Costa Rica House

11/2 Sleeping at my house wasn't great last night because I don't like air mattresses. I guess I need to spring for a real bed. The first night was windy, and the outside alarm kept going off because I was playing with it too much. I didn’t get enough sleep. The second night the strong wind would make the sensor move. I need to secure it better.

The views are unreal. Last night, I was mesmerized by the lights of Puntarenas and the houses spread across the the valley. As of now, I've got a hammock, coffee maker, hot plate, air mattress, stool, worker's table for the porch, and also two bamboo chairs that Jose lent me.

My House

The alarm I have now is just a hundred dollar job I brought from the states. I'm trying to get a guy here to give me an estimate on a hardwired system that has a siren with a battery backup. And I should stop by Edwin's at Electro San Ramon again, and see what his estimate will be. Also, Jairo's electrician, Martin, does alarms. It's still a pain getting things done here. I can see Vince’s house under construction from my front yard. They’re working on it every day. Sometimes I yell over to Lizanias or Antonio.

Someone made a youtube movie with Jacob Dylan's song about Costa Rica. People are always asking why I like Costa Rica, and I tell them that it's different for everyone. This movie shows it all. Dylan Costa Rica Video

I went to Espinoza's store and their cheapest decent 'individual' bed with a mattress is about $200. I think he said delivery was free, but there was something lost in translation. I think I’ll head down the road to Jaco today to surf a little and spend a night in a room with a real bed and television.

A Nocturnal Visitor

They say the rainy season is ending a month early this year. The weather is supposedly transitioning now. Not much rain so far. I'm told that it rained a lot during the two months I was gone. I guess I got lucky with just a slight movement in some of my ground fill in the front yard where it starts to slope down. The back wall held up without any erosion. That's where I thought I would have problems.

11/3 I'm at the beach right now enjoying some a/c, TV and internet. I stayed at my house in Butterfly for two nights, and will spend more nights there, but I need a real bed. I don't like the air mattress I brought down from the states. The lights of the houses and Puntarenas are quite a sight after the sun sets. I'm a little slow right now because I'm trying to get over some sort of illness that gave me a fever a few days ago. I think it’s a sinus infection that I also brought down from the states. That might explain the discontent with the air mattress, too.

Mariposa Luxury Estates (Vince's House)

11/5 I’m back at my Butterfly house. The views are unreal - morning, day, twilight, night - always something different to see. Last night, coyotes were howling in the distance, then nearby. They make the weirdest sounds. I need to buy a machete. Just kidding. This morning, two flocks of different types of parrots were flying around before 7 a.m. It seems you’ve got to catch most of the parrot activity before 7 a.m. My computer is acting up. It doesn't want to power up when I go to the internet cafes, but it always comes on here at my house (where I write my emails).

Cell phones aren't hard to get. There are two types. One type you have to wait for. The other type is older, but people say the coverage is better. Gary will probably find out about the cable and internet possibilities. None here now, but you can use the new type of phone to hook up to a computer. I don't know how fast it is. Probably not fast enough for what we're used to.

11/7 Another beautiful morning today. I watched a flock of 30 parrots while two toucans were sitting in a nearby tree. Last night, I was awakened by the weirdest howling/screaming I’ve ever heard from an animate object. Antonio said it could have been a panther. I don't know. Jairo had a couple guys working on the slipped dirt in the front of my house. And Gerardo and Rodrigo started my verjas (window bars) today. Sounds like a Costa Rican version of Miami Vice detectives. I'm at the Cafe Delicios using wifi. I hope to get out of town by 3 pm and take pics of Ann’s house today if doesn’t rain. Trish, who has a house in Rancho Lobo, wrote a letter to the editor in AM Costa Rica, complaining about a story or editorial someone wrote criticizing Obama. It got published but I haven’t seen it.

Unwanted Guest

11/11 I've been going to bed before 9 p.m., then I wake up around 5:30. I've also been putting plants on the dirt walls and around the edge of the yards. Just now I was out in the dark in my bathing suit and t-shirt watering some new plants by the light of the outside lights that are installed on the sides of the house. The temperature is perfect here. No need for a heater or air conditioner. Also, in the morning, I move my plastic chairs out to the edge of the grass and watch flocks of parrots flying around. Two days ago, I watched two toucans in a tree below my property. I know what they sound like now (big, big crickets), so, when I hear them, I look around. Also, there's been coyotes howling, and maybe a couple of wolves (or probably just dogs) talking to each other at night. Antonio, my ex-foreman, told me he saw a panther a couple of months ago.

I'm the only gringo living here, so I'm quite the pioneer. There are, however, two workers that I know who are living in a shack about 300 meters from me. At first, it was a little scary because of stories I'd heard about break-ins down at the beach. I put a motion sensor alarm outside, and it kept going off at night due to the wind moving the sensor. It was very windy for the first couple of nights. So I kept jumping up to see what set off the alarm, and then I'd have to go to sleep again. So I was tired for a couple of days. Then I secured the sensor better, and now it goes off less, but, actually, I turn it off sometimes if I wake up after midnight. I figure that's past the bedtime of any god-fearing thief. (Someone told me later that I'm incorrect.)

Hammock and Cerveza Await

Last night I left the outside motion sensor alarm on, and the horn sounded so I just reset it from my remote control in my bed, then it went off again, so I got up to find three 3 cows (two look like Brahma bulls) grazing on my nice sod. I went out there in my bathing suit yelling at them to get off my property. That's happened twice now. Hard to think about any financial crisis or impending economic depression when you've got to chase cows off of your property half naked at 3 a.m.

My Three Amigos (6 a.m. Cattle Call?)

Trish, regarding 'my job has just begun with the house,' I think you and I are on different planes. I just built the house to build it, because I had talked to many Americans who had built houses down here, and I thought the process was very interesting, and I wanted to be part of it. (And to maybe have a little vacation house.) It was fun, but I agree that it was a job. I don't consider anything I do with it from now on as a 'job.' There's nothing I really 'need' to do. I'll only do things to it that please me, so I don’t see it as ever being a ‘job’ for me. Maybe it's different for you since you plan to have your house as your permanent abode. Mine is kind of a hobby, and when it's not fun, I'll go home, and find something else to do. Plus, the house isn't in a cloud forest, so I don't think I'll have as much a humidity and mold problem. I'll just have scorpion problems. (Kidding. I hope.)

11-12 I met the guy who owns the cows. He drove up in a nice 4-wheel drive vehicle this morning and asked if I'd seen a small cow he was looking for. I told him the cow was muy deliciosa. It‘s not that I‘m a cow miser. The reason I don't want the cows here is because they rub on my house and car and make them dirty. And they crap all over the place. Contrary to popular belief, cow dung is not good for new sod.

First I Painted it Blue, Then I White-Washed

I filmed the views from my house. I'll probably post them tomorrow. I'll let you know. It's pretty warm and peaceful here. No rain. I'm painting the windowsills a white-washed blue, and putting up some lights and stuff. I go into town once a day to buy food and things for the house and to go online. I only have a radio up here, but I read at night. I hope to bring back a keyboard to play next trip.

My house is pretty simple. Its basically a big two-bedroom, two-bath cabina with huge views. I had decided I liked staying in rustic type cabinas in the tropics in Costa Rica. Today, I talked to a guy named Mateosky. He said my house would sell easily for $130K, so, who knows, I may sell it before I finish the interior decorations. But the minimal profit isn't worth the time and care it took to build this house. If I sell it for cash, I'll pocket some of it, then get Jairo to build another house for me here. I don't really want to sell it, but I'd like to get this place developed, and with the way the economy is going, we'll be in a holding pattern for a year and a half to two years. And I've been told several times that foreigners want to buy a house that is already built. They don't want to go through the hassles of building one. I don't blame them.

Evening View Toward the East (or was it morning?)

The views here are amazing. (Have I mentioned that?) And at night, when I'm in the new bed I ended up buying from Espinoza's, I look past my feet, past the patio and land and out onto all the lights of the countryside. It looks like the stars are above me and below me. By the way, they delivered the bed the same day, and at no extra cost.

11/12 Oh, also, if it makes you feel any better, that snake in my movie wasn't caught on my property. Your buddy, Victor, caught it down somewhere on a lower lot. Victor is the ex guard/builder that built Gary's house. Gary's house will soon be without a roof due to a windstorm coming up. More about that on the next webpage which I'll soon post. As a matter of fact, I have not seen a live snake at Butterfly yet. (And now that I know they're here, I'm looking.)

11/15 Ann, the weather here has been sunny, and I'm not surprised you heard that Rancho Fogo has had bad weather. After all, it's at 4,000 ft, and here we're at about 2,300 feet (below the clouds, not in them). It's beautiful here. (Have I mentioned that before?) It rained in the evening and well into the night a few days ago, but it was sunny by morning. I hadn't heard the rain on the roof lately, so I enjoyed it. Peaceful. Soothing. There's been some windy nights at my house - I'd say at least four in last 14 days. But none nearly as windy as what is to come in a few days.

ICE, or whomever, is installing cable and internet poles and wires from San Ramon to Esparza, and they're well past Butterfly already. The poles and wires are even on our side of the road. Gary wants us few homeowners to spring for the cost to string the wires along the existing poles up our private road. Once again, I hope he gets us some info.

Any Ideas on This One?

One of my evening pastimes is to turn on all the outside lights, then walk around the house looking at all the bizarre bugs with whom I'm sharing my ecosystem. Does anyone know what kind of insect the thing in the picture is? They get BIG.

It’s been very quiet at night lately -- no coyote howls or weird bird sounds or strong winds attacking the roof. I haven't experienced any uncomfortable humidity levels except yesterday morning for a few hours after a night of rain. But even then, the wind lessened, dried and cooled in plenty of time by evening. I’ve slept every night with just a sheet, and I haven’t been cold or hot so far. The views are nonstop - and are not some pittance of a shallow valley view. I've got ocean, peninsula, mountains, valleys and more. There was a beautiful sunset yesterday - high thunderclouds on two horizons -- distant lightning and thunder with a pink backdrop.

Gary (Future First Fulltime Resident) Doing Some Landscaping

I'm now sitting at my kitchen counter looking past the valley to the Pacific, the Nicoyan Peninsula and gulf, and Punta Leona. The wind is blowing about 30 mph right now, and last night it caused the roof to make a lot of noise. I was told that this is the windy month, a time between the wet and dry seasons. I only have access to the internet when I go into San Ramon, so I write emails here, then send and receive when I go into town. I just finished making a movie of the making of my house. I posted it yesterday on YouTube. (see link)

I'm in CR for another week probably. (I ended up staying longer.) I'm living in my house. It's great. I bought a bed, and don't have much furniture, but the sunsets and mornings are amazing. Always different, always moving. At night I can look down the foot of my bed out the glass doors and past the patio to all the lights of the little houses sprinkled across the valley below me. I'm buying a few things for the house while I wait for the iron bars to be put on the windows. Two guys build them in their little workshop in San Ramon. Gerardo said I could have any fancy designs of the bars that I wanted for the same price. Unfortunately, I'm settling on a simple design so I can maintain the best visibility outside.

(next: destructive windstorm and the panther)

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