All the right moves!

Hello all,,, Im gonna try to add to this blog. Bonnie is the ‘Techi’ with the internet.

So as I browse the pics we haven’t sent out, which is almost all of them, I feel the need to explain a few.

Soren did a head-plant down the stairway one night, the first night we were at our “beach house”. He surfed down the whole stairway on his luggage, after first bashing his head on the concrete wall. After we were fairly sure he didn’t have a concussion, I took this photo to document it, but freaked out because he looks dead.

Lucas has been hammin’ it up, (especially when he is naked). We have made several trips to beautiful beaches, but always managed to leave our camera behind.

Bonnie and I have determined that we are participants in the amazing race, and sometimes pretend there is a camera in the car. We speculate on who the viewers are most partial to, or who’s side they pick when we are both being crabby.
Soren got a bike for his birthday, and we go two great beach cruisers for under 110 bucks. Cataherine and I tood a ride at 10pm to Montezuma and swam in the moonlite at this awesome little cove. The beach is about 30 feet wide between rocky tidepools.
It was cool to have my eyes at water-level in the dark with the full moon reflecting the waves.
We have had a nightly visitor, a very old raccoon who knows no fear. She walked right up to me eventho I was banging my machete on the bricks to scare her away. Kind of freaky…. I have this nightly routine of taking out the compost, which is typically me walking or half running through the jungle yard wielding my machete. At nite there is the. sound of a million hermit crabs moving underfoot. It is pretty loud and unnerving. I try to imagine actual combat with a machete…. It usually doesn’t comfort me much.

Our current landlords are unexpectedly very flakey and aren’t appearing to fix anything that needs help here at our beach house,,, so we are (could it be???) moving again!! We found a nice place upland a bit for half the money and twice the size. There are children in the hood and basically all the relatives the owner has live on all sides of us. While we toured it soren and lucas played with the neighborhood kids in the yard, it was very cute. The tico kids are very curious about the boys, and are eager to play. Soren has stubbornly refused to speak Spanish claiming that THEY can speak English.
“he knows English dad,,,,, he said ‘uh huh’ and ‘cool’ and ‘my name is…’. Lucas has learned some and his little voice speaking Spanish is sooo cute!
So the plan is to get a lawyer (1 out of 10 people here are lawyers- Brian should move here) to scare our landlady a bit,, get our deposit back, travel in Nicaragua for a week or so by bus, and return to move into our new digs on the 20th.
Oh Boy!

Homeless No Mas!

We have a home!! We are ready for visitors! A little catch up…

Directly following our debacle at the Casa de Ormigas (house of ants), we bit the bullet and rented a cabiña for the next week while our search continued. We celebrated Soren’s 8th birthday at this cabina. We hiked to a nearby island that morning and enjoyed homemade ice cream cake that night. His big surprise was a new bike, which he’s been riding all over.

Here’s how our house search went- we’d go to Saturday market in Montezuma, and talk to just about anyone who could have a lead for us. We established some relations with a few of the regulars who are really fantastic and interesting people. At this point I need to introduce Dennis. Dennis is an expat that lives here with his wife Cassandra and an army of dogs.

This dude is about 50, very intelligent and a hybrid between Kramer and Barney Miller, but way more intense. I haven’t found a topic yet that Dennis isn’t well informed in or at least isn’t willing to take a vigorous stab at. He is very well connected here and has been largely responsible for our success in finding our current digs. He our translator, goto guy, informant and hitman.

During the week at our cabina we explored the nearest ‘bigger’ town of Cobano.
This is where we do our shopping for things beyond eggs, rice, beans and white bread (the white bread is brand named “Bimbo” and we found awesome t-shirts that we gotta get for Potlatch this year!!). By the way, their idea of bread is these baguettes that are all white flour and air and weigh about 5 ounces per loaf. They eat these for breakfast with tons of margarine and fruit. We sampled a few of the sodas (cafes), bakeries, internet cafes and even a so-so iced cappuccino. The internet bandwidth here is better than Montezuma but still dialup speeds. They have two hardware stores called Ferreterias, a little Quick lube (very little) and Pedro the mechanic. I am lining Pedro’s pockets lately.

Our new house-

I had earlier heard of this place owned by a rich gringo lady, who had bought it for Nena, tico woman, to manage and keep the rent because she was so poor. The guy Mike that told me about it said it had a leaky roof, termites and was on the demolition list. Clearly I had written this one off. Well, things getting worrisome being that high-season is just starting to rev-up and the rentals will be gone soon; we decided to take a look anyway.

Nena sells homemade marmalade, jams and coconut oil, and has this crazy outdoor kitchen with a makeshift wood oven. I bludgeoned her with my Spanish and arranged to see the house. Her husband got on his old motorcycle and showed the way to our current home. Very dusty and musty but obviously a diamond in the rough, especially after Ormiga Manor. All almond wood floors and woodwork, decent kitchen, a freeken huge bathroom with walkin two person shower, large master, loft for two and a little area under the loft perfect for my teens. (Bonnie is currently laughing hysterically because I fail to mention the Costa Rican perceptual adjustment situation- as in if its not rotting or full of ants, its GREAT. She thinks maybe I am misrepresenting the place a tad)

After some negotiation with Dennis as our liaison, we got it. A new fridge, stove and washer were included in the deal. But it is way more than we anticipated paying here.

We’ve been here a week and a day now and so far, Soren has plummeted head first down the stairs from the loft in the middle of the night (the loft has no railing- just a hole in the floor for the stairs), getting the gnarliest goose-egg on his forehead. Scared the crap out of us, and I was worried he might look like John Merrick the rest of his life.

THEN has turned out to be our favorite word when telling about our adventures here….. because THEN we discovered a legion of Iguanas living in our ceiling. This was revealed in the middle of the night on evening. It sounded like a bunch of lumber being dragged around by something with very large claws tearing at the roof top.
THEN- the water one day turned to mud, well more like water in a mud puddle. THEN we had a major bug infestation. THEN the shower head started shooting water up at the ceiling where there are open 10 gauge, 40 amp wires sticking out for the disconnected water heater. The water heaters here are at the end of the pipe. They are actually little coffee makers with a shower head on them. The water perks, mixing with the flow of cold and comes out. If you run the shower on drip then the water is ‘warm’. All this is very cool. Except that ours doesn’t work.

I picked up Dennis and went to Nena’s.
They will fix the screens, new showerhead and do something which I couldn’t understand with the Iguanas. (When they will do this, we don’t know). Dennis later told me he had that Iguana problem once and killed them all but one, with great head shot with his pellet gun. I guess the other was a gut shot. He calls the local Argentinean who comes over, harvests the corpses, and has them for dinner! “Chicken of the Jungle”

We do however have an amazing beachfront view, literally fifty feet from the beach. A very cool large yard with outdoor shower, private drive and lots of room for camping. The house has cleaned up nicely and we are adjusting to the foibles of living here, because the ‘here’ clearly isn’t going to change any time soon. It seems like I’m gonna have to do a McGuyver on the Iguanas with Dennis and the Argentinean chef. Bonnie is very eager to chase away the iguanas as they are very hyper around 2 am and also because we heard that they are the favorite food for the BOA CONSTICTORS! Dennis assures me that boa’s bites, however painful, aren’t fatal but the last one he had to wrestle was particularly nasty.

I’m off to pick up our 1990 Montero, which had its rusted frame (that was threatening to drop the rear axel) welded, in addition to a new muffler, rear bushings, transmissions support and spark plugs.

More later as we are able.
We miss you all very much and assure you that it is a must visit here, and absolutely beautiful.

Back Online!

Internet hiatus. Back online now. Lots has happened, then again, not too much. If we had been updating regularly, here’s a brief synopsis of what we would have written:

Montezuma- In a desperate attempt to flee San Jose, the rain, and the non-kid friendly hostels, Bonnie & the kids take the bus to Montezuma while Eric stays in San Jose to (hopefully) buy a car.

Lucas has no shoes!- After a swim in the ocean, we decided to go for a walk down the nearly deserted beach. We returned to discover all of our shoes had been stolen, including Lucas’ little crocs- his only shoes because in Turrialba we found out his new shoes were to small and gave them away to a shoeless boy at the market (one would think we’d have good, not bad, shoe karma after that?) We walked barefoot back to town and bought new flipflops. Lucas hates his!

Baby Turtle- Today on the beach (Eric’s still in San Jose) we saw a lone baby turtle making his way back to the ocean! It was amazing- so beautiful!! The boys named him Flipper-Flapper and we cheered for him all the way to the ocean. (We of course don’t have any photos to share because we don’t take anything but our cheap flip-flops to the beach these days.)

Proud Montero Owners- Yeah!!! All together now: Yeah!!!! We are now the proud owners of a 1990 Mitsubshi Montero! Complete with a glow-in-the-dark Jesus is our Savoir stick shift. No joke! Buying a car here is no easy feat, and it was even harder for us because the guy selling this car is a police officer who apparently never has any time off. The sale was FINALLY completed when Eric and our attorney (yes, you need an attorney to buy a car here) met the police officer on the street corner where he was working to sign the final papers. Learning to go with the flow in Central America.

The House Hunt- This is turning out to be a lot like buying a car. We get some info, follow it around for days in circles, and then start in a whole new direction altogether. We started looking in Cabuya, then we were told we’d have better luck in Manzanillo. So we headed over to Manzanillo, but never even made it there because the roads are soo bad!! And we have 4-wheel drive. Apparently the roads will all be repaired when the rains stop for good (any day now), but since we couldn’t even make it to Manzanillo, we decided we probably shouldn’t live in Manzanillo. Back to Cabuya.

On Sunday the post would have read: We’ve found a house. Actually 2 houses- one green and one purple bungalow right next door to each other. We’ve rented them both and between the two we have 4 bedrooms in Cabuya for $450/month. We move in today!!!

Monday- The bungalows were infested (and I mean INFESTED as in 5000 plus) with ants!! And roaches. And who knows what else. EWWW! :( We moved out this morning. So sad! Back to the house hunt.

And here we are. We are still house hunting. Have a good lead. We should know in the next few days. In the meantime we’ve rented a house on the beach (nice vacation rental, relatively bug free) to have a nice base from which to search. Eric does most of the spanglish conversing, sometimes waiting for people to cook breakfast, eat breakfast, and press coconut oil before they are ready to show him a house.

There is still no urge to hop a plane back to workaholism and school. The people have been great and unbelieveably helpful. There is a sense of community and if your car is stopped by the side of the road, someone always stops with a smile and wants to help.
Lucas’s hair is still the feature attraction and usually the great ice breaker with the language barrior- “ QUE LINDO!” We will elaborate and illustrate when we are sitting at our breakfast table having our coffee, looking at the beach, fifty feet from our porch.
We wish you all were here as our neighbors, and we could have dinner and play Frisbee in the local futbol field at dusk.

Turrialba

Saturday, October 20th:

After spending one night in San Jose, we headed straight to Turrialba to start a one week language intensive program. Que Bueno! Turrialba is about 1 1/2 hours from San Jose, nestled in a lush valley. The Turrialba River runs through here and thus the town is famous with the white water kayaking crowd. We stayed with a host family who have 2 teenage boys and a nine year old daughter, Ruth. Within minutes Soren and Lucas were off playing with Ruth, and that's how its gone most of the week. We all went to school in the morning, Eric and I at Spanish by the River, and the boys at a local international school. The boys did ok, considering how much they both love starting new schools, but by Friday they had had enough and sat in class with us instead. The family were staying with, the teachers and director at our school, and the people in Turrialba in general are incredibly friendly! We feel very safe and welcomed. Everyone stares at the boys, especially Lucas. Occasionally a taxi driver even reaches out to pinch his cheek. We are heading back to San Jose Sunday to pick up Catherine and finish up things with the whole car purchase.

We're Off!

Tuesday, October 9th:

After weeks of craziness (we slightly underestimated the time needed to pack up a family of six & finish our remodel), we're off to Costa Rica to begin this great adventure! Thanks to all who helped us get out of town- finish building, pack up, and to Angel who's catsitting our dear Pumpkin! :) Check back soon- we'll update as soon as we can.