173. It's Only Taken 3.5 Years

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    Friday 1/10- Ramie got a bag packed, a cooler out, and some of Skye's things ready, but then had to go meet Michael to discuss some things with Karen’s house. I worked a few hours and then took off at work at 10 this morning. What is going on? We are going on a long weekend getaway before tax season starts. What are we talking about? Well, the short story is that our friends Val and Marshall invited us to go to San Vito with them for a weekend away. This will be the first touristy thing we’ve done since we’ve lived here. We always talk about going to La Fortuna for a mid-week get away but things always get busy and we’ve never made it happen. This time we committed! Val and Marshall mentioned they would leave around 2pm, and we told them that that we were taking off work early and planned to leave around noon.

Unfortunately, Ramie didn't get home from the construction site until 1pm and we still had to drop Skye off at the pet sitter. That's also when he told me that Marshall had messaged him earlier today saying that they had arrived at the hotel around noon today. San Vito is about 2 to 2.5 hours South of us and more in the center of the country. Clearly our plan to leave early didn’t quite work out like we wanted to, and Val and Marshall wanted to get there when we did… and it just didn’t turn out like any of us were expecting.

Once we had Skye dropped off at the pet sitter for the weekend, we hit the road… but only for about 10 minutes. We had to make one more stop for Ramie to pick up some solder (at a store that is outside of town but on the way) that he just couldn't find anywhere in town. With that out of the way, we were on our way to San Vito.

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Val and Marshall go to San Vito fairly often to go birding and wanted to show us the cute little town and the area surrounding it. The drive was beautiful with scenic valleys & mountains all along the way and an almost 360 degree view once you made it to the ridgeline. You could see for miles and miles. We took our time taking in the scenery, and it was absolutely worth it.

We finally arrived there around 3:30 pm and hung out together for a few hours until it was time for dinner. The place they booked had a restaurant on the property so we decided to keep things simple and stay here at the hotel for dinner. After dinner we had a few drinks and played Rummikub at our table.

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We had the whole place to ourselves so weren’t bothering anyone but the staff at the hotel. Of course, we have all been living here long enough to be on the early-schedule, so it was off to bed at our normal time of about 8pm.

    Saturday 1/11- It was a leisurely start to the day with breakfast at 7:30 at the hotel. Once we were fueled up for the day it was time to head to the botanical gardens where Val & Marshall like to go birding and we’d enjoy checking out all of the cool plants. If you want to know more about this beautiful place and to see more pictures click HERE.

The blue dot is San Vito, we live kind of near the light blue things near the left side.

On top of the look out tower, Ramie was very nervous!

I counted the stairs but I forgot to write down how many, I want to say it was around 150.

We spent around 3 hours walking through the trails, looking at birds, plants, and bugs before we decided we’d head back to the hotel. We certainly could have spent a lot longer here just enjoying the quiet pace. Ramie and I haven't hiked or been to a place like that in years and would have loved to explore more of the trails, there were just so many interesting trees and plants! An interesting fact that we were told is that they have the largest collection of different palms in the world.

Since we got a late start to the day, the birding was not very good, I guess birds like it early in the morning and go to hide once it starts to heat up. Val and Marshall were itching to get going, and they were our ride, so we followed them. They are thinking about buying a 2nd property somewhere in a cooler part of Costa Rica to stay during the hottest part of the summer at the beach, and were on a bit of a scouting mission this weekend to see if San Vito might have something that interests them. There was a house that they wanted to go look at, and they reached out to the realtor to arrange a time to meet. Since it was still too early to meet up with the realtor, they took us on a nice drive around the area. Eventually it was time, and we headed to the potential house. It was a very Tico style house which is fine, but there wasn’t as much land as they were hoping for, and the house needed too much work, not to mention the asking price was way too much. This wouldn’t be the house for them, so their search will continue.

We spent about 20 minutes looking at the house, and another 5 trying to get their truck turned around in the tiny parking area that had quite a steep drop off on one side. It was lucky that we were here to help, as Ramie guided Marshall forward and backwards until the truck was pointing the correct direction. I’m sure Val would have been able to do it, but she and I just stood back and watched while the guys took care of the truck situation. Then it was back in their truck and headed to the hotel for a little siesta. Well, Ramie & I didn't actually nap, but we ate lunch and explored the grounds while Marshall and Val took a little snooze.  

Empanadas for lunch!

As it neared dinner time, we made plans to head into town for pizza. When we told some other people we know that we were going to San Vito, many people who had visited before raved about a pizza place we had to try. Well, if you know Ramie, you know that he could eat pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner 7 days a week and enjoy it. You certainly were not going to get any complaints from him!

One Bite And All Your Dreams Will Come True GIFfrom Snow White GIFs

We jumped back in their truck and headed into town. We got to the pizza place only to find it closed. Well, that's disappointing! I guess we will have to come back to try it in the future. While walking to and from the Pizza place we had to snap some pics around town. 

After some more discussion and looking on the map for anything else that sounded good, we decided we would head to a little town a short distance away for some Italian food. It was ok, but definitely not up to Ramie’s expectation for pizza! After dinner we headed back to the hotel and called it an early night. We went to our room and relaxed watching TV until it was time for bed.

 
    Sunday 1/12- This morning we once again gathered for the breakfast offered by the hotel at around 7:30. Even though the checkout wasn’t till noon, we all got going after breakfast. Val & Marshall had a couple more houses to look at and we are just the type of people who always like to get up and go. We said goodbye and headed back out on the scenic drive home, taking our time and enjoying the beautiful views on the way back to the coast. We stopped to pick up Skye and were home a little after 11. We did a few chores to finish out the weekend, as it was back to our normal schedule tomorrow. It was such a nice get away even though it was only for 2 nights. We will definitely go back there someday. Thanks Val and Marshall for a fun weekend and showing us a new place for a little adventure.

    Monday 1/13- Ramie decided that he wanted to further investigate the water heater drip and redo some of the PVC pipe up there that has been bugging him. He probably spent about half a day messing around with that, and there is nothing he can do about that leak yet. After he was done playing with the water heater, he reached out to our immigration lawyer Laura to discuss our upcoming steps with regards to our residency. 

Oh, you thought we were done with that a couple years ago when our residency was approved? Nope- it’s not that simple!! That’s kind of just the beginning, and there are more steps that have to be taken after that to KEEP residency. Before Christmas Ramie had contacted her about renewing our residency, which is required after the first 2 years, but with the holidays most of the country offices shut down or do very little work, so she thought it would be best to wait until January. Our first residency, the temporary residency, expires in February and we need to renew it in order to keep our status. Once we are able to renew it, we then have one more year of being a temporary resident, and after the 3rd year of temporary residency, we can finally apply to be permanent residents. Confusing? Absolutely!!

    Tuesday 1/14 thru Thursday 1/16- After the conversation with Laura, Ramie spent the next few days working to gathering all of the documents that Laura had requested in order to prepare the paperwork for the residency renewal. She was able to get us us an appointment for this Saturday to do our renewal so we had to get all this stuff done fast!

In between all the information gathering, Ramie had decided that it was time to clean out his bodega. The bodega is basically the shed / storage room that is attached to the outside of our house. It’s where we keep things like our yard tools, paint, floor jack and all those types of things, things that can stay outside without danger of damage from the heat and humidity. It has gotten to be such a mess, and it needed to be gone through.

While it’s the size of a walk-in closet, it took Ramie a couple of days this week to clean it all out, organize, consolidate things, and make it all nice again.

    Friday 1/17- Today, the day before our residency appointment, Ramie had to go to the bank to pay for our residency renewal. Strangely enough, you don't pay for this while you are at your appointment, you have to pay the fee 1-2 days before your appointment at the bank and bring the receipt with you to the appointment. The thing is, you have to pay the fee at the bank in US dollars, and the charge that comes through at the appointment is in Costa Rican Colones (tell me how this makes sense… but that’s the rule). Now, because the exchange rate is constantly fluctuating, it’s best to pay only one day before the appointment, just in case the rate changes. If you end up being short, you won't be able to do the renewal the following day. It's a ridiculous rule, but that's Costa Rica for you! 

Ramie went to the bank right away this morning when they opened and before it got busy. Sometimes the lines get super long and waiting in line takes hours, going to the bank here sucks. Despite showing up early, Ramie waited over an hour for his number to be called. As he was talking to the teller he asked if he could pay a little extra to cover the exchange rate, just in case. Of course they were happy to take extra, and no you won’t get change back if you overpaid. We are only talking about $0.50 extra, though, so really no big deal to make sure you’ve got it covered. He had to pay for each of us separately and get paper receipts that you will then have to bring to your appointment to show that you have paid and that the money has been applied to the correct account. With the receipts in hand, he stopped at the copy center in town to get a couple copies of other documents that will be needed too. Now we have everything ready to go for this residency renewal process.

    Saturday 1/18- Our appointment was scheduled for 8:30 this morning at the Correos (Post Office) in San Isidro. Want to hear another thing about this whole ordeal? The first appointment of the day is at 8:00 am. We were lucky enough to get the 2nd appointment, which is great, but Correos doesn't open until 9am. Huh!?!?! Truly, what sense does that make? 

We got on the road earlier than our normal trips to San Isidro for a few reasons: 

1. We didn't know how traffic would be on a Saturday morning.
2. Just in case there was an accident or other road blockage or slow down on the only direct route to San Isidro, we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time.

We got to San Isidro and parked our car at around 8:15am and headed right to the Correos office. Even though we were early, there was already a line of about 15-20 people waiting before us. We texted Laura to let her know that we were in line (she would be joining us with our paperwork and to be our translator), and at about 8:45 a guy came out and started calling names. Dana’s name was called and as not to be left behind Ramie walked up with her. He knew we both had appointments and directed us inside to wait. The lady with the 8am appointment got called up to the counter right away and we were getting a bit nervous since Laura had not yet arrived with our paperwork. Ramie messaged her again to tell her we were now inside and next in line. Thankfully she showed up about 5 minutes before they called us up. The first guy at the counter took our paperwork and entered it all into the system and had us sign some papers. Then we were directed to an office where they would take our pictures for our new ID cards. None of this took long at all and we were heading out the door saying goodbye to Laura at about 9:30. 

And now we wait… Wait for what? Well, this isn’t like renewing your drivers license in the US where you are just automatically approved and get the new card, even though we are already residents and have only applied for a renewal, we still have to be approved, once again, by Costa Rican Immigration.

Waiting GIFfrom Waiting GIFs

Since we were done with the official reason we came to San Isidro, it was time to do the list of things and go to the list of places we wanted to stop. We ran around to all the stores we needed to shop at and were finished at about 1:30pm and on our way home. I will say, it was a nice productive day and we still have a little bit of the afternoon left to be even more productive (or relax).

    Sunday 1/19- You may remember that in the last blog we mounted the last of the solar panels on our roof for the array we wanted to set up, but I mentioned that you had to stay tuned to hear more about all of this. Now I can tell you about what was in store. Since we have all these solar panels hooked up, now during the sunny time of year we are making an insane amount of power and we decided that we would move/add circuits to the solar power and off of the grid power. After we move the things that we are planning to move, almost our entire house will be ran on solar power during the sunny part of the year.

Since it's Sunday and Ramie can shut off the power to the house without interrupting my work, today would be the day that he makes those changes. It took Ramie about a half a day to rewire our electrical panels to move the additional circuits and get the power restored. Now, as long as we have good sun, we will run everything from solar generated power except the air conditioners (that only get used when we have guests staying at the house), the washer and dryer, a few of the outdoor outlets that need more “oompf” from the grid to run things like Ramie’s welder & power washer, and a couple of other rarely used outlets. This might be the only time that I can say that I can’t wait to see the electric bill after this has all been running for a month! Fingers crossed that this is worth all of the effort, time, and expense to get this solar system installed. STAY TUNED!

With Karen and Dennis moving here in just a couple of months, they are preparing to ship pallets down from the US with all their stuff, just like we did way back when we were building our house… if you want to read all about that process click HERE.

They have been purchasing and packing, trying to keep all of their stuff contained to two pallets, but recently discovered they have more than they thought and will have to ship 2-1/2 pallets. That means there is a half a pallet of room available and offered to sell that space to us. There are definitely things we would like to have but won't buy here, another battery for our solar system and a new grill for instance. BBQ grills are just too darn expensive here, and honestly, the little one we originally shipped here is still working fine, but since there is space for a full size one, we will order one as well as some other things that we’d like to have.

  

Carrying Bags Oops GIFfrom Carrying Bags GIFs

Time to get all of the things that were too heavy or too big to fit in our suitcases in October as well as other things that we’ve decided we would like to have since we got back. We had to hurry, as we don’t have long to do this. Their goal is to ship the pallets at the end of this month so that they would be delivered by the time the items were needed for their house. We spent the rest of the day online shopping. It was kind of fun, but we do have to keep in mind we are limited to a space of about 40x48x36.

    Monday 1/20- I had the day off work because of MLK, so this gave me the opportunity to finish the shopping I didn’t finish yesterday. What was left on the list? Mostly non-perishable grocery stuff. What else do I do in my spare time? Work on the blog, which I was supposed to do yesterday but didn’t get to due to the power project & shopping situation that happened instead.

Pura Vida!