electricity except in and around town, along the highways on the west side north and south of town, and along the transveral road most of the way across the island. The entire east side of Cozumel has no power-grid, nor do the north and south ends. The new zoning law that went into effect in 2008 actually requires the use of home power in many areas of the island, including all of the east side. So there are many places for the use of solar panels, batteries, and the other equipment used to generate, store, and use home power. If you are not familiar with what these things are, here are some examples:

1100 WATT Solar array that tracks the sun to generate electricity

500 WATT Windmill to generate electricity

Cozumel has moderate sea breezes ever day most months of the year, so windmills are also a good way to generate home power on the island. Of course, once generated, home power needs to be stored, and that is done with batteries such as those shown below. Notice the muffin fan at the left that vents battery charging gases safely out through a pipe on the right (not visible) when the lid is closed.

8 L-16 golf cart batteries in an insulated, vented battery box

With the right home power system that fits your personal electricity needs, you can live very comfortably totally disconnected from the power-grid. A great place to learn more about home power is to go to a couple of the author's favorite websites:

Home Power Magazine and Backwoods Solar Electric Systems

These two sites will tell you all you need to know about home power and where to get the proper equipment to design your own home power system the right way from the start.

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Copyright 2009-2011 All rights reserved. Rojo Vivo Consultores, S.A. de C.V., Cozumel, Q. Roo, Mexico