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.