Just hangin' out. Click for video:
View from the Patio in Grecia
Documenting the joys and challenges of being retired expats in Costa Rica
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
DAILY RHYTHMS by Marilyn
A diffuse light teases the sheer bedroom curtains. Rooster
greets the dawn. Charlie’s wet nose nuzzles my ear. After three weeks here I no
longer need to look at my watch to know it is 5:10 a.m. The day has started. A
little too early for Paul, but when he hears me rustling in the kitchen, making
our coffee, he’ll be up too.
I make the coffee with the Melita – a plastic cone that fits
a filter and makes one mug at a time. While the water heats on the stove, I set
the Melita on my travel mug. Whenever possible, I’ll use my travel mug; it
makes drinking my coffee a leisurely activity – no matter how long it takes me,
the coffee will still be piping hot.
Now that we’ve unpacked, though, Paul prefers what he calls
his “Cindy mug.” Years ago my sister Cindy gave Paul a handmade mug for
Christmas. It’s square on the bottom and round on top decorated with a moon and
stars. He wrapped it carefully in bubble wrap and was delighted when it emerged
unscathed from one of the “miscellaneous kitchen” boxes.
Paul wanders into the kitchen, drawn by the smell of fresh
coffee. As we embrace, we murmur “I’m so happy here.” “Me too.” The dogs will
have none of it, and fuss at our ankles, anxious to check out, with the 5
million scent cells in their noses, what enemy dog might have dared enter our
property while they slept.
Until yesterday, we had to drag two dining room chairs out
onto the patio every morning and drag them back in at night. But now, Jenny and
Tim have given us two white plastic deck chairs – Christmas in October. Sitting
outside each morning at six we marvel at the scene unfolded below us. Each day
dawns slightly differently but we always look out on lush green fields and rows
of coffee plants. Here and there a blanket of black shade cloth protects what
will become the fabulous Costa Rican brew. Red-roofed houses dot the landscape.
In the distance we can see our town, Grecia, the prominent steeples of the
church looking expectantly to the west, as is every church steeple on every
town square in the country.
As the dogs romp on the front lawn or sun themselves on the
patio, we breathe deeply. Each breath of clean mountain air feels healing,
cleansing, life-giving. Some mornings, before my second mug of coffee, I need
to stop my reverie to hang out the laundry that I’ve washed the night before.
It’s important to get it on the line as early as possible, ever hopeful that
morning sun will win out over driving afternoon rains and I’ll be able to pluck
dry laundry off the line on the same day I’ve hung it out.
This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I miscalculate the
speed of the clouds filling in the valley below or hiding behind the eastern
hills. Then the rains come, and my laundry gets a second rainwater rinse, and I
wait another day to let it dry. It was frustrating that for the eight years I
lived in the Valley of the Sun (Phoenix), I never hung out any laundry except
for our bathing suits and towels. Probably my job and volunteer work and
hobbies got in the way, but also, there was the ever-present dust. So I used
the clothes dryer, just like about 90 percent of the other desert dwellers.
Here, I have no choice. There is only a washing machine in
the laundry room. Paul has offered to help me hang the laundry, but I’m a
little obsessive about the how of it, so I decline his assistance. Going back
to my childhood days on Augustine Street, I had to hang the laundry in very
specific order. Never would a facecloth be hung amongst the underpants. And if
you were a t-shirt – you would get hung in a neat row with the rest of the
t-shirts – in color-coded order, from the hem, all facing the same direction.
And so the sunny morning goes. After laundry and a second
cup of coffee, there’s maybe some writing or art, sometimes a Spanish lesson,
but first the daily sweeping and mopping. Again, I am loathe to share these
chores with my more-than-willing spouse. He is master of the dish washing, and
that is fine by me.
I might add flour to my sourdough starter or start a soup
for the evening’s meal. I have time now to indulge all my joys of cooking. But
mornings are also the time to do anything related to the internet. As we’ve
learned firsthand, when the rains come, often with them comes lightning, and
all of our technical equipment has to get unplugged. Just the other morning,
Paul was screwing in a light bulb when lightning struck – fiercely. It burned
his finger and, possibly unrelatedly, caused Lily to throw up. The sound was something
like a Mac truck crashing into a moving freight train, if you were in between
the truck and the train – only louder.
So even though all of the outlets look like they’re
grounded, they’re probably not, and we have no internet now to prove the point
even further.
Once the rains come – and this could be anywhere as early as
noon or as late as 6 p.m. – the mood changes. Grey skies darken all of our
large windows and the sound is deafening. I might need to throw on a sweatshirt
and some socks. It’s in this damp chill that I remember why I’d decided to make
soup for supper. The afternoon darkness is the perfect excuse for a nap, and
the dogs have usually beat us to the bed.
When I awaken, there might be a break in the rain and I let
the dogs back out to run off steam, chasing each other. Charlie patrols the
perimeter of the property, re-marking all the bushes that the rain may have
rinsed clean of his earlier manifestations. Sacha pops out from the little
house we’ve made for her on the porch and politely requests “up” into my lap.
As I nuzzle her, she makes tiny little growling noises – if dogs purred, this
would be purring.
Lily lets me know
it’s “ball time” and I retrieve her big orange ball from its hiding place in
the laundry room. She had gotten fat and lazy in Phoenix, where it was too hot
to go for proper walks. Outside for her meant finding a good sleeping spot, so
she could continue the nap that she’d started inside. Now, she’ll run up and
down the hill playing catch for as long as we’ll play with her. All of this
exercise is trimming her up, but sadly, there’s probably nothing that can be
done with the excess skin that now flaps from her belly. I don’t think they
make Spanx® for dogs.
Before the next rain, Paul gets out the binoculars and we
watch the buzzards on their daily mouse hunt. They glide gracefully over the
valley, swooping and soaring. With their long necks tucked in, they resemble
hawks. It’s not until they rest high in the dead tree at the edge of our
property that their ugly heads emerge. It’s as if the tree and the buzzards are
one, waiting for Edgar Allen Poe to wax poetic about them.
When the rains come again, I go into the kitchen to finish
making supper. Now that all of my kitchen equipment and supplies have arrived
safely, I feel I can be my creative best. I’d packed all of my spices in a
shipping box and they are now safely stored in a kitchen cabinet. I don’t know
if it was legal to do that or not, but I was bereft without them in the two
weeks before the boxes arrived.
We eat supper in the glow of one of the three lamps we
shipped. All the Gringos we met or read warned that lamps are in short supply
in Costa Rica. One of the three didn’t have a good ocean crossing – it broke in
several places. Rather than toss it, Paul is rebuilding it. It’s one of my
treasures from my Crafts Report days,
so I’m glad it will live to see a new day.
After supper, we either download a Netflix movie or play a
game. We shipped Scrabble and Power Yahtzee, which are good for the times when
the internet is down and we can’t get to Netflix. On clear nights, we can see
the lights of Grecia from our windows. We haven’t seen many stars yet – or the
moon for that matter – they will have to wait, I guess, for the dry season that
starts at the end of November.
In this time of no furniture, of 85 boxes in various stages
of unpacking, projects yet to be done, we are healing. We are healing from the
stress of the last year of working – for me it was largely physically
challenging; for Paul, more emotionally draining. We are healing from planning
the move, packing and, finally, moving – an overwhelming experience which I’ll
write about eventually – there are many lessons-learned in our process.
After the evening’s entertainment, we have reached maybe
7:30 or 8 p.m. I turn in to the bedroom to read – we only have two options for
sitting right now – the bed or the dining room chairs (oh, I forgot that we now
have the plastic patio chairs). Paul has constructed both a desk and a keyboard
stand from shipping boxes – his office now looks like a giant Lego-land site.
He’ll either write at his computer, play his keyboard or, if the internet is
working – watch old comedy shows. My favorite way of drifting off to sleep is
listening to Paul play the piano. He always played when we had the piano in
Wilmington, and now that his keyboard is in the room next to the bedroom, I
love having him play me to sleep. When I was a little girl, my dad played the
piano every night after the news and I have that same warm, safe feeling now.
So are our daily rhythms, with minor changes from day to
day, as we settle in to our new life here on our mountain. As we begin
unpacking our art supplies, as Paul moves his workshop to the Tico house (behind
our house) and I plant my garden, get chickens and a horse and maybe goats,
these rhythms will change. We may find opportunities to volunteer in the barrio
of El Cajon where we live; we may want to connect regularly with expats nearby.
But that’s still in front of us. For now, these are our days, and we are happy.
Friday, October 18, 2013
THE BOXES ARE COMING! by Paul
It’s four AM on Friday morning in Costa Rica. From our
mountain ridge, the lights of Grecia twinkle in the darkness. We’ve been here
for a week with the same four straight-backed chairs, one dining room table and
a bed; furniture that was here when we moved in. We have been reading a lot. I
just finished Studs Terkel’s Race,
another of his powerful oral histories, this one about “how blacks and whites
think and feel about the American obsession.” (Read anything by Studs Terkle.
He died a couple of years back, but his oral histories The Good War (about WW II), HardTimes
(about the Depression) and many others are timeless. In my view, it’s the only
way to really understand the human impact of those events.
Anyhow, back to me and our Spartan living conditions.
Luckily, I brought my guitar with me on the plane, plus I have a fat book of LA
Times Crossword puzzles. Unluckily, our internet has been out for two days, so
communication with others has been temporarily interrupted. Without that great
time hog, we spend leisurely hours sitting on the patio with our coffee, taking
walks with the dogs, riding the bus into Grecia and finding our way around a
bit. I am getting restless, but I have
found new parts of myself emerging to take up the slack. Lots of reading,
guitar playing and staring at a blank wall wondering, “What is a wall, really?”
These Zen moments are enriched by the mama doggie who has befriended us and
whom we welcome in our laps as we absent-mindedly stroke her and stare at the
valley below wondering, “What is a valley? Is it really there? Or is it merely
an image imprinted in my mind? Perhaps we are really on spaceship earth, and
the valley is merely a digital image projected on the wall of my cabin. Where
is it taking us? Will there be refreshments?”
Anyhow, back to me and our Spartan existence here in Grecia.
Our shipper informed us that our eighty five boxes of household and personal
stuff would arrive Monday, early evening, from the warehouse in San Jose.
Goodby bliss. Hello corrugated cardboard. Now we must face some practical
issues. First, the Tico house behind our house was to be a space for my
workshop and storage. However, it is full of junk right now, and the landlord
is in Canada for another week. We don’t have a key anyhow. So, all those boxes
will have to be stored in our little house. Secondly, this is the rainy season.
Starting in the afternoon and into the evening, the rain pours down with no
regard for who is moving in or out. Third, our house is the last house at the
bottom of a steep road (that’s why we have the wonderful view) When our
landlord returns, many of those boxes will have to be stored in the Tico house,
which is up the hill. We couldn’t find space for my hand truck, so we had to
leave it in Phoenix. (We’ll have to buy another one here.) And finally, all
that stuff once unpacked will need to be put in or on tables, cabinets,
dressers and shelves, none of which we have. Our Subaru will not arrive for two
more weeks, at which time we can begin considering what furniture we need to
store it all.
Okay, okay. We are not sitting in the dirt in Ethiopia with
a bowl of rice for the day, I grant you. The challenges we face are of our own
making. However, once again I confront the question of how much stuff does one
need? My friend Liese has assured me
that once we have it all here in place, I’ll be glad to have my keyboard, my
shop tools, my sculpting materials. She is probably right. I really AM getting
a bit restless. But right now, those boxes are a monster in a Japanese horror
film. Even as we speak, that corrugated mass is wading through the Caribbean
and stepping ashore at Limon. It stomps inland and on Monday, will look down at
our little house on the ridge.
“Ha, ha! What do I see before me?
Can it be Paul and Marilyn and their pitiful little dogs?” The monster stares
down at us cowering on our patio. “Did you think you could escape me so
easily?”
“Enough with the rhetorical
questions, already,” I reply. “What are you going to do?”
“You shall see, my puny earthlings.
You shall see.”
So, the battle takes place on Monday. I think we
will win in the end, but I don’t want to lose the clean simple, uncluttered
mind space we had here for a week. La pura vida, as the Ticos
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Rain or Shine: First Week in Costa Rica by Paul
A short contemplative video essay shot in our front yard. Click on the link below:
Rain or Shine: First Week in Costa Rica
Rain or Shine: First Week in Costa Rica
Friday, October 11, 2013
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE by Marilyn
Soon I will write about the trauma of getting our dogs to
Costa Rica. But not today. Because I’m feeling very “pura vida” and I’d rather
write nice things.
In June, when we first looked at the house we’re now renting,
it was occupied by a young couple with two little ones and what appeared to be
multiple dogs. Emily, the wife, told us that the mama dog had shown up on their
patio and shortly thereafter, given birth to six puppies. Although the owner of
the mama dog lived across the road, mama preferred Emily, who probably took a
lot better care of her. Emily had gotten shots for all the pups and planned to
have them and mama neutered as soon as the pups were weaned. When we visited,
the pups were close to six weeks and all had been claimed by new owners except
Coco, the runt.
Of course I fell in love immediately. “Would you be able to
save Coco for us when we come back in October?”
“Of course,” said Emily, “he’s so tiny, I’d really prefer
he’d go to a home with no little kids – they might squash him out of sheer
devotion.”
I hadn’t heard from Emily after we returned to Phoenix, and
I was a little bit afraid to ask because the last time we’d seen Coco, he’d
been in the throes of an ear infection. He was so small that the fluid in his
ear made him list to the left, so he could really only walk in circles. Of
course Emily had taken him to the vet for antibiotics, but I just wasn’t sure
he’d survived.
PATIO GREETING
The afternoon of October 2 we arrived in Costa Rica. It was
grey and overcast. After the van unloaded our piles of stuff, we walked the
dogs up to Jenny’s to get the key. When we got back to the house, a little
brown dog was sitting expectantly on our patio. I recognized the mama dog from
this summer.
Now, in Phoenix, we’d had to keep our dogs away from other
dogs. Lily had shown aggression toward other dogs at the dog park when she was
very young, so we’d stopped taking her. When we adopted Charlie, he just picked
up on her vibes. Their behavior got a little better after about nine months of
“dog school,” but we’d always felt we couldn’t trust them around other dogs.
But now we had another dog on our patio, and she seemed to
have no intention of going elsewhere. We kept the leashes on our dogs and even
muzzled Charlie. MamaDog made tentative advances. Lily seemed to want to just
sniff, so we let her come closer. And she just sniffed. Amazing. Charlie
trembled and hid under a chair. I gave him a dose of Rescue Remedy. It eased
the trembling but he still remained planted under the chair.
Soon Lily and MamaDog were interacting. And then playing.
Running around together on the lawn. Lily still had her leash on and MamaDog
sometimes grabbed it, pulling Lily around the yard. Charlie watched warily from
the safety of the chair.
SUPPER TIME
I’d put a water bowl out on the porch, but now it was supper
time for the dogs. Lily and Charlie came in to eat. I got out a plastic bowl
and put a scoop of dog food in it. Paul glanced over at me. “We’re feeding her
now?” It was really less a question than a statement. Yes. We are. MamaDog is
letting us live in this nice house; the least we can do is feed her.
WALK TIME
Each day when we take the dogs for walks, Lily and Charlie
on their leashes, MamaDog comes with us. She bounds ahead, visiting the local
perros, letting them know there are two perros de Norte America in the
neighborhood now. Then she scampers back to us to make sure we’re coming along.
On our walk, Lily is mostly calm when the other dogs come up
to check her out (e.g. sniff her butt). Charlie is still in lunging mode, so
we’re keeping his muzzle on him for the time being. Someone told me recently
that the population of Costa Rica is 4 million humans and 6 million dogs. This
is not hyperbole. In fact, most of them seem to live on our hill and most of
them have stopped by at least once to poop on our lawn (not hyperbole).
AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY …
We’ve been in the house a week and our morning routine is
pretty set. Coffee on the patio surrounded by three dogs. We’ve since learned
that MamaDog has an actual name, Sacha. Sacha, it appears, is now our dog.
Waiting for the bus the other day, Paul was chatting en Español with some of
the neighbor ladies. “Es su perro?” he asked, pointing to Sacha, who’d
accompanied us to the bus stop.
The ladies laughed. “No, no,” they replied pointing to us,
“es su perro.” Apparently the rule
around here is: if you live en quarto casa dereche Calle Echoes, Sacha belongs
to you.
So now it’s Day Seven. Charlie has finally figured out a few
things. 1) If I don’t snap at the other dogs, I don’t need to wear my muzzle.
2) If I accept this new member of the family, I get to play on the lawn. We
finally have some video of him romping like a normal dog instead of looking
like an SS officer on duty. He still prefers the safety of hiding under the
bedcovers (see red arrow in photo).
And Lily has discovered her true lesbian roots, falling head
over heels in love with Sacha. Sacha has tried to explain to her in her best
polite dog way “I don’t lean that way … not that there’s anything wrong with
it.” We’ve given Sacha a bed and half the crate to hide in when Lily’s
protestations of love (e.g. humping) get too much for her. But most of the time
they are simply content to hang out together on the patio, just pals.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF COCO
I learned from Emily that while she and her family went away
for a week, Sonya, the actual owner
of Sacha, was supposed to be taking care of Coco, the little runt. One day Coco
went up the hill and never returned. I hope that he found a good home, and if
there are kids in it they don’t squash him. Maybe we’ll meet him on one of our
daily walks.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
THE BUS INTO TOWN by Marilyn
I’d forgotten to buy salt on that first day coming up from
the airport so we’d been eating salt-free meals like we’re cardiac patients.
Fortunately, I’d purchased lemon-seasoned chicken so by stir-frying it with
rice and veggies, we got by. But we really wanted salt.
“What day is today?” Paul asked after supper last night. It
is quite easy to lose track of time when you have no particular place to be at
any specific time.
“Thursday. Tomorrow the farmers’ market is opened in town.”
We decided to take our first bus ride to Grecia the next
morning, find an ATM, and do some grocery shopping. I’d read several articles
about the farmers’ market and we recalled nosing around it when we were here in
June. We hoped to get as much of our food there as possible. Everything we’d
researched, as well as advice from expats living here, was that avoiding
“American”-type grocery stores was a key to living cheaply in Costa Rica.
The bus arrives at the top of our road every hour on the
hour with maybe a few fewer stops on weekends. I readied my nylon shopping bag
and stuffed my rain jacket and our one umbrella in my backpack. Having borrowed
about 600 colones ($1.20) from our landlady Jenny before she left for Canada,
we figured we’d have just enough for the bus before we withdrew more money from
the ATM in town. “Living on the edge,” Paul calls it. But it’s actually pretty
comfortable. Or it will be once we get salt.
As we locked the door and headed up the hill, a young woman
carrying a sack stopped us. “Tamales,” she said shyly, holding out two freshly
made packets.
“Quanto questo?” We were getting very good at asking how
much something cost.
“Siete ceintos por dos,” she replied. That’s $1.40 U.S.
“Solo tengo colones por la autobus,” Paul said. “Later, when
we come back.”
“Dos hores?”
“Tres.”
She smiled and put the tamales back in the sack.
Shortly after we arrived at the bus stop, we were joined by
two women from the neighborhood. There were “Buenos” all around while we
waited. “Solo dos dias in Costa Rica,” we told the ladies. They smiled warmly.
Everyone in Costa Rica, either genetically or by some government decree, smiles
warmly.
Only a few other passengers were on the bus when we boarded.
Paul handed the bus driver some colones and got change back. The fare into
town, we discovered, is 85 cents. A lot better deal than paying more than $5.00
a gallon for gas. And much more colorful.
As the bus wound its way down the mountain, it filled to
capacity. Each time an older person boarded, a younger person quickly offered
their seat. I whispered to Paul, “Maybe you should offer your seat,” as an
elderly woman shuffled down the aisle.
“I’m old too,” said Paul. Sometimes I need reminding that
I’m married to a 68-year-old retired guy. I guess that’s a good thing. Needing
to be reminded, that is.
Seeing our road from the bus is very different than glancing
quickly from a car window. At each bus stop I peered out to see what kinds of
outdoor furniture people had – much of it Sarchi-made (Sarchi is a nearby town
famous for its furniture factories); I admired the profusion of blooms in front
gardens; I watched women sweep porches and men plant fruit trees. Uniformed
children hiked up or down the hill on the way to school, heavy with backpacks
or dragging wheeled book bags behind them.
On the seat across from us, a young pregnant mother dandled
a bright-faced baby on her knee. “Isn’t he cute,” Paul whispered.
“She,” I whispered back, “she.”
“How do you know it’s a girl?” he asked.
“Well, for starters she’s got gold earrings, pink Mary
Janes, lace socks and flowered pants.”
“Oh,” he said, “I was focused on the short hair – no long
banana curls.” The baby looked from Paul to me, wide-brown eyes serious,
probably wondering what jibberish we were spouting in our strange tongue.
Only one man, a few seats ahead of us, looked to be Gringo,
not Tico. I tried to catch snatches of conversation going on around us. I’m
very good at picking up “tengo,” which means “I have,” but I never get what the
speaker actually has. Oh well. More
Pimsler Spanish lessons coming up.
After about 20 minutes, the bus pulled up—conveniently –
right alongside the Grecia farmers’ market. Booth after booth of fruits,
vegetables, seafood, cheeses and meats beckoned. But first an ATM. I’d
remembered seeing one somewhere near the church, so we headed in that
direction. One of the reasons we love Grecia is that it feels like the kind of
towns both of us remember from the 1950s – towns in which you could buy
anything you needed, from appliances to shoes, codfish cakes or cough syrup.
WHICH BANK?
At the first bank we came upon, there was a long double line
at the outside ATM. Then I recalled that the 3rd day of the month
was Costa Rican Social Security day, and yesterday was October 3. The second
bank had a wall of ATMs, but it seemed like you needed some kind of key to
access them. I’d remembered reading that once one became a legal resident and
were able to officially open a bank account, you were given a key – and there
was a slot that looked like it took a key.
“We need to find a Scotia Bank instead of one of these state
banks,” I said to Paul. “I’m pretty sure I remember that there’s one a few
blocks away from the church. Having the large church and park as a guidepost is
very helpful and every town in Costa Rica has both.
We walked a few more blocks and were getting ready to cross
the street when a car seemed to try to sideswipe us. But the driver looked
familiar. “Richard!” I laughed. It was our landlord from our June visit. He’d
seen us leave the bank and had followed us. Richard jumped out of the car and
gave us hugs. We explained our situation and he said we must be mistaken; he
always takes his guests to that bank. And it doesn’t charge a conversion fee
either.
“Get in,” he said and drove us back to the bank. He
introduced us to his most recent guest, a handsome black man who said he was
considering moving to Costa Rica. “Well, when Richard comes for dinner, he’ll
have to bring you too,” I said. Richard offered to wait for us, but we
explained that we had shopping to do and planned to take the bus back for
practice anyway.
This bank was also crowded. We went inside, which meant one
person at a time going through an airlock kind of security system. Once inside,
a guard asked to check my bag, but all he really looked at was my umbrella and
rain jacket. I guess I didn’t look very suspicious. I showed him my debit card
and asked if I could get money. He called over another bank employee who
escorted us past several lines of people to a teller, where she confirmed that,
yes, indeed, I could get colones from the ATM. She then escorted us back to the
bank of ATMs where I put my card in the slot with no problem this time. We
“muchas gracias”-ed her and got our colones.
SHOPPING IN DOWNTOWN GRECIA
After picking up a few staples and cleaning supplies at the
corner grocery, we headed to the farmers’ market. People swarmed every booth
but no one seemed out-of-sorts or in any kind of hurry. And there were those
warm smiles again.
I stopped at a produce booth. “Ajo?” I asked. The young
clerk handed me a sleeve of very fresh looking garlic and took about 15 cents
from my handful of coins. As I rounded the corner, I saw huge pineapples
dangling from hooks. Got to get one of those. Same clerk took a 100 colones
coin from my hand and brought back change. I think the last time I purchased a
pineapple at the Sprouts in Phoenix it was $2.99 – and it was a Costa Rican
pineapple.
At the next booth I pointed to what appeared to be a whole
chicken, but it turned out it was only the breast – it was about as large as a
whole chicken you’d get in the states. Paul found the actual whole chicken –
which was really large – and we
purchased it for about $3.00. At the next booth, a kilo of hamburger (2.2 lbs.)
because it was recognizable in the meat cooler. We really need to practice the
names of cuts of meat or we’ll be stuck eating chicken and hamburger forever.
The seafood looked fresh so we’ll definitely pick some up next Friday.
By the time we got to the cheese vendor, our bag was
strained to capacity. I asked for parmesan and the vendor reached past all his
fresh cheese and held up a tiny bottle of grated cheese. “No, no,” I said.
“Block?” he asked. Or at least I think that’s what he asked.
“Si, si,” I said. Would I really be getting actual parmesan from a block? One
of the things I’d picked up on from various expats was that there were basically
two kinds of cheese available in Costa Rica: mild and really mild. I peeked
over the counter as he was cutting my “media kilo.” It did not look at all like
parmesan. But it did look fresh and local and, what the heck? Who needs hard
cheese anyway? I’ll wait until I get goats so I can make my own.
At the pet booth we passed cages of sweet bunnies (pets or
dinner?) and chirping birds to buy some dog food. The dry food was displayed in
plastic kilo bags. We only had room for one kilo, which wouldn’t last very
long, especially now that we have a (sort of) third dog (more on that in
another blog).
When we finished shopping, we’d purchased a week’s worth of
meat, cheese, vegetables, fruit and dog food for $35. Not bad. We’re getting
more comfortable with using colones and the vendors are quite accommodating. If
you look like you don’t understand (apparently that’s a relatively common look
on my face), they use a calculator to convert colones to dollars and show you
the amount. But that only had to happen a few times. I was pleased that we
could communicate enough in our 1st semester Spanish to get what we
actually wanted and not come home with an entire pig’s head by mistake.
Although I think I could manage to roast up a mighty fine pig’s head if necessary.
We had to buy another shopping bag to accommodate all of our
provisions. Both my nylon bag and the new gigante bag were filled to the brim.
We found the bus stop to go home with no problem and the bus was sitting there
waiting for us. No driver in sight so we just climbed in and sat down among the
other passengers. It was 11 a.m. We had boarded the bus to come into town at 9
a.m. Not bad considering all we’d accomplished.
At 11 a.m. on the dot, the bus driver emerged and walked up
and down the aisle collecting fares. Paul had exact change this time. I was a
little bit concerned that we might not be quite sure of a landmark near our
stop, but then I saw one of our neighbors who’d boarded the 9 o’clock bus with
us, so I knew she’d pull the cord at the right time. Once again, I tried to
pick up different snatches of conversation and this time I learned that the
guys sitting behind us were going to “comer algo” (eat something) soon. Good
for them.
Sure enough, our neighbor pulled the cord for our stop, but so
did Paul, who recognized the saddle-maker’s sign near our road. Leaving the
bus, we “bueno”-ed our neighbor, introducing ourselves. She’s Sonia and she
lives down a rutted trail to the east of our house. We’ll have to explore it
the next time we walk the dogs.
TAMALE LADY
Sure enough, at 12 noon, three hours after we’d told the
tamale lady “tres horas” she showed up and I purchased two tamales wrapped in
banana leaves from her. We had them with salad for lunch. They were delicioso
with some of the ubiquitous Costa Rican salsa (which is nothing like Mexican
salsa – it comes in a bottle and is tangy/sweet – I think they use it on just
about everything).
RELAXING INTO THE COSTA RICA VIBE
The week before we moved here (actually, just about a week
ago), I was so stressed about what seemed our unsurmountable moving problems
that I said (to anyone who would listen) that my “vida” had lost its “pura.” After
our bus ride into town, I feel like it’s come back to stay.
Monday, October 7, 2013
ARRIVAL IN COSTA RICA by Paul
It is eight o’clock at night. Pitch black outside. I am
sitting at the dining room table, on one of four chairs in our new house on a
mountain ridge in Grecia, Costa Rica. The only other piece of furniture in our
possession is a queen-size bed where Marilyn has conked out with the dogs.
It has been raining since two this afternoon; no wind, just
a heavy, tropical downpour beating on the tin roof. Little wonder Costa Rica is
so green. It is drunk on pure water.
We arrived just before the rain started from Miami with our
two dogs, Lily and Charlie, both somewhat crazed from being caged in the cargo
bay for the two and a half hour flight to San Jose. But they made it along with
four suitcases, two giant duffle bags and my guitar, all of it passing easily
through customs. When asked how long we planned to stay in Costa Rica, we said
three months. We thought it best not to
reveal that we were moving here permanently, for fear that we had overlooked some
immigration requirement that would stop us in our tracks. I did not want to end up in a rat infested
jail in rags raking my tin cup over the bars of my cell.
None of that happened. Our Costa Rican contact, Barry, met
us outside and arranged for a van to take us to Grecia, forty five minutes
northwest of the capital, San Jose. Our driver, Rodrigo, was nice enough to
stop off at a supermarket on the way so Marilyn could buy some food and get
cash from the bank to pay our first month’s rent. Rodrigo and I chatted about a
variety of topics including who had the best beer. I told him I liked Imperial,
“la Cerveza de Costa Rica”, which pleased him.
The door was locked, so we unloaded quickly onto the covered
patio, and Rodrigo was off to the airport again. We left everything on the
patio, including the groceries, while we hiked a short distance up the hill to our
landlord’s house. Jenny is a Tica, the nationally accepted term for the people
of Costa Rica. She and her Canadian husband are leaving for Canada today with
their son, Nathan, so she quickly ran though the essentials of life in our new
rental house- circuit breakers, water shut off, keys and phone numbers. She
added that it was dangerous to walk barefoot on the tile floor when there was
lightening and that the computer should be unplugged from the wall, even with a
surge protector.
Marilyn made a simple chicken dish which, despite the fact
that we had so salt, was delicious. In Phoenix, I would have run a few blocks
to the store and picked up salt. But here, we have no car. In fact, we have only
what we carried with us on the plane. We
shipped the Subaru out of Ft Lauderdale yesterday and don’t expect to see it
for two weeks. Our eighty five cartons of household stuff arrived in the port
of Limon today. We think we might get them delivered in a week.
The house is a bit smaller than I remembered, but still
well-made by Costa Rican standards with vertical walls, level floors, big
windows, a water-tight roof, electricity and hot and cold water. Centered in
the ceiling of each room is a single lighting fixture which casts sharp shadows
on the blank walls. Only when darkness came did we admit how much we care about
indirect lighting. It is not a Tico priority. However it is great for making
shadow puppets on the walls.
It is getting late. The drumming on the tin roof shows no
sign of ending, so I will go with the flow and let it drum me to sleep. My
great joy is that we are here. Somehow, nothing else matters. The things we
left behind, gave away and sold for pennies to the auction house. No esta importante
ahora. Our new life has begun. We have a bed big enough for me, Marilyn, Lily
and Charlie to cuddle together.
A Day in the Life
We awoke at 5:30 this morning. All that remains of the heavy
rain of yesterday are mounds of cumulous clouds obscuring the mountain tops.
The rising sun frosts the highest of these clouds with blazing glory, as if
Michelangelo’s God were about to pop into view. We are sitting out on the patio
on our dining room chairs enjoying the first coffee of our new life, too overwhelmed
to speak a word.
The view is as spectacular as we both remember from our scouting
trip in June. At 4600 feet, we overlook a broad valley with orderly rows of coffee
plants on steep slopes, farmer’s fields fitted together like puzzle pieces and
clusters of houses here and there along the winding roads. In the distance we
can see the town of Grecia and the twin steeples of its famous red church, Iglesia de la Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes. Two
neighborhood chickens wander the lawn in search of worms. A friendly Chihuahua
approaches with wagging tail and lets us pet it. Lily and Charlie can’t figure
it out. They watch. Lily relaxes quickly and begins to sniff. Charlie, our
younger dog remains nervous and nippy. Leashed and muzzled, he watches confused.
Later, I ask Marilyn what
time it is, a hilarious question that gets us both doubled up in laughter.
Finally, she tells me it is 6:15. We are so accustomed to thinking that coffee
is what you drink in the morning before you tackle the day’s tasks. What tasks?
We watch the dogs play. A hawk soars overhead. A little girl in her school
uniform walks up the hill by our house with her mom. “Buenos” we call to each
other. Marilyn and I tune into our new lives, retired and living in Costa Rica.
The adjustments to be made will be profound and subtle; not so much about
finding the right roads or keeping track of money, but about relearning, as
Adam and Eve must have, what the possibilities of a day are.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
La Pura Vida by Paul
La pura vida. That’s how the locals (los ticos)
describe life here. Relaxed, friendly, helpful and beautiful. Our first night
at the B&B, when the hot water wasn’t working and two light bulbs were out
etc. I thought la pura vida meant “nothing works and nobody cares.” I have
since tempered my outlook. As we used to say in the 60’s “go with the flow.”
Being retired helps a lot, of course, since we don’t have to be anywhere at any
specific time and we’re not on vacation where we have to cram in X number of
things in a limited span of time.
One thing I have figured out is how
this country got its name, Costa Rica, which means “Rich Coast.” It has to do
with colones, the money here. 500 colones equal one dollar US. They don’t have
Costa Rican dollars, only colones. It’s as if the US only had pennies. A movie
would cost you 700 cents. So, we filled the gas tank of our rented SUV and it
was 37,000 colones. To convert, drop the three zeros and multiply by two.
That’s $74.00 US. (Gas is expensive here, around $5.00 per gallon.) Anyhow, the
smallest paper bill is a 1,000 colones note. (Worth $2.00 US) But let me get to
the point: Why does Costa Rica feel “rich?” They have these big golden
(actually bronze) coins: 500, 100, 50, and 25 colones. At first, we just handed
them American money, which they accept here. But the change is in colones. After
a day at the market and shopping around town, you have a pound of brass coins
in your pocket. I like to stack them on
the table in our little rented efficiency. They make me feel like Blackbeard
the pirate after pillaging a village. Har!
Getting used to no-street-names is a
challenge. That’s right; they don’t have street names. So, if you want to get
to somebody’s house, you have to ask them “How do I tell a cab driver how to
get to your house?” They write it down. Something like, “From the church in
Grecia, drive out past the supermercado (the new one, not the original one),
take the right fork, then the third left turn and go to the red house on the
left.” So, to get from downtown Grecia (our little city) we know to drive from
the cathedral at the town square about 3 km to a sign that reads El Quixote.
Hang a sharp right and go past Hydrante 4 and take the gravel road to the
right. Odd as it is, you do learn where things are. The GPS is invaluable. You
have to buy one from here. Our US one won’t work, they say. The GPS calls all
the roads “unnamed road” but you see the display of the roads and an English
speaking GPS voice tells you to turn in so many miles. We have already made
several friends here as a result of the tour and just meeting Ticos. So using
the GPS, once you get to someone’s house the first time, you just enter “Juan’s
house.” The GPS logs the coordinates and will show you how to get there next
time.
Costa Rica is a small country of
more than 20 micro climates, depending on the elevation and the mountains.
There are few flat places here. Everything is up and down, and your car knows
it (especially if you have an automatic transmission) This is the rainy season
throughout the country. Where we are, that means an afternoon shower every day
and temperatures that stay in the 70’s year round. Two hours away from us on
the Pacific Coast it gets to 100 degrees and humid at the beach. (Costa Rica is
only 10 degrees north of the equator.)
The rain forests are always wet and humid. No thanks!
We are looking for a rental house,
furnished, with some open land to have a garden, chickens, a goat, horses, Internet,
etc. etc.. We should be able to find something like that for $500 a month. We looked at
a beautiful new 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom house with an amazing view of the hills
and coffee plantations and distant mountains -- for $850/month. That's more
than we'd like to spend, but considering you never need heat or a/c, it's
certainly not bad. Yesterday we looked at a place for $450 a month that
would be called a Tico house. It was a masonry bungalow on a steep hillside in
the country. It had no glass windows, only wooden shutters. Two of the three
rooms had a ceiling. The third room was like a shed (but it was supposed to be
a bedroom and it had a bed in it). No ceiling and no soffits, so it was open
where the roof met the walls. A bird flew out in a panic when we stepped in.
And for that $450 a month, instead of
pesky windows that you’d always be washing, the house came with … juro por
Dios … BATS living in the bathroom (bat-room?). Oh, and birds too, but it
was the bats that REALLY got our attention! So we're still looking. We're
willing to rough it a bit but I draw the line at taking a shower with a row of
bats hanging from the rafters. We took pictures and said, “We’ll
let you know.” The “landlord” -- a very nice young woman who is really only the
sister-in-law of the sister who now lives at the beach and apparently owns the
“house” will discover quickly enough that nobody will rent it at that price
(maybe at any price.) There are too many other Ticos and Americans who have
really nice properties available.
Interestingly, as more and more Americans move here, I fear
that the McMansions will begin to take over the Tico houses; and the hillsides,
instead of being dotted with little farmhouses, pasturelands and coffee bushes,
will be a puzzle of interlocking housing developments with nothing to look at
but other housing developments. Once we move here, we don’t want anyone else to
come (well, unless it’s any of our friends or family, of course).
One Week Down by Paul
We
are having a wonderful experience here. Three days at a horse resort in a rain
forest at the foot of the Arenal volcano. Marilyn and the owner are thinking
about ways Marilyn might do some of her horse therapy up there, depending on
where we decide to live. Howler monkeys, parrots, lizards beautiful foliage and
flowers … but way too much humidity for us to settle there. We took a half-day
horseback ride through the dense greenery to a hidden waterfall, like the ones
in the old Tarzan movies. We swam in the pool below trying not to break our
feet on the boulders hidden in the water.
We returned to our B
& B near the airport and took off the next day for a 3-day tour. There were
3 couples, all retirement age and definitely not rich, plus George, our
charismatic, friendly, knowledgeable bulldozer of a tour guide and Oscar,
silent, intrepid driver who piloted our bus through rutted mountain roads and
along steep precipices like a mountain goat. It was a terrific tour to many
small cities in the central valley- San Ramon, Grecia, Baracoa de Puriscal
(where George's mountain-top mansion is) Escazu (which is so developed with
expats it's like Phoenix without the desert and heat) The Tico's(what they call
Costa Ricans) are SOOO warm and friendly and helpful. It's wonderful practicing
Spanish with them. Each night, we had get-togethers with people who had taken
George's tour and had already moved to Costa Rica. Some were obviously people
of means who built beautiful homes here, and others were renters (as we will
be) We visited many homes and were especially knocked out by some of the
beautiful rental homes( one for $500 per month) These are not tract homes. We
saw none of those. They are nestled on steep hillsides with views of green
valleys or in the distance, the Pacific Ocean.
Today, we are renting
car and driving up to Grecia, where we will stay until we leave for the States
on July
11. We plan to drive up
to Guanacaste, the northwest corner, where it is hotter, lower elevation and
drier and on the Pacific, plus some other areas. This is a country of mountains
and valleys, so the driving is slow.
This is so different
than a vacation. The excitement of planning where we want to live is
invigorating. We have no doubt that what we have read is true. It is not cheap
here, but cheaper than the US. If you insist on driving into the big city and
shopping in the malls, it's just like the US. But, we can live easily for under
$2,000 a month for everything, as several of the people we met are doing.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
And the alarm went off … and off … and off … by Marilyn
The folks at the B&B were incredibly warm and sweet.
When they heard we hadn’t yet rented a car for our drive up to Leaves &
Lizards, Carol, the wife, offered to rent us their Toyota SUV. The rental on it
was a real deal compared to rental places I’d checked out and it seemed like a
win-win – Carol and Barnabi would get some extra colones and we’d have a nice,
older SUV that didn’t look like a rental car. I really wanted to avoid looking
like a tourista, which is kind of imposible considering the fact that Paul and
I are about 6 to 8 inches taller than the average Tico, extremely WHITE and our
Spanish at this point is a pretty good rendition of “Donde un cervesa y donde
esta el bagno?” which is probably fairly importante though not nearly complete
enough to get us very far.
So a deal was struck and Barnabi began explaining the ins
and outs of the Toyota. He pointed to a red button on the driver’s side door.
“Sometimes,” he said, making it sound like an extremely rare occurrence, “the
alarm will start to go off for no reason. When that happens, just push this red
button – once – and it will stop.”
“You’re sure about that,” Paul prodded.
“Si, si. Just push the red button,” here he flicked it
nonchalantly as if to prove how simple it was to control, “and no more alarm!”
“Well, okay … .” I could tell Paul was a bit concerned, but Barnabi
was so darn nice. And it seemed like a simple solution to something that should
hardly be considered an issue.
Barnabi left for work shortly thereafter and we loaded up
the car. The alarm went off. Paul pushed the button. The alarm continued. Paul
pushed another button – one on the automatic door lock – and the alarm stopped.
We got in the car and Paul started it up. The alarm went
off. This time Paul pushed the red button. The alarm stopped. Hmmmm … two times
in as many minutes. Coincidence?
We followed Carol’s directions to the PanAmerican Highway
and ended up driving into the airport instead. Somehow we turned ourselves
around and got on the right road, going in the right direction, although
getting lost three minutes into our journey was as unpropitious as the alarm
going off twice.
“Should we get gas before we get out in the country?” I
asked.
“Nah,” Paul said. “We have a half a tank.”
I have run out of gas enough times in my life that “half a
tank” to me sounds like “we should be carrying a five-gallon gas can for when
we are hitch-hiking to a gas station.” But I remained silent. Instead I became
an eagle-eyed lookout for anything vaguely resembling a gas station. Barnabi
had assured us that there were “many, many” gas stations on the way to La
Fortuna.
What I discovered instead was that there were many, many
structures that looked like gas
stations on the 75 km to La Fortuna. As Paul and I chatted pleasantly about
this and that and marveled at the abundant green
all around us (we do live in Arizona, after all), I asked with greater and
greater frequency “so, how’s that gas gauge lookin’?”
“We’re fine, we’re fine,” said Paul.
“Okay.” I tried to shut up. Paul caught me glancing
furtively in the direction of the gauge. We stopped for lunch in San Ramon
after driving around the town a bit. I did not see one actual gas station despite seeing several faux gas stations that turned out to be shoe stores or whatever.
We parked the car in front of a beautiful church across from
a lovely square in downtown San Ramon. The alarm went off. Paul hit the red
button. It stopped. Phew! He turned the car off and pulled the key out of the
ignition. The alarm went off. He hit the red button. Nada. He turned the car
back on. By this time the gentle beep had turned into the aa-oo-gah of a London
police car. Once the ignition was on, he hit the red button again. This time
the alarm stopped. We sat in the car a few minutes. Gingerly, he turned the car
off again. We carefully opened the doors and slipped out so the alarm wouldn’t
notice. We tiptoed through the park to a café where we had lunch. We paid in
colones. We think we paid way too much. We figured it came to about $18 in
dollars which didn’t sound like what everything we’d read about getting
inexpensive lunches in local cafes.
After visiting the beautiful church, which was a surprise
because it was wide opened, unlike nearly every church we’re familiar with in
our neck of the woods, we snuck back to the car. Paul started it. Warning beep.
He hit the red button and it stopped. He was getting pretty good at this “rare occurrence.”
We drove further and further into the countryside. In nearly
every village there were several auto repair shops but not one gas station. But
again, many faux gas stations. I
began to wonder: had most of the buildings in Costa Rica begun their existence as
gas stations? And then, without discussing it with one another, all at the same
time they decided to become something else? And there were really and truly no
more gas stations in all of Costa Rica except for the one we’d passed on our
way out of Alejeula? So so long ago? Paul assured me we’d be fine until we got
to La Fortuna.
On the map that Leaves & Lizards provides, there is a
gas station marked on the road going out of town. I didn’t see that until after
Paul stopped at the local Alamo car rental place and asked. They pointed to a
gas station even closer. I unclenched everything that I’d been clenching for
the past two hours. It felt good to be so clenchless.
In Costa Rica, as if it were the 1950s in the U.S. or
present-day New Jersey (check on this) there are attendants who not only fill
your tank, but wash your windows and your headlights and are generally many and
pleasant. We were on a main stretch of noisy and busy road, so at first it was
hard to hear the tell-tale beep. “Isn’t that our beep?” I asked Paul.
“No, that’s not our car,” he said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“No, it’s out there somewhere.”
I saw the guy getting gas in the bay across from us staring
at us. Soon all the many and pleasant attendants were swarming our car. The
aa-oo-gah had started it earnest.
“It is us!!!” I shouted. “Hit the red button!!”
Paul whacked the button but of course it wouldn’t work
because he’d turned the engine off which is what you’re supposed to do when
you’re getting gas. He quickly tried to start the car and it wouldn’t start. By
this time, the aa-oo-gah had morphed into an even more horrendous and nerve-wracking
squeal, like something was dying and something else was eating it. Or
something.
Paul jumped out of the car and the many and pleasant
attendants pushed their way in, pushing every button they could get their hands
on. The caterwauling alarm by now was surely disturbing every sleeping baby in
La Fortuna and up into Nicaragua.
I sat helplessly in the front seat, praying to all those
saints I’d just made acquaintance of back in the beautiful San Ramon church.
Paul was beginning to get hysterical as the attendants were threatening to pull
out wires and the like. They had the hood up. “Where’s the number for the
B&B?” he shouted. I handed him the card. “Does anyone have a cell phone?”
One of the attendants called the B&B and Paul tried to explain
through the din what was going on. Not that much explanation was needed.
Whoever was on the other line gave him the helpful suggestion to push the red
button. By this time, the attendants had disconnected the battery, and the
hellish racket went silent.
After what seemed like many hours (but was probably only
about six minutes) of reconnecting the battery, alarm going off, starting the
car, pushing the red button, rinse and repeat, something finally worked and
silence again reigned in La Fortuna. We muchas graciased the many and pleasant
attendents up and down and bailed out of town. And it only cost us 42000
colones to fill the car ($81-ish).
We came to a sweet little café on the side of the road. “I
need ice cream,” I announced. Paul didn’t need any more prompting than that. He
pulled into the parking space in front of the café and turned the car off. We
waited. Blessed silence. We ordered milkshakes, chatted with the wonderful
Israeli proprietress, admired and photographed her wonderful murals and enjoyed
our shakes on a patio overlooking – what else – abundant green.
Pulling out of the lot, the alarm dared a tentative beep.
Paul flicked the red button and it shut right up. Maybe it had gotten all this
blaring out of its system.
We finally made it to Leaves & Lizards and gratefully
rounded the driveway in front of the reception building. Turned off car. Alarm
beeped. Turned car back on. Pushed red button. Alarm stopped. This was getting
really, really tiresome.
Debbie the owner, with her husband Steve, of this amazing
eco-resort, led us up a steep hill to our cabin. We’d told her about the alarm
problem so she wasn’t surprised when it beeped again as we got out. “God, I
hope it doesn’t start beeping in the middle of the night,” Paul said. We
surveyed the exquisite, lush tropical and peaceful surroundings. If that
happened, it would really, really stink. “Maybe I should borrow a [name of
wrench] so I can disconnect the battery.”
“Maybe,” I said, “that will be the only way we can get a
good night’s sleep.”
Debbie had told us that we were invited to a party at the finca
down the road. She was going to go with us because her husband was wrapping up
a construction project.
The frustration of the car alarm took away some of the joy
of being in this absolute paradise. What would
we do if the alarm went off in the middle of the night? Paul joked that he’d
have to sleep in the car, but I was starting to think that was not such a bad
idea.
At the finca, the alarm went off two more times as soon as
we arrived. I was glad when the music started because at least if the alarm sounded
then, it would be less noticeable. But we were okay.
When we got back to our cabin several hours later, sure
enough, the alarm went off as soon as we got out of the car. Paul was getting
really expert at jumping back in, starting the engine and hitting that @#$% red
button. He shut the door again. Very very gently. I held my breath. We backed
up the walk to our cabin. Silence.
It has been exactly 24 hours since we arrived. We haven’t
gone near the car for fear of setting off an alarm storm again. All the other
guests drove down the hill to the lodge’s restaurant this morning in what was a
torrential downpour. Not Paul and Marilyn. We walked. Happy for the soft sound
of rain hitting our umbrellas.
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