35. Party Party Party!

Maybe not PARTY--- because we really aren’t the party type people, but we had a few good days over the next week!

Friday 8/6- The day we’ve been waiting for finally arrived, closing on our properties!! The last couple of weeks leading up to today have been stressful and filled with uncertainty about whether the seller would get her stuff together in order for us to be able to close. She delayed, she stalled, she didn’t seem to be real up front with information, but between our sweet talking and hard working realtor Diego and our “get it done or the deal is off” American need for action, we got everything that we needed!

The closing process was very different than closing on property in the US that we are used to. The first difference (that didn’t surprise us at all) was that the seller was going to be late, in fact, she was running an hour late. That didn’t seem to bother Moe (our Attorney) or Diego. Just another day in Costa Rica, right? While we waited for the seller to show up, we got a chance to chat with Diego about more than just business, since that's really all we had been doing the last couple of months working together. 

Finally Moe, (our lawyer) called us back into the conference room. He mentioned since the seller was running late he would do our end of the paperwork. This is where it was very different. He had the entire contract on his computer. Since we are English speaking he found it best to play the contract word for word. We sat and listened to a computer speak the entire document to us in English. If we had any questions or if something needed explaining Moe would stop it and explain what that verbiage meant. Thankfully it was only 5 pages long (versus the 50+ pages of sales documents in the US that you never read and just sign).

When the seller arrived, most of the conversation turned to Spanish. She spoke some English, but the majority of the meeting was in Spanish so Ramie and I just sat there listening, picking up a few words, and relying on Diego and Moe for any pertinent information. For the most part, it was just going through what we had read to us before the seller got there. The contract was then passed to Ramie and he signed once, then to the seller and she signed it. BAM DONE! The actual legal part of the closing really only took about 15 minutes once the seller arrived. She handed us all of the official letters, past surveys, and any other pertinent paperwork she thought we we needed and the sale was official.

Its Official GIFfrom Contract GIFs

After we had finished all of that, the seller and Diego were talking some more (in Spanish) and shuffling around papers, while Moe was talking with us some more. We later asked what Diego was talking to her about, and she was very concerned about how the sales price would affect her value when it came time to pay her capital gains tax on the property since her "claimed" value was much lower than the amount she sold it for. Well, that’s not our (or Diego’s) problem… maybe if she would have sold it to us for less she wouldn’t have had to be concerned. Hahaha

Anyways, after we were done with the closing we asked Diego if he wanted to go celebrate with a beer with us. We had been joking about doing just this for a long time, but when he agreed to go out with us we were very glad. We stopped at the new Uvita Beer Garden, a little restaurant that just opened in March, that serves craft beers and good food. Diego had previously told us that he really likes this place, and since we had often talked about, but never actually went here yet, we thought it was a fantastic opportunity.

At the Beer Garden we also got to meet Ben, a former American who has lived here for many years. He is also a realtor with Diego’s office, and is actually the person who got Diego involved in their company. We all chatted for a while and learned more about Diego, Ben, Uvita and everything. After Ben left, we also learned that Diego had to put in a lot of extra work on our purchase of the house. I guess the seller was very difficult to deal with, and he had to do quite a bit of wheeling and dealing to make this all work out for us. We told him so many times that we are very grateful for all of his help, and we hope that now we can hang out as amigos instead of clients.

Oh- and the Beer Garden. They had some really great beers and some really good food. I think this is a place we could go back to! I’ve been following them on Instagram, and they have Ladies night 2 for 1 happy hours on Thursday, and live music on Friday and Saturday- so it sounds like a cool hangout where we might be able to meet and befriend some locals (or tourists?).

 

Sunday 8/8- Since it is my birthday, we just continued right on with our PARTY on Sunday. 

It Is My Birthday Carlton GIFfrom It Is My Birthday GIFs

We started the day without any plans and spent the morning like we always do. Around 11 Ramie messaged Loren to see if they wanted to go out to dinner, but they were unable to tonight.  Karen, the owner of the house we are renting, flew down today and was scheduled to arrive this evening and stay at their house for the week so they would have to pass on dinner tonight. Karen would also be celebrating her birthday later this week, though, and Loren invited us to come hang out at their house tonight to meet Karen, and if we wanted to join them for dinner later this week, all 6 of us could celebrate both my and Karen’s birthdays together. I was perfectly fine with that, I like to meet new friends and thought it would be a great opportunity to meet with the owner of this house.

I then came up with the idea to go explore the town of Dominical. It’s about a 20 minute drive North of Uvita that we pass through every time we head to San Isidro or San Jose. We’ve seen it from the highway but have never stopped to check out the town. We also know that there is a craft brewery in Dominical, so why not check out another one this week?!

We got to town around lunch time and saw that the majority of the town was one long stretch set back a block or so from the beach, so we parked on one end and started walking down toward the other end. There are lots of little touristy shops, beachy restaurants, and coffee or smoothie shops. It’s about what I expected, but it was still fun to go explore. Fuego brewery was about half way down the stretch of road, and we decided to stop and grab a drink and a bite to eat now, and continue the rest of the way after we were finished.

They had a beer list with a good variety to choose from, plus homemade coconut hard seltzer. That turned out perfectly for me! Ramie ordered a flight of beers so he could try a bunch of them, and I ordered the seltzer of course. The waitress told me that you could also add a flavor to the seltzer with one of a few different tropical flavorings, but I passed on that for now. I had never had a coconut flavored one before and thought it sounded delicious! 

 

Their food menu had a lot of delicious looking options as well, I ordered the fish tacos and Ramie ordered calamari.  Ramie did not like the calamari, he said that it was way to chewy and had far too much breading. That's not going to stop him from trying something new next time though. The fish tacos were fabulous, and their homemade hot sauce was delicious too! The restaurant was a little pricey, but it was great to check out, and I think it would be a place that any of our future visitors would love to check out too. They also have a coffee shop and roastery on site too, so you can order some fancy coffee drinks as well. 

Wouldn’t you know it, that one day we decide to go in to town we run into one of the very few people in this country that we know. Mike, the former neighbor that just sold his house next to our rental house happened to stop in at the same time we were there. Mike likes to talk a LOT, so we ended up spending much of our time talking to him and didn’t really get to explore the rest of the town, unfortunately. That’s fine though, it’s close enough that we’ll be able to go explore again another day if we want to (and have a good excuse to stop for another coconut seltzer!)

We stopped at Loren and Nancy’s house after we were finished up in Dominical and got to meet Karen and Dennis. Dennis is her boyfriend. They currently live in Florida, but Karen hopes to someday move to Costa Rica and build another house on the property next to the one we are staying in. We hung out with them all afternoon and evening, Nancy even unexpectedly made dinner for us and we hung out even longer. We really enjoyed hanging out with Karen and Dennis, and of course always like hanging out with Loren and Nancy, so we decided that we would try to meet up again a time or 2 this week while they were here and make plans to go out to dinner on Wednesday evening to celebrate the birthdays.

I do have to say that I really enjoyed my first laid back tropical birthday here in Costa Rica!

Over the next few days while Karen and Dennis were here we hung out a few times, had our birthday dinner together, and really did make some new friends. Hopefully we continue to stay in contact even after we move out of her little house, and when she eventually moves down here we’ll be able to help her out just like others are helping us.