New House -- or Nueva Casa, in Español

At last, it’s official: we are moving! In fact, we took the first couple of loads up Tuesday. After the on-again/off-again housing drama earlier this year, I’ve hesitated to mention finding a house for fear of queering the deal. But we’ve paid our rent and now have my plants and a few suitcases already in the place. The rest of our “stuff” will follow next Monday; on Tuesday we’ll help Cidia, our housekeeper here, finish the last big cleaning jobs and then we’ll be in our new home.

View of the rancho from back patio

Located just up the hill in the Tico community of Santa Eulalia, a barrio of Atenas, the house is the “two bedroom, two bath with a great kitchen” that we had hoped for. At the end of a short street, it sits right next to a huge cornfield and sugarcane field with a lovely view of the hillside beyond. It’s private, safe and very near to several of our friends. It was one of those friends, our sausage-making amigo Marcial, who served as our agent in securing the place. 

Our friend Marcial on the sofa

"Our" cornfield and sugarcane field

Our new landlords seem very accommodating, relocating the washer and dryer (the dryer, a remarkable luxury here) out to the rancho so that the laundry room could be my office, putting up shelves for me and upgrading the Internet service for us as well. In that regard, we have some concerns because even with the upgrade, the Internet speed is not nearly what we are used to. Still, we hope it will be enough for those weekly Skype calls to my mom and Layne’s sister, even if not sufficient for streaming video.

Nice Kitchen!

The kitchen is all I could ask for (except perhaps a gas stove and a double-sink… spoiled Gringo that I am) -- with a big side-by-side refrigerator and even a working icemaker (again, quite a luxury), a modern electric stove and a big expanse of counter space. And although there is no swimming pool with the house, the small resort next door, El Cafetal Inn, is owned by a friend who said we could use their pool anytime. The bus line is only a block away and buses into Atenas run frequently. We learned from an older Tica neighbor, as we were waiting for a bus, that with our cedulas (residency cards) we could ride for free! Such a deal!

With our friend Marcy coming in early November for some dental work and a vacation, the move comes none too soon. Now we can anticipate being the “magnet” for friends that we had hoped to be. Although we don’t have the budget for many tourist activities, we can provide a home base, conveniently located for easy travel to many of those tourist attractions.

Cidia and her family

Cidia, our sweet Tica housekeeper who has really become a friend, had a sad look on her face last week to hear that we were moving. After cleaning this week she insisted on returning later that day as she said her 12-year-old daughter Melanie had a gift for us. We’ve gotten acquainted with Melanie over the months we’ve lived here because occasionally, when school was not in session or whatever, she would come to our apartment with Cidia and with Layne’s help in turning on the television, would watch TV or read while her mom worked. Also, I have given her a few of my jigsaw puzzles, which she and I both enjoy. So we’ve developed a friendly relationship with her.

Melanie's handiwork

As it turned out, Cidia and her husband and Melanie all had going-away presents for us: beaded earrings and necklace for me that Cidia had made, a lovely decorated wine bottle that Melanie had created in school and a colorful picture frame, purchased for Layne. They stayed and visited for over an hour, which definitely gave me some much-needed Spanish practice. Although I didn’t understand everything that was said, it was pretty amazing just how much we were able to communicate. We learned, for instance, that in 1948 during the armed uprising that resulted from a disputed presidential election, Cidia’s father and mother, pregnant with Cidia’s older brother at the time, had to flee the violence up into the mountains. It was after that last civil disturbance that Costa Rica abolished its army and turned its resources to public education, resulting in today’s high literacy rate. We talked about Cidia’s fourteen (!!) brothers and sisters and where they all live, Melanie’s school and dance classes, our new neighborhood in Santa Eulalia, a mutual friend’s new baby and precocious 5-year-old son and many other subjects as we sipped wine and laughed at my language struggles. It was very encouraging to me to actually carry on a conversation to that extent. Perhaps there is hope for my Spanish!

The Chalet de Hazel

Thursday, February 25, 2010

It’s quite cool today and has been raining off and on all day.The English-language paper, A.M. Costa Rica, said that a “cold front” was coming in today and I guess it’s here. But this is unlike the cold fronts that we faced in Northern California. Just for my own amusement, I keep the Pilot Hill weather on my Google home page. Today it was in the low 40’s there with rain forecast for the next two days. B-r-r-r-r. It makes me appreciate this tropical chill of perhaps 68 degrees. In fact, I’ve spent much of the day on the front patio working one of my rompecabezas. Perhaps I should have gotten 1000-piecers as I’ve almost finished the first one, a 500-piece close-up of a hummingbird hovering over a pink flower.

Yesterday found us back on the bus, this time for a lengthy trip all the way to Atenas to look at a few housing possibilities. We are paid up here at the Villas until March 10th and are certain we don’t want to stay beyond that, not only because of the the cool temperatures but also for the high cost of these luxury digs. Atenas, on the other hand, is known as having "the best climate in the world," according to National Geographic. With daily temperatures around 80 F. and nights down in the 60's, the slogan "El Clima Mejor del Mundo" emblazoned on all Atenas buses is well-deserved.

Our appointment was at 10 a.m. with Dennis, a transplanted Florida realtor  and his Tico partner Geraldo of Pure Life Development real estate (http://www.purelifedevelopment.com/). Looking through ads on http://www.amcostarica.com/, I had clicked on a link to their webpage and found a number of very affordable and attractive houses for rent. A few emails had led to this meeting date. 

We’ve become quite adept at taking the bus into San Jose, of course, but making the connection for a bus out to Atenas, and arriving there by 10 o'clock, presented another challenge. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, Costa Rica has very few street addresses posted or even street names. Instead, most directions are given by landmarks. The major bus stop in San Jose is known as “Coca Cola.” You might think it was named for a soda bottling plant there but you’d be wrong. Apparently, there used to be one but no more, so unless you know the area, you could easily get lost. Our map of bus lines (http://www.costaricaweb.de/crweb/es/sanjoseweb/index6-sanjose-es.htm) indicated the Coca-Cola stop was at Calle 16/Avenida 3. But again, without the streets being labeled, that was little to go on. And of course, my espanol is still so limited, there was no chance of getting directions from the driver.

But hope springs, as they say! So we exited near what we thought might be Calle 16, planning to walk the two blocks to Avenida 3. After a few minutes of confusion and with our time rather short, we opted for a taxi and $1 later, we pulled up to a maze of buses.

Finding the Atenas bus was easy enough with big signs overhead but as we boarded and were given what looked like a transfer ticket, I tried to ask the driver if we would need to change buses somewhere. As so often happens here, a young Tico overheard my effort and quickly intervened, assuring us in perfect English that this bus would go straight to our destination. He sat down just in front of us and we conversed easily for awhile, learning that his brother works for Procter & Gamble in the Information Technology department and that he, too, hoped to get a job there after college. At last, he smiled and said he would now take a nap until our arrival in Atenas.

Upon arriving some forty-five minutes later, Dennis and Geraldo picked us up and started our tour, stopping first at a modest duplex within walking distance of downtown. But like the Grecia house we rejected, the ventilation here did not seem adequate, the bedrooms were small with only a twin bed in one, plus the neighbor dog was extremely aggressive, although our hosts assured us that he was ultimately friendly. Yeah, right. So Layne and I were in agreement that this was not our place.

We headed out of town, driving 10 minutes or so steeply uphill, well into the mountains above Atenas. Obviously, the next house would not be within walking distance of shops or the farmers’ market, so secretly, I was beginning to have my doubts. But as we rounded the last curve and looked up at a charming chalet above the roadbed, our hopes bloomed.

What a doll house! It turned out to be another duplex, our rental unit a mirror image of the one we could see from the road, the two units well separated by a broad tiled patio. The chalet, with huge windows all around, looks out over a deep canyon to a lush green mountain and beyond that to the Pacific Ocean on a clear day. The new highway nearby has cut the bus trip to the beach down to only 35-40 minutes. And the breezes blowing up the canyon promised the tropical ventilation of our dreams.

The house itself features beautiful polished wood and ceramic tile floors; there’s a nicely appointed kitchen - including a double sink, something we don’t have here at the Villas. The two bedrooms each have a double bed (the upstairs one seems to be a Temperpedic mattress - wow!) and the bath has both shower and tub. The furnishings are stylish and high quality.

There’s even a working fireplace, although I doubt we will need it. A large walk-through closet offers good storage space and an additional storage building is set away from the house. The enclosed porch holds a washer and a dryer - again, a feature missing at the higher-priced Villas. And of great pleasure to me, there are orchids growing in the big yard. The back patio has a bench overlooking the magnificent view. We loved it at first sight!

The owner, Hazel, was there to greet us and she was utterly delightful, a beautiful young woman with long brown hair wearing shorts and a halter top, which suggested the kind of weather we can look forward to. It didn’t take us long to decide this was the place for us. Buses stop at the corner and a taxi ride into town costs only a couple of dollars. And the price? Well, let’s just say it’s less than half what we are paying now! And did I mention? That includes phone, utilities and Internet. Yowsa!

When our good friends, Penny & Joel, arrive at the end of March for a visit, we’ll be able to entertain them in style. La Pura Vida!