Wednesday 3/19- You may remember a few blog posts ago that Karen and Dennis were getting ready to ship pallets down here in anticipation of their move, and they offered us some space on their pallets to send down some things that we might not otherwise be able to get here due to size or weight. Late last week they found out that the pallets had arrived in Costa Rica and were getting ready to be released from the port. Originally Karen & Dennis were told that the pallets would be delivered to Uvita, and the price that they would pay for the full shipment reflected that, but when they were informed that the pallets were here, the company also told them that they didn’t actually have a way to transport the pallets from San Jose to Uvita. Well, this really throws a wrench into the plan, through no fault of anyone but the shipping company.
Over the next few days, or maybe a week, a number of logistics changes had to happen, and the shipping company wasn’t being particularly helpful. At the end of the day, the result was that Karen and Dennis (with Ramie’s help) were in charge of finding their own transportation from the San Jose shipping yard to Uvita. Having found this out after the pallets were already in the country was not ideal, as all of this should have been (and we all thought it was) planned by the company before they even agreed to ship the pallets to Costa Rica. Dennis spent a lot of time during this past week or so messaging back-and-forth with the shipping guy, who then messaged with the main office in San Jose to try to come up with a plan that worked for everyone. Once a “plan” was okayed by the company, Dennis then had to reach out to Ramie, who got in contact with Randall to make sure he would be available to make the full day trip from Uvita to San Jose and back. Originally the company okayed them to pick up the pallets this past Saturday, which worked well for Randall because it was his day off of work, but then later the company changed their mind and determined that no one would be working at the pick-up location on that day. Then then they said that the only option would be to pick them up on Monday because they didn’t have the space to store the pallets for any longer, but Randall wasn’t available that day. Dennis pushed back, reminding the shipper that it was all their fault that this was happening and that Randall was only available on Wednesday and they had to make it work. After some more back-and-forth, they finally agreed on Wednesday. Oh, and then came the next big snafu on the part of the shipping company “By the way, you have to have a lift gate or your own forklift because we don’t have any way to lift them and we don’t have a loading dock”. WTF!?!? This is a shipping company that advertises their ability to ship pallets from the US, import them to CR, and get them delivered. At this point, the only thing that they had successfully done was get the pallets from the port in FL (Karen and Dennis were on their own to get the pallets to the port), and into Costa Rica. They couldn’t deliver on the final part of the promise (pardon the pun). Finally, after continuing to remind them that this whole problem was because their advertising was false and misleading, the shipping company finally found a nearby company with a forklift that could help them and get the pallets loaded onto Randall’s truck.
While this shipping company was significantly less expensive than the one that we used when we came down (the shipping company that Randall works for), there was zero headache. The company booked the shipper in MN to get it from Taryn & Steven’s garage to Florida, then got the pallets into Costa Rica, and got them to Uvita, all without any problems (except for in MN when, through no fault of our shipping company, the MN shipper flaked out and they had to find a new one).Today Ramie took the day off tax work today to go to San Jose with Randall for the pallets full of all of all of Karen & Dennis’s remaining belongings (and some new gifts to ourselves). Ramie will tell you about this adventure.
I met Randall at the warehouse bright and early this morning at 5am, jumped in his truck, and made the drive up to San Jose. Picking up the pallets was the first stop on today’s agenda, but since he would be up in the city, he was going to make it worth while and make 2 other stops as well to pick up some items for other people. He might as well fill the truck up! The drive up went well and we ran into very little traffic.
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| The box truck on the right is where the pallets are stored. |
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| Time to transfer from this truck to ours. |
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| All loaded, tarped, and strapped. Onto the next stop. |
The other exciting thing that happened today, coincidentally, was that Karen and Dennis took their one-way flight, with their dog Dexter and their suitcases full of the last of their possessions, and arrived in Costa Rica to be full-timers here. Congratulations! Welcome to your new home!!
Thursday 3/20- In order to get the casita ready for Karen & Dennis’s arrival in the next few days, this morning, bright and early at 7am Ramie hopped into Dusti and head up there to let the cleaners in. Since it has sat empty for over a year, the casita is quite disgusting, surfaces covered in mold, dead bugs, gecko poop, and dust everywhere.
It will probably take the cleaners all day to get it looking livable again. Letting things like a house or vehicle sit unused for long periods of time in the tropics is not a good idea! Even after our 3 week trips back to MN, we notice the mold & gecko poop, so you can imagine what it looked like after a year!
When Ramie got home he wasn’t quite ready to start on his tax work yet, as he had to take care of the yard. While doing that he noticed 3 ripe pineapples that were ready to pick, and 4 more that were growing and getting close. We planted these pineapples almost 3 years ago and have only got to pick and eat 1 so far. We had 3 others almost ready to eat, but then were stolen by animals. We have probably 25 more plants growing, but they seem to take so long to produce a fruit. We are excited to finally get some to eat, and are excited that there are so many. I hope some are ready to pick when our visitors come next week!
Saturday 3/22- Karen & Dennis bought there new to them car yesterday.
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| The happy family with their new to them SUV. |
Now that the vehicle purchase was all taken care of, today they arrived in Uvita. This afternoon, on the way into town, they stopped over to say hi real quickly and pick up the keys before they went up to settle into the casita for a couple of weeks until their new house is finished. They are beyond excited to be here and can't believe they won't be going back to the US in a week like they always had before. “Can you believe we live here?!” Ramie and I have been asking ourselves that for over 3.5 years!
Sunday 3/23- While this is supposed to be a relax & recover day, today was my last non-work day to prepare for Mom & Taylor arriving later this week. We had a lot that we wanted to get accomplished before they arrived, and the first thing on that list was getting the house cleaned.
We did have the cleaners come to do all of the heavy lifting & deep cleaning, and while they took care of that, I worked on the blog, which has been neglected for weeks. That’s part of the reason why you guys are still reading about Thanksgiving and Christmas (and won't be reading about this for quite a while). We knew we had to have some posts ready for you ahead of time because there wouldn’t be much “new” to talk about during tax season, and we wouldn’t have the time to write about it, even if it did happen! (Real time update: I am writing this post on May 18... after tax season. We are finally trying to get caught up.)
A problem that we may not have wrote about before that we deal with regularly while living here in the jungle is leaf-cutter ants, or zompopas. These particular ants live in huge nests, probably containing hundreds of thousands of ants, and the travel quite long distances to find the plants that they need to feed their nest. The picture below was actually from Brazil, but we have seen nests of this size or bigger in the jungles here. Thankfully, the nests around our house are much smaller.
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| photo courtesy of https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Subterranean-portion-of-a-giant-leafcutter-ant-nest-in-Brazil-Concrete-was-poured-into_fig3_282628837 |
After today’s little jungle trek Ramie had some more yard work to do. Recently we purchased a few new fruit trees to plant in our yard. Previously we had tried to grow some lime & mandarina trees (they kind of look like an orange but are sour like a lemon, but differnt) from the seeds we found in the fruit. The plants are growing very well, but they have not produced any fruit after 3 years. After doing some research and learning that growing from a seed may or may not work, we decided to bite the bullet and buy some grafted trees that WOULD grow fruit, which we should have done originally 3 years ago. We bought a real lime tree (real limes can be hard to find here), an orange tree (naval-type oranges are also difficult to find, usually the oranges that you see are only really good for juicing), and a blue java banana (yes, its actually blue and we have heard that it has a vanilla flavor to it) to add with our regular banana tree.
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| Pic courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/groups/1245092916206262/posts/1464752664240285/ |
Wednesday 3/26- After 3 days of working hard to get as much work done as we possibly could, today our guests would arrive. After a very long travel day from MN, my mom (Marie) and Taylor arrived at our house around 6:30pm. Instead of the whole day affair of us driving up to San Jose, picking them up at the airport, and driving back down here, this time we hired a shuttle service to pick them up and deliver them to the house. This was much easier on us, especially since we wanted to get as caught up with work as we could so we can enjoy the time together while they are here for the next 2 weeks.
It was great to see them again, as it has been about 5 months since we last saw them. Skye was super excited for new people too, and I think after a few minutes, she even remembered Taylor from last year when she visited. We said all of our hellos and heard all about their travel day, and then got to unpacking their suitcases of all of the goodies that they brought down for us. Not only do we like having guests stay with us so they can see Costa Rica, we like having guests so they can bring stuff to us, and boy did they deliver lots of stuff (mostly stuff that we ordered)!!
Thursday 3/27- After a travel day as long as the one from MN, all you really want to do is relax. Plus, the weather change and temperature difference can really take a toll on you until you get used to it, so today mom & Taylor were happy just relaxing by the pool.
While they did that, Ramie and I did work some more, and we would try to work most days while they were here, and just try to end our days earlier than usual. After I was done working, we brought them to the grocery store to stock up on some essentials and items they wanted, and for mom being her first time here, show her how different our grocery shopping is compared to what she’s used to. We also stopped at the fruit stand to pick up some fresh fruit and some things that they may not have tried before, and drove around town a little bit to point out things that mom has never seen but may have heard me talk about or read about in the blog. Today she got just a brief glimpse of where we live. Over the next couple of weeks, she will get to see more and more
Pura Vida!
Blue bananas- very cool
ReplyDeleteI hope they taste as good as they look!
DeleteLove reading your blogs!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Mary!
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