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.