Monday 6/29- Happy Gotcha Day Skye!
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| What a pudge! |
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| Here she is now! |
Once both containers had been unloaded and everything from the Germany container was loaded onto the other trucks, the two other helpers left and Ramie, Randall and Jose, the crane truck driver, headed south to their house to deliver the goods. Once there, Ramie discussed with the owners where they would like to have the stuff unloaded and helped Randall and Jose position the trucks in the best place to unload. Since they had a crane, they would be able to unload the entire pallet instead of box by box like they usually have to. Jose operated the crane, Randall was on the bed of the truck un-strapping the pallets, and Ramie was on the ground guiding and placing the pallets so the owners could easily unpack them on their own.
Once the pizza oven was where they needed it, the guys collected payment from the owners, and drove to the next spot for an even more interesting load.
Randall had to pick up a tractor that someone sold and needed to bring it back to the warehouse for the buyer to store it until the new owner wants delivery. Before they got there, Ramie asked how big this tractor was and the answer was “it will fit on the truck but barely”. Ramie then asked how they were going to get it onto the truck since they don’t have ramps, and the answer was that Randall was “hoping for a hillside”. When they got to the place with the tractor, the only available hills were dirt piles, which would make this tricky. Jose jumped onto the tractor and maneuvered it onto the top of a dirt pile, Randall backed his truck up to it, and Jose backed the tractor onto the truck. Sometimes you just get lucky!
Ramie said that this was very interesting to watch. There was no way this would fly in the US! They got the tractor strapped down and then made a slow drive back to the warehouse. Now to get it off the truck… There was a hillside across the highway from the warehouse where they would unload it in much the same way as they loaded it. This time, though, Jose couldn’t help because he had to go to another job, so after they had Randall’s truck in position, Randall drove the tractor off the truck and Ramie drove Randall's truck back to the warehouse. Like I said, here in Costa Rica there is always something interesting, and that is why Ramie likes doing this work here.
In order to put the tractor away they had to move a few things around in the yard and put away some of the stuff that was still sitting out from the Bali container. Randall then had to do another delivery but didn’t need Ramie for it, so it was time for him to come home. There was a slight problem, though, and he didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. There was a traffic jam on the highway and traffic was completely stopped.
Yesterday it was announced that there was going to be a protest on the bridge in town that would disrupt traffic. Keep in mind, this highway through town and over this bridge is a section of the Pan-American highway, the main thoroughfare for shipping between North and South America. And there was one-day notice given, and really only to anyone who follows the local Facebook pages. This protest is because the tour operators in Corcovado, Uvita, and Sierpe, the southern zone of Costa Rica, want the tourism board of Costa Rica to start supporting and helping them increase tourism in our region. The tourism board really only supports the northern areas of Costa Rica and not so much the southern area where we are, and the tour operators find that unfair. The infrastructure and funding in the south is severely lacking, and despite making formal requests, it has fallen on deaf ears. In our area, the main way of getting anyone’s attention is to protest and shut down the highway. This is not the first protest where they block the main road here and its is actually very effective. The protestors allowed all emergency vehicles through and opened the bridge for a very short time every hour to let traffic pass. There was so much traffic, though, that it took Ramie well over an hour to get home; a drive that typically takes 5-7 minutes if you don’t have to stop at the single stoplight in town.
The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of June rainfall total was 17.53 inches
This has been a low year in comparison to prior years at 27+ inches in June
Thursday 7/2- As you can probably imagine, early this morning Facebook was alive with people asking how the talks went and what was the status of the bridge. Ramie is also part of some local Whatsapp groups that the locals use to spread information, but it’s all in Spanish, so he only glances at them to get an idea of what is happening around town. Thankfully the talks went well, and the protestors have left town. Now it’s up to the tourism board to come through on whatever they have agreed to or it will all happen again.
In addition to publicity, one of the other things the tour operators were asking for was funding. Since the tourism board ignores this area of Costa Rica, there are not proper facilities or infrastructure at some of the more remote national parks like Corcovado. This includes no proper bathrooms, electricity for buildings, etc. This was one of the key points the tour operators were making. These are Costa Rican national parks and the government can’t even provide proper facilities for the workers or the tourists that do visit the area. They need funding so that they can build the facilities.
Good for the people for standing their ground and demanding change. Even though it was a big inconvenience, I’m glad this one day of protest made a difference. We don’t get upset about things like this, that’s part of the Pura Vida lifestyle we’ve come to have, even though it can be irritating when you have to deal with the inconveniences. One other thing I would like to note, and most people here don’t understand, is that it is 100% illegal for non-citizens to protest. If we were to go there and support a protest, we could lose our residency and be deported. While I don’t know for certain, I am guessing that this is the rule in many countries and people in the US don't realize just how good they have it when it comes to things like this, and don't realize what it's really like in the rest of the world.
Saturday 7/4- Today we ended up doing some online shopping for 4th of July deals. Since we are going to be back in MN visiting family in August/September we figured that we would start to do some shopping while the sales were happening. Since we have the house for sale and plan to leave Costa Rica someday in the fairly foreseeable future we don't have a lot of stuff that we plan to bring back with us this time. Of course, that could all change as we get closer. We both also did some computer work, Ramie created a for-sale ad for selling Dusti, and updated some of his other for-sales items like the LEGO. I worked on the blog and enjoyed some sun and pool time.
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| Our 4th of July Wine. We try to remember to do this every year |
Later in the evening we ended up getting a phone call from Randall that Dusti did not pass inspection.
WHAT, your not kidding!?!?! The reason is that there is a problem with the license plates. What can possibly be wrong with the license plates!? Well, it turns out that when the side by side was brought into Costa Rica by Yamaha and went through its very first registration, some brilliant person decided to list it as a 2-passenger when in reality it’s a 4 passenger, and the importer/seller (Yamaha Cost Rica) didn’t catch or didn’t care about the issue. The license plate that is on Dusti should be used only for agricultural, construction or some emergency use only. It has been that way since the beginning. Last time they didn’t catch it or didn’t care, but for some reason during this inspection they paid attention to the registration. This inspector wasn’t afraid to point out that Dusti has the wrong license plate for a 4 passenger, so we can't pass you.
So what does that mean? Now, since they failed us, we have to go through a ridiculous process of obtaining a letter from a government dept who will review the original registration. When they realize that yes, the paperwork and license plate are indeed wrong, they will write an official letter stating this, then we have to hire a lawyer to legally get the plates changed to the correct ones, and also change it for a 4 passenger as well. Costa Rica has at least 10 different license plate versions all coded to different types of vehicles, and apparently they can’t make it as easy as just fixing the error in the national registry and keeping the original plate. That would make sense, and as we’ve described for other things, Costa Rica makes no sense for anything official. Shortly after learning all of this, Ramie began working on obtaining that letter and, once that letter has been issued, he will move forward with the lawyer to finish the rest of the process. Pura Vida!
Friday 7/10- Ramie’s turtle team finally found their first nest of the season since walks started in early June. Before today they had found an attempted nest where turtle dug a hole but didn’t lay eggs and an early-season naturally hatched nest, but this is the first nest they found that they were able to relocate the eggs to the hatchery. This is on par for the first part of the year, though, as it almost always starts off slow and gets busier as the season progresses.
Saturday 7/11- Today Red and David, the humans that belong to Skye’s mom Bonita, stopped by to pick up the last dog bed that I had made a few weeks ago. Unfortunately they could only stay for a few minutes because they were in-route to visit another friend who lives in Ojochal. You might remember us talking about Red and David when we adopted Skye, they were the people who rescued Bonita and her litter of 8 pups and fostered Skye until she was old enough to come live with us. If you want to read that blog click here
This was the first time that they’ve seen Skye in person since we picked her up just over 3 years ago. Skye wasn't too nervous around them, but you could tell that she didn’t remember them. That’s understandable, though, she was just a baby and it has been a very long time. Red and David always like to hear updates about or see the dogs that they’ve helped and were so happy to see Skye. It was good to see Red & David again, too, even though it wasn’t for long.
Sunday 7/12- Ramie had recently seen a local Facebook post about the grand opening of a new furniture store in town. This wasn’t just any furniture store though, this is a few local artistic woodworkers who appear to do some amazing work. We are considering having some custom furniture made to ship back to the US when we move back there, and Ramie has been seeing this guy post some of his work. This would be our opportunity to go see some of his best pieces in the showroom. This guy in particular does Epoxy pours on things like furniture, tables, and other décor items, and Ramie has been in contact with him to learn more about other types of things that he might build and make. After they had been exchanging messages he told Ramie about this store that would be opening today and invited us to come see his work in person. The event started at 11am, and since we didn’t have anything else planned for today, we arrived right as they opened, and we weren’t the only people who arrived early. We walked around the small but very full store and checked out all of the beautiful wood art work, you see, they make more than just furniture. We didn’t buy any big furniture today, but we did buy an epoxy poured key holder and beautiful local wood cutting board. We will be keeping this guy’s contact information for when we are ready to think about sending pieces back to the US.
Monday 7/13- Ramie spent a good portion of the day out in the yard today. He has been trying to get our hibiscus hedge to grow in better and he had some established hibiscus plants that he moved from the lower yard to the upper yard to help the hedge along. Another not so pleasant task that he took care of was relocating a particularly nasty beehive that was on one of the palms near the house. He called himself the bee whisperer, since he successfully relocated it without disturbing the bees or getting stung.
He was able to just cut the whole palm branch off and walk it across the yard, then tossed it over the fence. We aren’t sure what happened to the bees or the hive once he threw it over, but I guess whatever works… I’d say that was pretty daring, but he said he was ready to run and jump in the pool if they came after him. He also did some pruning of some other trees and bushes in the yard and harvested the first batch of our Blue Java bananas. These bananas are pretty special, and are supposed to taste like vanilla…we will see how true that is. This was the first batch for us and it didn’t seem to grow and ripen very well, so we aren’t sure what to expect from these. They don’t look very blue like pictures we’ve seen, but we hope that they have good flavor.
Tuesday 7/14 thru Thursday 7/16- The rest of the week was quite uneventful. Ramie worked on odds and ends around the house, cleaning and organizing, making repairs, and of course, continued with the never-ending yard work.
The only somewhat exciting thing that happened this week was that we finally had our “virtual holiday party” for my job. I guess at this point during the year it's not a holiday party anymore, but the boss has been wanting to do this, so we made it happen now that we are in a bit slower time of year. We are a small firm, with only 5 of us total. Since the boss really wanted to meet the spouses or significant others and introduce his, they were invited as well.
This means that Ramie would get to meet my coworkers. It’s kind of a running joke for my co-workers and Ramie that they already “know each other” even though they have never talked because with the way my desk is set up he can see them on camera when I’m in meetings and they know him as “the shirtless guy walking in the background”.
They will finally get to “officially” meet him. For about an hour we played some online games and all introduced ourselves so everyone could get to know a bit about each other. It didn't take quite as long as the boss had anticipated, but it was still a nice time getting to know a little bit more about the personal sides of our co-workers.
Pura Vida!
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