Life on the Coast
Early arrivals
It was the 1980s and Massachusetts winters weren’t getting any warmer. So George and Pearl became among the first foreigners to come to this rustic stretch of Yucatán coast to build their dream house. More than 3 decades later, we see how their timing, and patience, paid off. 32
TEXT LEE STEELE PHOTOS CARLOS ROSADO VAN DER GRACHT
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ollege professors George Ashley and Pearl Mosher-Ashley were still in their 40s and working in Western Massachusetts when the Yucatán coast started calling them. It was the mid-1980s and a university colleague who had been called upon to increase his Spanish skills so he could teach the language, took a sabbatical in Yucatán. The colleague fell in love with it, bought a coconut grove on the beach, and built a house. Whereas today the coast is practically packed with houses, there were virtually no neighbors back then. When he and his wife invited George and Pearl down to see their home in San Bruno on the Gulf Coast — it all looked pretty primitive, Pearl recalls. But they were set up with a real estate agent and ended up buying the triple-wide property next door. It stretches from the road to the beach. Such a property would be unaffordable to only the most well-paid, superstar college professors today. The hitch? No electricity, no water, no telephones. The dusty road outside was a lane and-a-half wide, transportation via bus was very limited. And supermarkets were still a few years off. They designed and built their own study house, which has stood the test of ISSUE 5 | YUCATÁN MAGAZINE
