7. Getting to Our Rental House

 

As I briefly explained in a previous post, the town of Uvita is right on the coast. On one side of the highway is the beach (the flats) and national park, the other side of the highway goes up into the coastal mountains. While there are many houses on both sides/in both areas, we prefer being in the hills because it is cooler and you get nice airflow. There is barely any breeze, and it gets really hot if you are down on the flats. The house is not far from the mini-golf course, but it is up the hill a little way. We followed Loren up the mountain road which is unpaved, and in places can be very rough and very steep. We are used to this from our last few trips here, but it is kind of hairy the first few times you go up a new hill! Loren drives a UTV (side-by-side kind of 4 wheeler) which are very popular here (someday we would like one as well) and are much more nimble and handle better on the rough roads than a fully packed SUV like we were driving. He sped off as we drove, and we just followed along trying to guess which fork in the road he went down. Thankfully, before he got too far ahead he realized we were lagging behind and slowed down to wait for us. 

 

The signs you see are for resorts at the top of the mountain! 

Our rental is in a small, gated community, so we got up to the gate, went through, and we continued up some more hills until we got to our house at the very top of the community. The view was awesome! We are surrounded by jungle, and there is a small opening that we can actually see all the way down to the ocean (about 2 miles away). The house looked cute from the outside and we were ready to go in and check it out. We had seen a few pictures and know that it is a small, studio style house. One open room (bedroom, kitchen, living area all in one), and a bathroom. That was it. Oh- and the veranda. That is a very important part of houses here in Costa Rica. Much of your day is spent outside and much of your living space extends to the outside.

 

We got inside, and it was just as cute as the outside. Yes, it was small, but it was actually bigger than we were thinking it would be. It looked like it had everything we needed- a full kitchen, a bed, a bathroom with shower, a small couch, and 3 built in closets (which we couldn’t see in the pictures and were very glad about. We thought we were going to have to go buy some furniture right away!!) It even has a washer & dryer! There is a huge double wide sliding screen door that opens to the veranda, which has 2 lounge chairs and a dining table & chairs set (more like patio furniture than what you would think of a dining table.) THAT is where we knew we would be spending most of our time. This would definitely do!! 

 

We chatted with Loren a little bit more before he left, and then decided before we took the time to start unpacking, that we had to go buy some groceries. Today was our driving day, so that meant tomorrow we couldn’t go anywhere. We looked through all of the cabinets and cupboards to see if the house had the basic kitchen items that we needed and we discovered that there was no coffee pot. Oh, the horror!! We could not live without coffee, (especially in Costa Rica who has some of the best coffee in the world!!) We definitely had to go find a coffee pot, and I needed to get some food in the house to last at least a few days until we could really figure out everything that we need.  

 

Bathroom

 

View from the bed side to the front door

View from the front door side to the bed side

 

 

The balcony where we spend most of our time

We stopped at the 2 hardware stores in town, no luck with a coffee pot there, but did get a feel for what they have for when we do need to start buying things. Then on to the appliance store. We knew they would have coffee pots there but figured it would be expensive. We found one, paid double what we would have paid for the same one in the US, it’s a basic coffee pot (on/off switch, no timer but was 12 cups) probably about $15-18 in the US, we paid $30 but this was a MUST have, and went on our way. I expect we will experience a lot of these kinds of purchases until we can get our household stuff from the US shipped down here.

Coffee Addict GIF from Addict GIFs

 

There is a very nice grocery store in town, newly remodeled in the last few years (the first year we were here was before the remodel, it is definitely a HUGE improvement over what it was). It’s a little bit expensive, but that is expected for the touristy area that we are in. It has pretty much all of the basics that you need. There may not be a lot of different choices, but you will find enough ingredients to put together pretty decent meals. It’s definitely not like grocery shopping the US. Forget about convenience meals, many packaged foods, frozen things… here you get ingredients, and you are in charge of making your own things. Most of the meat you have to buy from the butcher case (no big bags of frozen chicken breasts or tubes of hamburger); you buy fresh fruit and veggies (or some canned veggies) instead of bags of frozen fruit or veggies (which are expensive if you do find them). Of course, they have things like cookies, chips and cereal, but definitely not the shelves and shelves of variety like you find in the big grocery stores in the US. While I have grocery shopped here (and in other parts of Costa Rica) many times, it’s still somewhat overwhelming to walk through the aisles and figure out what you need to stock an empty cupboard and prepare some meals. There are a lot of things that are the same here but a lot of things that are different as well. Ramie and I walked though together and just started picking out things we knew we would eat. Then, after having a half full cart of stuff, we tried to figure out what goes together, what meals I could make, and what was just good to have on hand. We threw some more things together, called it good, and headed home to unload our groceries and unpack our bags.

No Campbells Soup here!

 

We spent a couple of hours doing just that.  We got through our carry-ons and the first 2 suitcases or so but decided that was enough for the day and went to sit on our patio and enjoy the view. 

 

Aaahhh, wonderful!! This is what it’s all about!