Week #5

11/21/07
Day #16 without a car…

We were able to make arrangements for Tim to ride into Santa Cruz with Steve yesterday morning, where he caught a bus to San Jose. He said his seat was a few rows behind the driver and his assistant (the guy who helps load and unload everyone’s luggage). When they got to the mountains he said he could tell the bus was having problems on the hills, and when they stopped for a restroom/food break, the driver announced that they would all be getting on another bus when it arrived. By the time the break was over the replacement bus was there, and everyone loaded onto a bus that already had a bunch of passengers. Tim and another 10 or 12 people had to ride the last 90 kilometers standing in the aisle because there were no seats.

When he reached San Jose he found a really nice cab driver who helped him find a hotel room close to the bus terminal for buses leaving to the Caribbean side of the country (different lines service different parts), which is where he will go later today. He called the cab driver this morning and he took him to the couple different places Tim needed to go today before heading to Puerto Limon.

LATER:
We found out yesterday that we need an original bill of lading from the marine transport company who actually shipped the truck (it was not in the documents shipped by the logistics company). They have an office in San Jose, so Tim went there first thing this morning and got an official copy of the bill of lading, and then took all of the documents to our customs agent contact, Jorge. Jorge wasn’t able to complete all the necessary paperwork until the end of the day today, but what he passed on to Tim should allow him to pick up the car tomorrow in Puerto Limon. Tim had to spend an extra night in Sna Jose tonight and will leave for Limon in the morning. Barring any further complications, he could be on his way home in OUR VERY OWN TRUCK as early as tomorrow afternoon!!!

Happy thanksgiving everyone!

11/23/07
Last day without a car! Tim called last night from San Jose, saying he had picked up the car in Limon with only a minor hiccup: all of the paperwork listed his name as Tim Dollar, but the name on his passport is Timothy Dollar – no big deal in the US where people would automatically know that Tim is short for Timothy. After straightening it out, he get in the truck and started heading home. Next time we do this we will know MUCH more about how the process works, and also about which companies are reputable and which ones are not.

Suzette and I went to Tamarindo on Wednesday to get turkey and all the trimmings for yesterday’s meal. Yes you can find everything: canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce, Stove Top stuffing, etc. The problem is if you want to eat like an American, you will pay through the nose for it. Suzette bought a 20 pound turkey and sent it home with me to cook (they don’t have an oven at their house). I saw the price she paid on the label and had to get the calculator to check my math and yep…she paid $54.00 for the turkey. I got up and put the turkey in the oven at 4:30 am because I didn’t know if the electricity would be going off from 8-2 (after all, it was Thursday). Natch, it didn’t go off at all yesterday but my turkey was done by 7:30.

Steve & Suzette came to pick me up and we all went to Tierra Pacifica, a real estate development that Steve has been marketing. There is a huge kitchen and several tables outside on a beautifully landscaped patio, and also a pool and Jacuzzi. A couple of other families also brought food, and all of us had a traditional American thanksgiving outside under the stars in Costa Rica. Pura vida!

Tim should be home in a couple of hours. He’ll be sick of driving by the time he arrives, but I am driving that truck somewhere today, just because I can!!!

11/29/07
Life is good. We have been enjoying the privilege of driving for almost a week now, and having transportation makes a big difference in our outlook. Being without a car wasn’t impossible, but it required planning: Do we only need a few things from the store, so that one of us can ride the bike, or do we need enough groceries that both of us are required to go? If so, can we make it until the cooler part of the afternoon, or should the store run be made in the morning? I’m sure anyone who has had to rely on public transportation for any length of time can sympathize, because it requires the same sort of planning.

So Tuesday afternoon, we were hanging out around the house and Tim said he was going to check the surf conditions. For the non-surfers, this is something he does about 10 times a day, checking tide, wind and swell to see if he can catch a couple of waves. I said I wanted to walk down to the beach with him and changed into a swimsuit. As we were walking over the slight rise between the house and the beach, we could see hundreds of birds hitting the water very close to the shore, right in front of our house. We walked onto the beach and into a feeding frenzy. A school of fish had chased sardines right up to the shoreline, and the birds had followed the school of fish. The water looked like it was boiling, there were so many fish right off the shore. We could see dozens of fish in every wave before it crashed. Just up the beach from us is a house under construction, and all the workers ditched their tools and grabbed their hand lines and ran down to the beach. One guy stripped down to his underwear and ran in. In about a minute there were 8 or 10 guys in the water, all throwing lines. In another 2 or 3 minutes, they had caught about 4 fish; as they caught them, they would unhook them and toss them up on the beach and throw their lines right back in. When the birds started moving further down the beach, most of the crowd followed; a few stayed behind and started collecting the fish that had been caught.

Yesterday we were walking the beach around sunset and saw some fresh turtle tracks near the estuary. Since the moon was full last week, the tide is still really high when it comes in. Because of this, we figured the turtle must have come up during the high tide in the middle of the afternoon and laid eggs, since we didn’t see any tracks in the morning when we walked the dogs. Tim marked the nest (not too smart, we now know) and we marked on the calendar when the eggs should hatch (50 days). Today Tim was back on the beach checking the surf conditions, and he saw a guy walking along the high tide line with a hooked stick and a bag on his back…in other words, the guy looked very much like an egg poacher. Tim stood on the beach and let the guy know he was being watched, and the guy ambled away from the same nest we marked yesterday. We now have the phone numbers for 3 people who rescue turtle eggs and take them to guarded nests where they can’t be poached by locals. Hopefully we can get someone down here to get the eggs before the poacher comes back!

Just when you think it can't work out...

11/12/07
Day #7 without a car and no complaints. There is plenty of stuff to do around the house and yard, plus everything is within walking distance so it’s not too difficult. Even during the hottest part of the day it’s not so bad since there’s always the ocean nearby to cool off. Yesterday was my first solo venture – I rode our new bike to the Mini Super for groceries. Even though I went at 9:30 in the morning, there were already men outside the store drinking beer (it seems to be a popular way to pass the time). I guess when your day starts at 5 am, by the time 9:30 rolls around the day is already half over

Our weekend was very tranquilo and we stayed very close to home. We saw neighbor Barry on the beach on Saturday evening and ended up sitting and talking to him for quite a while; he offered some interesting insight on some of our other neighbors and had absolutely nothing but good things to say about our landlords. We plan to invite him over for dinner soon.

11/14/07
We found out today that our car has not yet shipped out of Florida. We were given a shipping schedule which dictated our plan to go without a car for the week before our own car arrived. The schedule said the ship carrying our car would leave on November 10th and arrive on November 17th, and now they say it will not ship out until Friday the 16th. The logistics company shipping the car left us with the impression that they would ship all the necessary documents to us via UPS. (I was told there was a $65 fee for shipping the docs, unless we had a UPS account number of our own…now what would that lead you to believe?) So we provided them with the address of the UPS office in Tamarindo; the way UPS works here is when your envelope arrives in their office, they call to determine the exact delivery location (they only ship documents, no packages) and to make sure someone will be there to sign for the shipment, then they bring it out to you on motorcycle. We have been hounding the logistics company for tracking information, and finally received an e-mail on Friday saying they had shipped the docs via USPS Global Mail. USPS? Are you kidding me?! So now we’ve got a USPS shipment going to a UPS office for final delivery. Tim has been calling every morning to see if it has arrived and so far no luck. Our new friend in the UPS office, Rodolfo, says he’s looking for it and will set it aside and call us when it arrives. Hope he’s on duty if/when the envelope arrives. What’s in this important envelope, you ask? The original title to our car, plus the export manifest signed off on by US customs…documents that must be in our possession to retrieve our car from customs on this end. It’s the waiting that’s killing us right now, not knowing if the docs will make it, and not knowing what we will do in the event that they don’t.

To top everything off, the phones have been out all day. Welcome to Costa Rica!

11/17/07
Day #12 without a car

The days just kind of blend together and most are about the same right now. We clean up the house, we walk the dogs on the beach, we piddle around in the yard, we take turns riding the bike to the store for a couple more days’ food & beverage, we trek to Rudy’s to check the internet, we cook, we wash clothes, etc. We don’t do all of these things every day, but over the course of the last week I couldn’t tell you which days we did what. A couple of days stand out…

We had a productive day around the house on Thursday and decided to treat ourselves not only to wireless internet service at Rudy’s but also dinner (I’d cooked for many, many days in a row). We needed a couple of things from the Mini Super too, which is conveniently located just up the road from Rudy’s. As we got close to Rudy’s, what looked like a small parade was heading our way on the road. There were several guys out in front, and then a backhoe with 2 guys in the front end loader – each with a machete in one hand and a beer in the other. As the thing crept along the road, the guys in the front end loader whacked low-hanging branches out of the way, and the entourage on the ground tossed them to the sides of the road. All of this was to make way for a huge 18-wheeler inching its way along the pot-holed roads behind the backhoe and all the guys following. It turned out to be a jobsite office trailer being hauled down to a site near our house, where a multi-million dollar condo project is getting underway.

After we got our fill of dinner and surfing the net, I walked to the store to pick up the things we needed and went back to Rudy’s, where Tim was waiting with the computer packed up and flashlight ready for the 30+ minute walk home in the dark (it was about 7). We were about 2/3 of the way home and coming down a slight incline when I slipped on the rocks in the road and fell down on one knee. It happened really fast and I was back up in a second, but I skinned my knee all up and punctured the side of my knee on a sharp rock. Tim wanted to check it out and as soon as I saw it in the light I didn’t want to look at it anymore. My lower leg was all bloody and even thinking about it made my stomach turn. I just wanted to get home because I knew there wasn’t anything we could do about it in the dark on the road, and anyway we still had to get home no matter what. Tim was worried about me because as soon as I saw the blood I started sweating profusely, so he didn’t know if I was really OK or not. We got home and cleaned it up and saw that it was only a skinned knee (skinned and really bruised). Skinned knees hurt – how did I manage to go through childhood with one or both knees always scabby?

Friday was a mellow day around the house, with many phone calls made to determine the whereabouts of the documents we need to retrieve the Montero from customs when it arrives (which is now supposed to be 11/19). We still do not know where the docs are or when/if they will make it to us. We are both ready to have this mess sorted out as it is driving us both crazy. We try to talk about other stuff, because it is a source of frustration and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. If you’re ever thinking if shipping anything internationally, I do NOT recommend using Ultimate Logistics.

As we were moping around the house on Friday afternoon, we heard a truck go by and honk twice. We looked at each other and Tim said, “Fish truck?” and went out to see. It did indeed turn out to be the fish truck; Steve told us they come through on Fridays, and it just so happened that our neighbor Barry had asked them to come all the way to the end of the road so he could buy fish. We bought a kilo of dorado and a kilo of tuna fresh off the truck. It’s funny but our sour moods turned around after buying fish, since we remembered the little things that we love about living here like the fact that fresh fish comes right to your front door!

Last week we were faced with the wonderful conundrum of having a beautiful sunset taking place in front of us while a double rainbow formed to our backs. Which way to look? With or without a car, life here is pretty amazing.

11/19/07
Today we got a call saying the documents have arrived! Tim leaves tomorrow for Puerto Limon to pick up the car. All is right with the world again!

A week or so of entries

10/29/07
It is the end of the rainy season. A full 6 hours of rain in the US means a hours indoors and lots of mud (especially if you have dogs). Here, that much rain means the road you drove down yesterday might not be passable today. We went to Avellanas yesterday, which is about 15 km or 10 miles away. It takes about an hour to get there, much of it in 4L because of the mud. It’s fun driving in it since it’s like a giant 4-wheeler, but it’s a lot of wear and tear on the car too. We went down one road 4 times, and scraped bottom each time we had to navigate the biggest mud puddle. We planned to go to Tamarindo today, which is along the same road, but after the heavy rains last night we didn’t figure we could make it, given the conditions yesterday. When we got back to our end of the road, there was one solitary guy working with a tractor and a shovel, digging trenches from each mud puddle along the road to drain the standing water off to the side of the road. We love him. He made our end of the road much better, even if it’s only a quarter of a mile or so.

Tim says that it’s not always this way, but I’ve only been here during the rainy season so this is mostly what I’ve seen of Costa Rica. This year has been worse than most, with torrential rain in this part of Guanacaste. Kids have been out of school for weeks because of the rain, and so when it rains all day there isn’t a whole lot that can be done besides staying inside and keeping dry. As a result we are burning our way through our reading materials…I hope the sun comes out to stay soon. I’m still in vacation mode, so spending a day indoors doing very little feels like wasting a day of vacation. It takes a while to get out of that mindset. We’re on Tico time now, and what happens in a day is what happens in a day…however little or much. It’s exactly what I’ve wanted but it’s still hard to get used to.







10/31/07
I doubt there will be trick-or-treating tonight, since it probably rained a foot in the last 12 hours. It also rained a foot on Monday night. The rainy season is definitely not over – far from it. Tim and I walked down to the beach today, and it looks like the entire ocean is brown…think Galveston with bigger waves. It’s not anything close to inviting at the moment, but I’ve been told it is clear and blue for months on end during the dry season. As a result of the rain, we’re already worried we don’t have enough books; luckily Steve has been here for a couple of years and has hundreds he is willing to share.

Yesterday we went to Tamarindo, which is about 25 kilometers away. Steve had some errands to run and we wanted something to do, so we offered to drive since we still have a rental car. The roads here thrash a car in a very short time, so when anyone has a rental car it is always preferred over driving your own car. Even by normal Costa Rican standards, the roads are in very bad shape right now because of all the rain. Anyway, we made it to Tamarindo without incident (the local gringo population call it “Scamagringo,” so you get an idea of how seedy it is). We went to the big, shiny new supermercado and stocked up on more groceries, then headed home. After bumping, sliding and splashing along for about an hour, we were literally a hundred yards or so from Steve’s from gate when we saw a truck ahead, stuck in the river.

Out here near the beach, on almost every road there is a creek or river you have to drive through. Some progress has been made in the last few years, but by progress I mean culverts have been put in the rivers here and there, with a little bit of dirt or rocks on either side, so even though you might not have to navigate a creek crossing anymore it hardly counts as a bridge. Only a few spots have been lucky enough to get a culvert, so there are still lots of hairball crossings. The river crossing near Steve’s house isn’t very deep or rocky, but the center and one side are super soft mud after months and months of rain and the only way to get through is to swing wide to the other side. Well, the large flatbed truck swung wide and got stuck there, leaving us no choice but to turn around and find another way home. We were close enough to hit Steve’s house with a rock, but ended up having to bump around for 20 more minutes because the river was impassable. We didn’t make it home until well after dark.







11/04/07
OK, I gotta admit, the blogging responsibility is huge right now. Our landlords e-mailed us before coming, and said, “Life in Costa Rica is about improvising with a smile.” Truer words have never been spoken. We don’t have internet access at our house, but our friend Steve does, so we check it when we can and try to be as unobtrusive about it as possible. A “high speed” internet connection here is about the same as dial-up at home…the result is uploading pictures to the blog has taken a backseat to simply staying in touch with immediate family. We have a lot of pictures but not a lot of bandwidth, so please be patient with us.

Let me say a bit about where we live: the house, although smaller than I thought, has absorbed all of our belongings and is very easy to live in; it is a wonderful place, and the beach is at the front of our property so we feel really, really lucky. That’s why, when we upload some pictures, most of what you will see are sunset pictures. J The rain seems to have stopped, and lots of the locals say we may still get one or two more storms but the rainy season is over. The roads are drying up and travel is somewhat easier without the mud. The trouble now is not the mud but the ruts created while the roads were muddy. There are many places where trucks and cars have gotten stuck and been dug out of the mud, leaving huge craters that may or may not be visible. We have the cheapest, most light-weight “SUV” (the 4WD is a button on the dash), so driving around is slow and extremely bumpy. We won’t have our own car here until 11/17 so we are about to turn in the rental car and rely on bicycle transport until our car is here. It’s a bit daunting, even though many of the locals have nothing but bikes. In the mornings we see lots of people walking to and from the Mini Super (grocery store in our neighborhood), and we are about to be among them. I think it’s about a mile from our house. We’ll be without a car for at least 2 weeks, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

Tim and I have been walking on the beach at least twice a day, and add the dogs to that mix and we are getting lots of exercise (and so are they). The water gets more and more clear everyday; when we first got here 2 weeks ago, the water was brown and murky with lots of debris because we are next to the mouth of the estuary. Today was the clearest day yet, and Tim and I headed out at 7 am with him on the surfboard and me on the boogie board. We both caught some fun waves right out in front of the house! As the summer goes on and there is less rain the water will get more and more clear, so the local wisdom goes. I welcome it.

It still hasn’t really sunk in that we are not just vacationing here but this is where we live. I’m not sure when that feeling will wear off; the difference is I don’t sweat the small stuff because if I didn’t spend the day the way I wanted today, I have a chance to do it right tomorrow; it’s not a day wasted on my 2 week vacation. I’ll let you know how that goes too.

11/06/07
GOING FERAL

Got no telecommunication, cables haven’t gotten out this way…

Today is the day we turned in the rental car and decided to hunker down until our Montero arrives. Knowing that our time was limited, we decided to capitalize on having a car and make a run into Santa Cruz yesterday. Santa Cruz is about 38 kilometers, and it takes about an hour to get there. I don’t know how big it is, maybe 5,000 or so, but there are lots of stores. We had an odd assortment of things we were looking for: a bicycle, a set of king size sheets, fishing hooks, a rolling pin, a rice cooker or a pan with a lid, plus we wanted to get some groceries that we can’t get at our local Mini Super. There are no large stores, everything is just a storefront and crammed from floor to ceiling with stuff. Almost every store sells rice cookers and crock pots, since many Tico kitchens have only 2 burner propane stoves that sit on the counter (we are very lucky to have a convection oven as well as a propane cooktop with 4 burners). We found fish hooks and a bike in the same store (they also sold rice cookers); we never did find king size sheets so we’ll have to keep looking.

We haven’t been off the muddy, rutted roads by the beach since we got the new Playskool rental car until yesterday. After a particularly rough ride last week (sideways in the mud, water lapping against the car door crossing a river), the Dhiatsu developed a noise. Since it still started everytime we asked it to and still moved forward, we didn’t think much of it; besides, it can be hard to hear a specific rattle on the car on bumpy roads. Yesterday we were on our way to Santa Cruz and when we reached the paved road (about halfway there), I asked Tim if it was a good idea to drive in 4WD (which, remember, is only a button on the dash). He pulled over and stopped and disengaged the 4WD. When he put the car in gear and tried to take his foot off the clutch, there was no movement at all and a LOT of grinding. Same with reverse. He put it back in 4WD and it moved fine. We had no choice but to go on so we did. This morning we cleaned it up as best we could (maybe if it’s clean they won’t notice the transmission, eh?) and drove it to Iguana Azul, a hotel/restaurant in the area that everyone knows. There we met with the rental car reps and told them what happened; we are hoping that we are not held responsible for mechanical problems…I’ll let you know how that goes. We have already had the rental car gods smile on us, because the last one we turned in when we traded down to the Dhiatsu had a crack in the windshield that wasn’t there when we rented the car (thanks to a rock on the road in San Jose the first day), and the rental car company didn’t say a word about it!

The swell is HUGE today. After turning in the car, we walked home from Iguana Azul along the beach as far as we could. Since the tide is still high, there was a point that we couldn’t navigate with such big waves so we took to the road. Some of the waves are probably 12 feet high right outside our house…I’ve only seen swell like this in Hawaii. I think we walked about 4 miles to get home.

This morning the power went off at 8:00 am and stayed off until almost 2:00 pm. The reason is because a 5-star Marriott is being built up the road about 45 minutes from here, and so every Tuesday and Thursday all the residences and businesses in the area have to go without power for 6 hours until the construction is complete at the Marriott. Welcome to Costa Rica!

So let’s see…we have no TV (we play lots of dominoes, Uno and Scrabble…the other night Tim let me get away with playing “cooter” as a word because I didn’t have anything else; he had an “s” and instead of making it “scooter” he made it “cooters”), no internet access, no car, we are washing clothes by hand, and for 6 hours a day 2 days a week we are without power (which means no hot water either). Yep, that’s pretty much feral.