TOUCAN RESCUE RANCH -- NOT JUST FOR THE BIRDS by Paul and Marilyn

Baby Two-Toed Sloth

B&B Cottage on the Grounds

 We recently spent a wonderful afternoon at the Toucan Rescue Ranch with our friends Mark and Georgi.

Directors Leslie Howle and Jorge Murillo have created a peaceful sanctuary for injured birds and animals from around Costa Rica. While the goal is rehabilitation and release back into the wild, sometimes that is not possible, and the creatures become permanent residents at the Ranch.

I'll let Paul's video speak for itself about the tour -- but I do want to mention that if you're visiting Costa Rica's Central Valley you might want to consider booking a night or two at the Ranch's adorable B&B. It's a great opportunity to be introduced to an amazing array of Costa Rican wildlife by some terrific folks who've dedicated their lives to these fascinating creatures.

Here's the link to the video: Visit to Toucan Rescue Ranch - February 2014

From the Toucan Rescue Ranch website:

THE GOALS OF THE TOUCAN RESCUE RANCH ARE:

•     • To establish a captive breeding program for all 6 species of Costa Rican toucans.
•     • To accept, evaluate and treat rescued and decommissioned toucans, sloths, owls
  and other birds and animals in need.
•     • To rehabilitate and release when possible any injured bird or animal back to its’ natural environment.
•     • Provide educational programs, research sites and facilities as well as volunteer opportunities for local, national and international community members.

Grounds of Toucan Rescue Ranch

FEBRUARY EXPENSES – EVALUATING THE $2,000 GOAL by Marilyn

CATEGORY	AMOUNT
Groceries/Household	$568.63
Rent/Utilities	$1,001.09
Transportation	$126.81
Doctors/Dentist/Meds	$400.97
Dogs	$66.86
Entertainment	$57.69
Trips	$14.16
Workshop/Garden	$0
Furniture/Fixtures	$0
Misc.	$12.00
February 2014 TOTAL	$2,248.21

We exceeded our $2,000/month goal by almost $250 in February. Looking at the categories, two stand out. The first is “groceries/household.” We expected to spend about $100/week for this category – and this month it’s more than $140/week. I thought that by baking my own bread, making my own yogurt and salad dressings, growing some of our food (at this point it’s mostly lettuce and spinach), and buying our meats and produce at the feria (farmer’s market), we’d actually spend less than $100/week.

Apparently though, I’m genetically programmed to hoard household items. Price Smart (the COSTCO of Costa Rica) is my Achilles heel. This month we went to Price Smart to get dog food, and left with a groaning grocery cart $230 later. Of course, we now have enough toilet paper and paper towels to last into the next decade, but we also bought some items considered “luxury” in Costa Rica – a block of feta cheese imported from Wisconsin, wine in a bottle instead of a box, and giant quantities of chocolate chips, pecans, dried cranberries and pasta.

I also visited AutoMercado, which is a Gringo-style, upscale grocery store. I needed cheese cloth for my yogurt (I’ve been using and rinsing out the same tattered piece since we moved here in October) and parchment paper for baking. I’d read on one of the expat Facebook pages that AutoMercado carried these two items, so on the way home from our February Blooms meeting, my friends Irina and Kathy and I stopped in to find these items. The parchment was easy to find (but expensive -- $8.63!) but there was nothing resembling cheese cloth. I approached a gentleman who looked managerial and asked if he had “fabrica de queso” when I should have asked for “la estopilla.” Unlike my husband, who is really good at looking up what he needs to say in Google Translate before he goes to the store, I just pulled some Spanish-sounding words out of the air.

Señor AutoMercado Manager scratched his head as he watched my wild gyrations. I was trying to mime putting yogurt into cheese cloth and squeezing out the liquid, but it probably looked more like I was milking a cow. So he said something to one of the clerks, who came back with a jar of Cheese Wiz. Meanwhile, Irina found two women shoppers and tried to communicate my cheese cloth needs to them. They said something to Señor Manager and he motioned us to follow him through the store. We got to the housewares aisle where he handed me a package containing a microfiber bag for storing lettuce. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that’s not what I wanted, so I bought it ($16.42). I’ve tested it to see if it will drain the whey from my yogurt – water does come out of it, so it may work. And it looks sturdy enough to last forever.

I’m hoping that we can avoid Price Smart in March so I won’t be tempted. We’ve only gone through about half of the giant bag of dog food, so we may be able to hold out until April. Our pantry is nice and full so it could be that we’ll even be under the $100/week for March.

The other budget-breaker in February was the doctor/medicine category. Paul had a chiropractic treatment, but everything else was me. I had to have a lot of lab work ($180) and my regular medicines are pretty pricey. They’ll continue to be until we get our residency and can use the CAJA (Costa Rica’s required medical insurance that is based on one’s monthly income.) We’ll be depositing my Social security check into a Costa Rican bank and that will determine what we’ll pay for the CAJA. It appears that for the two of us it should come to about $150/month. Once we get on the CAJA, I won’t have to pay anything for doctor visits, lab work or most of my meds.

This is the third month that we’ve published our budget. In March we’ll be going to Nicaragua for our 90-day border run – something we will have to do until we’re in the process of obtaining our pensionado (our category of residency). Many folks do a quick run across and back – but since we’ve never been to Nicaragua, we plan to spend several days visiting Grenada and doing some other touristy activities. So even if we sidestep the lure of Price Smart, we will have some trip expenses to account for. It will be interesting to see how close we can stay to $2,000 in March.

I love doing this monthly report and I hope that it will help folks who want to know what it’s really like to live in Costa Rica. Everyone’s experience is going to be different:  some folks may have much lower housing expenses because they’re perfectly happy in a one-bedroom apartment; others may spend much more because they choose to live in a fancy Escazú condo and spend every weekend at a beach resort. As I’ve written before, we were initially inspired by Paul & GloriaYeatman, who’ve been publishing their monthly budget for several years. It really helped us before we moved here to determine that we really could retire and live for less in Costa Rica.

WE GO TO SAN JOSE FOR 1 BILLION RISING by Paul

On Friday, February 14 (Valentine's Day) we went with a van load of Blooms' women (and two token men) to participate in the global campaign for justice for women around the world: 1 Billion Rising (click here to read about the campaign). To see the video where the Blooms joined several other humanitarian organizations and the University of Peace to dance in a flash mob, click here: One Billion Rising with Blooms Group

PICKING COFFEE FOR FUN IN COSTA RICA by Paul

We hung out with our landlord Jenny and her family to learn how to harvest coffee beans. The video link is below:

Paul videotaping Jenny's coffee harvesting lesson

Click here for video: Picking Coffee for Fun in Costa Rica

Nathan and Kenneth are coffee bean experts

JANUARY 2014 EXPENSES -- A COSTLY MONTH by Marilyn

CATEGORY	AMOUNT
Groceries/Household	289.60
Rent/Utilities	1,026.99
Transportation	69.27
Doctors/Dentist/Meds	261.40
Dogs	42.76
Entertainment	0.00
Trips*	$1,524.00
Workshop/Garden	53.26
Furniture/Fixtures	17.59
Misc.	0.00
January 2014 TOTAL	3284.87

When you set your budget goal at $2,000/month, and you spend nearly $3,300, should you 

a) reevaluate your budget

b) start eating on alternate days only

c) move to Nicaragua, or 

d) “forget” to list expenses that make you go over that budget (I think this is called either “Bernie Madoff accounting” or “The ENRON Way”)? 

What happened in January?

If we had considered our expenses as being ONLY what we’d spent for living life in Costa Rica, at $1,760.87 we’d be under our budget goal of $2,000/month. But in January (actually the end of December) we returned to the states and spent the New Year with our family and friends.

Until we get our Costa Rican residency, we will have to leave the country every 90 days, so our trip to Delaware was our first 90-day “visa run.” Going all the way back to the states only three months after we’d arrived in Costa Rica was not in our original planning.  We had purchased bus tickets to Nicaragua, but at the last minute we had to change airlines in October – because of the dogs – a long, cautionary tale that I will someday post.

And even though the trip cost nearly as much as the rest of our January expenses, the money we spent in January on airline tickets only includes the return flight to Costa Rica; the tickets from CR to Philly were rolled into our “getting here” expenses several months ago.

*VISA RUN to Delaware

Airline tickets back to Costa Rica	$916.00
SJO exit tax	58.00
Groceries/meals out	235.00
Shuttle to/from airport (in CR)	100.00
House Sitter	165.00
Misc.	50.00
January 2014 Visa Run TOTAL	$1,524.00

At least we have a good general idea of what it will cost us any time we decide to go back to the U.S. Our airline tickets were super expensive because we were traveling in the high season; we’ll know to pick a less popular time to go. Most likely the cost of our round-trip flight will be somewhere near these one-way tickets.

MY FIRST GARDEN IN COSTA RICA: AN ONGOING JOURNAL by Marilyn

Nasturtiums are beneficial as pest control (and salad).
I'll be planting more of them in different parts of the garden. 

 I have always loved growing things. Genetically, this came from my maternal grandpa, who believed roses were the cure for all ills, and my mom, whose beautiful flower beds were the envy of our neighborhood. My mom’s freezer was always stocked with fruits and veggies harvested either from our property or from her many trips to pick-your-own farms. (The one thing she never did – canning – after an exploded green bean jar episode before I was born. She was deathly afraid of botulism.)

When we lived in Delaware I had the advantage of a 30-year-old compost heap which made growing veggies as easy as plopping seeds in the group and watching my tomato plants rise to over six feet, heavy with luscious fruit.

Then we moved to Arizona. About a week after the June 2005 move, I bought some tomato plants from Home Depot. I figured if they were selling them, I should be able to grow them. Despite shade cloth, judicious watering and loving attention, my plants succumbed to a week of 115 degree (plus) temps. 

This was my garden in Phoenix. Very challenging.  

RIP.

Noel and his pup finishing the garden.

In eight years of desert living, my many attempts produced about five edible tomatoes. When I planted in the fall, a deep winter freeze zapped everything. I was eventually able to harvest kale, eggplant, arugula and some incredibly delicious snow peas, but I never really got the hang of desert gardening.

Noel, Jenny and Nathan taking a break.

EVERYTHING SHOULD GROW HERE, RIGHT?

I couldn’t wait to start my garden in Costa Rica. Once the rainy season (e.g. winter) started to wind down, we hired Jenny’s gardener Noel to dig up the back yard of the workshop. Five hours after shoveling and hauling about 25 wheelbarrows full of “good dirt” from across the road, Noel had given me a nice 16’ x 20’ plot. The “good dirt” was pretty dense, and Jenny suggested I add graza (rice hulls) to aerate it. A few days later she called and said better than plain graza, she could get organic chicken poop fertilizer mixed with graza. “You’ll love it,” she said. It was 1 mil (about $2.00) a bag. I had purchased bags of some kind of fertilizer from one of the garden centers and they were about a kilo for 1 mil. “How many bags would you like?” she asked.

“How about if I go with 12.” I figured that would be a good start. A few days later I heard the familiar rumblings of Fernando’s (Jenny’s dad) truck pulling up to the workshop. Jenny and Noel were with him. The truck was filled to the brim with huge sacks. I think my eyes popped. They had to be at least 50 kilos (110 lbs.) each. And I was getting a dozen. Jenny saw my face. “Bigger than you thought?” she asked.

My huge bags of fertilizer.

“Uh, a little.” But heck, I’m a committed gardener now, I’m sure I can use them. Noel hauled my dozen bags to the little shed behind the workshop. I paid Jenny the 12 mil colones and set about planning how to use my wealth of fertilizer. I’d divided the plot into eight sections. In addition to the workshop plot, I’d started a small herb garden in the backyard of the house, and, after researching Costa Rica gardening advice online, planted my eggplants and tomatoes in buckets on the patio.

Paul turning in the fertilizer.

Me, watering.

With Paul’s help, I turned a half a sack of fertilizer into each of the eight sections. I then went over to the “good dirt” area across the road and filled pots for my tomatoes and eggplant, adding a few healthy scoops of fertilizer into each pot. My tomato plants were ready to be transplanted, so I shifted most of them to the new pots, leaving several in the original pot without the chicken fertilizer. I didn’t realize it then, but this has become my “control group.” There is an amazing difference between the “chicken pots” and the original pot that didn’t have the benefit of my new fertilizer.

Garden divided into sections and planted.

NOTE TO SELF: DON'T LEAVE YOUR GARDEN WHEN IT NEEDS YOU

Lots of squash and cucumber plants.

It’s now the end of January and my gardens are in various stages of happiness and unhappiness. Part of the problems stem from being away just as things started sprouting. We left for the states right after Christmas when I should have been using row covers and nipping problems in the bud. And as soon as we returned, I came down with a nasty stomach virus that kept me flat on my back and out of the garden for nearly two more weeks. So by the time I started focusing on the garden again, the bugs were winning -- big time. I'm posting the good, the bad and the ugly here in the hopes that someone might see this who has some solutions for me.

PLANT AND PESTS: THE CHALLENGE OF THE ORGANIC GARDENER

Spinach and lettuce. So far, so good. 

I’ve just harvested the first of the zucchinis (I have five varieties of squash) and am in an ongoing struggle with cucumber beetles, using two different organic insecticides that seem only mildly effective. 

Cucumber beetles.

The prolific pests seem most interested in the zucchini, but I’m going after them on the cucumbers and cantaloupes as well. The cucumbers and cantaloupes are blossoming despite the pests, 

Cantaloupe blossoms still undefeated by the
cucumber beetles, but not looking very healthy.

carrots are sprouting, and the spinach and lettuce, shaded by a row of sunflowers (although many of their leaves have been munched up by leaf-cutter ants – grrr), are progressing nicely. 

Leaf cutter ants ate all the sunflower leaves.

Organic pesticides -- not working very well. 

Pests have been leaving the lettuce alone.

Some lavender peeking under the eggplant.

Destroyed green beans.

My green beans have been almost completely decimated by a still-to-be-discovered insect (possibly the cucumber beetles, but I haven’t seen evidence of them); I may be able to eventually harvest enough to add to a salad. 

Basil.

Down in the shadier herb garden, I’m growing snow peas. The only herbs that are showing any progress so far are the basil and a few oregano sprouts. 

The herb garden did not have the benefit of the chicken fertilizer, but herbs don’t really need rich soil. And on the patio, the tomatoes are blossoming (at least the ones planted with chicken fertilizer). I have some lavender plants in among the eggplant to keep pests away, and I am either growing a bucket of marigolds or peppers – I can’t tell yet and I don’t remember what I put in that particular pot. The nearby nasturtiums seem to be doing a nice job repelling pests – I should have planted them in with the squash; I’ll know to do that next time.

MORE BEDS ON THE WAY

I’ve expanded one flower bed that was overgrown. A young mango tree and an azalea were crammed beside several agave. Now they all have their own space, nurtured with chicken fertilizer. In that bed I’ve also planted gladiola bulbs and some mystery flower seeds. I have lots more plans for other areas of the garden and so much more to learn about gardening on our beautiful mountain in Costa Rica. I’d love to hear from others in the Central Valley who’ve had experiences – positive or negative – with their gardens. 

Mango tree and azaleas in new flower bed.

THE COLON PROBLEM by Marilyn

Using cash for most purchases means piling up lots of change.

Before we moved to Costa Rica, the only time I ever had cash in my wallet was when our school was having a fundraiser and I knew I needed money to buy candy bars, frozen pastry, coupon books (which I never, ever used), raffle tickets, and once, I contributed to the group lottery ticket purchase (as a group, we won 20 cents each). I used my debit card for every other purchase, paid most of my bills online and wrote checks at the doctor’s office. If I ever had spare chance (e.g. my 20 cent lottery win) it went into the big change jar in the bedroom.

Using my debit card also helped me avoid handling anything with nickel, because I have contact dermatitis. Handling nickel (including costume jewelry) causes my hands to break out in itchy, oozy disgusting welts. Because I rarely had to use coins and knew better to own any jewelry with nickel, I’d basically forgotten about the contact dermatitis issue. That is, until I moved to Costa Rica.

We’d only been here for about two weeks, taking the bus downtown, shopping at the Central Market and the Farmer’s Market and using colones for all transactions. My palm started itching. Madly. Then the watery welts popped up. I hit the cortisone cream hard. Colones!!! That must be it. I’d been making change willy-nilly for two weeks and now I was paying for it, in a matter of speaking.

Grrrr! The cause of my contact dermatitis
(except for the aluminum ones)

As soon as I realized the colones problem, I made it a policy to bring Paul along whenever I knew I’d be using coins. One day he had so many coins in his shorts pocket that his pants started to hang down like some of our former high school students. I almost sent him to detention. At home, we kept the spare colones in a little glass box on the dining room table. For some reason, Paul became obsessed with sorting them, putting them into piles, and complaining about how useless the little aluminum ones (5 and 10 colones) were.

It seemed that many of the merchants weren’t so thrilled about handling colones either. If, for example, the vegetables we just purchased came to, say, c2565 (2 thousand, five hundred sixty-five colones, or about $5.00), I would pull out a 2 mil note (paper money starts at 1 thousand colones – 1 mil) and Paul would dig in his pocket for the remaining coins. As he would start counting out the coins and dumping them into the merchant’s hand, if he came anywhere close, the guy would wave him off. “Okay, okay … no mas!”

Sometimes a deal isn't that great of a deal. I thought
 these were sandwich bags. I'd never heard of snack size.

Now it came to pass that the week before we left Phoenix, I had one of those $5.00 “bonus bucks” from Walgreens. I hate wasting bonus bucks, but we really didn’t need anything, especially anything that couldn’t be easily packed for our move. So I cruised the aisles looking for a way to spend $5.00. There was a big buy-one-get-one free sale on baggies. I could get two of a couple of sizes of the store brand for my bonus bucks. Deal! I brought the boxes of baggies home and stuffed them into one of the suitcases. It wasn’t until we unpacked here in Costa Rica that I discovered that I’d purchased two of something called “snack sized.” They were these little bitty bags that I’m guessing were for people on diets who had to count out seven Cheetos for their permitted “snack.” That’s about all that would fit into these useless baggies. And now I had 100 of them. Try to squeeze half of a tomato or onion into one. Impossible.

Until one day when Paul and I were having lunch. There on the table was the box of colones. “Don’t we have a lot of those pointless little bags?” Paul asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“I have a great idea,” Paul said. He often has great ideas. Paul is a very interesting guy to live with. “I’m going to make 1 mil bags of these colones,” he said. “Then instead of digging through a pile of random colones from my pocket, I’ll know exactly how much I have in each bag.” He set about his task. At first he put all the big coins, the 500s and the 100s, in one bag. But then he was left with all the 50s, 25s, 10s, and 5s. So he evened things out a bit until he was satisfied.

Paul's 1 mil baggies of colones

The next task was to try out his new system. We drove down to the Farmer’s Market. It was to be my first foray out after 10 days of battling an ugly virus, so I was not planning to meander. Get in. Get out. The baggies of colones would help.

At our first stop, we bought a lot of greens. They came to exactly 1 mil. Oh boy! Paul pulled out a baggie and dumped the coins into the vendor’s hand. “One mil, exactamente!” Paul exclaimed. “Sistema por colones,” he added. The vendor smiled. But he still counted the change.

As we continued through the Farmer’s Market, Paul pulled out baggie after baggie. Usually what I was purchasing cost less than 1 mil, so he had to start juggling baggies. But he was still happy with his system. After finishing up at the Farmer’s Market, I had to stop at the regular grocery store. “How are we doing with the colones?” I asked.

“We have about 350 left,” Paul said, peering into his last baggie.

A week's worth of Farmer's Market provisions for under c10,000 ($20) includes a half-kilo of FRESH shrimp, fish filets, a kilo of tomatoes, a kilo of carrots, two kilos of onions, bananas, ginger and a variety of greens. 

“Perfect,” I said. “Just enough to tip the bag boy.” I had recently read on somebody’s blog (probably Vicki's extremely helpful blog) that most grocery store bag boys work for tips alone. Seems pretty sad. But maybe that put them at the head of the line when a paying job came up. I hope so. If I were getting more than three items, I might have thought that 350 (about 75 cents) was a little slim. But how hard do you have to work to bag butter, grated cheese and a bottle of wine?

So now we have no spare colones in the house, but when we do, I know the snack-sized baggies will emerge once again. 

OH, PRICE SMART YOU VILE TEMPTRESS ... OUR DECEMBER 2013 LIVING EXPENSES by Marilyn

CATEGORY	AMOUNT
Groceries/Household	536.18
Rent/Utilities	1030.15
Transportation	369.21
Doctors/Dentist/Meds	257.54
Dogs	38.23
Entertainment	0.00
Trips	0.00
Workshop/Garden	246.59
Furniture/Fixtures	62.63
Misc.	0.00
December 2013 TOTAL	2540.53

Cheese!!! Enough cheese to make Wallace and Grommit happy.

Saw these on first visit. Didn't buy.
They were gone, gone gone a week later :(.

Remember last month, the first month that I published our expenses, where I said we were trying to keep our expenses under $2,000? Well, that was before we joined Price Smart (the Costa Rican COSTCO) and shopped there … twice. True, the many staples I purchased will last us for months, but will we be able to avoid the Siren Song of smoked sausages, imported cheese, GHIRADELLI CHOCOLATE CHIPS!???

I hope so. We actually only bought one pricey chunk of cheese, skirted past the smoked sausages and, much to my broken heart (and the main reason we’d returned to Price Smart for the second time in as many weeks) the Ghiradelli chocolate chips were gone. Shoulda bought them on the first trip.

We will probably go back sometime in January because the giant bag of premium dog food at Price Smart was twice the size and half the price of the dog food we’ve been getting downtown in Grecia. But I’d still like to keep our grocery/household budget to about $100/week. I also prefer shopping at Grecia's Central Market and especially the Farmer's Market. It makes me feel much closer to becoming a "GringTica" which I hope some day to consider myself. 

What else kicked us over our $2,000 budget? Well, as everyone who owns a car in Costa Rica knows, December is Marchamo month. Marchamo is the annual liability insurance that car owners are required to pay. It’s based on the kind of car you drive and the age of the car. For our 2004 Subaru Forester, this year’s Marchamo was about $300.00.

I’m thinking that our doctor/dentist/meds category will probably stay around $250.00 until we get on the CAJA, so for the foreseeable future that’s not going to go down and may increase – neither of us has seen a dentist yet and although they are supposed to be a lot cheaper than in the U.S., we are going to wait for a few more months.

EPA -- just about everything for home and garden.

The other expense that is high this month is workshop/garden (besides being seduced by Price Smart, we were also lured by EPA, which is similar to Home Depot. It doesn’t help that Price Smart and EPA are within a half mile of one another). Paul is still putting together his workshop, and, unlike last month when we counted the electrical wiring as an extraordinary expense, we’re considering the lighting and shelving as more of “development expense.” And apparently the only place to get organic insect control is at EPA.  So those items are in the budget.

An EPA purchase and husband installation: Critical to my culinary happiness
and Paul's evening dish washing tasks -- lighting over the kitchen sink!

Well, even though we didn’t stay below $2,000, we spent a lot less than we would have if we were still living in the U.S. And most importantly, we love it here – we love our house, our garden, our workshop, our community … and especially the friends and discoveries we are making.

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 [MS1]