A cow and a truck, a love story – Updates on our move to Costa Rica

I have so much news this time around and no time to sit and write. We have one day off a week, which is Sunday. Every other day we wake up at 5am. I make the coffee and Barry makes the smoothies. I get on the internet and do banking, post a pic of the day and read the Costa Rican news. We then go to the farm at about 8 and work until 5pm on different projects to try and hurry up this already 5 month old bittersweet arrangement. We are so anxious to move in. Barry has been making windows, shelves and sanding while I have planted cassava, green beans, tomatoes, pineapple, garlic and cucumbers. We have to dress ourselves in long pants that tuck into our boots and shirts that can get sweaty and filthy because you never know what we will be doing or where we will find ourselves. We really look forward to a shower at the end of the day and for two weeks during dry season there was no water coming out of our tap in the apartment. We had to bring water in containers and take bucket baths which are not as satisfying as a shower, nor does one get as clean. Luckily, it started raining again and we are in the “green” season here.

Bug Bites

Barry had a nasty infection from some bug bites. He wore shorts one day to the farm and was chopping down some jungle when he scratched some bug bites with dirty fingernails. There were about 15 bites that got infected and became big, puss filled boils. He went through about 6 different antibiotics before feeling any relief. He made the mistake of looking on the internet for infections in the tropics and was convinced that he was going to have to cut off his leg or worse. Note to self: The internet is a scary place.

There is a black and white milking cow that is in love with our Isuzu Trooper. Our apartment sits on about 4 hilly acres above our landlady’s house. When we first moved in the landlady decided that she was tired of paying for milk and needed a living lawnmower. Now we have a cow that nuzzles our car at night. There are scratches all over the paint where her horns scrape and as an added bonus there are cow-pies all around our place. It is so disgusting that we started parking the car far away from the house. She sleeps out by it but it hasn’t stopped her from leaving us presents outside the door or attacking our dog at night.

A Husky in the Caribbean?

That’s right we got a dog. We knew that we would have to as a deterrent to thieves wanting to take what the new people have. Just like everywhere else if you have a big dog you are less likely to have petty theft at your house. We found a husky on craigslist that was 5 months old and had been well taken care of. His name is Smoky , after our favorite mountains. He is much more friendly than a guard dog should be but he does have a decent growl when he wants to. This situation was also bittersweet because the lady who was watching Roxy for a while decided that she couldn’t have her in her apartment anymore. So I am here, wanting to share the news of the new cute puppy but feeling awful because we don’t have enough cash to fly Roxy down. We are paying for everything by credit card now because we haven’t heard from immigration about our residency and they have very strict monetary requirements. We have spent $13,000 on the cabin and farm clean up so far which is double what I had calculated when preparing our budget. So now we have no cash, a never ending project and extra charges from Chase on every purchase. This is very depressing for me because I despise using credit cards. We even owe the builder about $400. If immigration calls next week, everything would be peachy but right now is a little bit of Hell in paradise. So, an angelic friend of mine told me during a phone conversation that she would lend us the money to send Roxy down and that we could pay her back when we had our stuff settled. I felt so much better. I didn’t have to feel guilty about the dog, I could look forward to seeing my kitty again and I didn’t have to pay interest (right Cheri?).
All in all our farm is beautiful, the cabin is so much cuter than we expected and we miss our friends and family but are slowly starting to get visitors which is nice. Happy Birthday to my Brother Eddie and congratulations to Brent and Tiffany, Justin and Jenny on your pro-creation proclamations.