Wednesday 6/26- We’ve probably explained it before, but in case we haven’t, I’ll explain now. The timing of the turtle walks that Ramie does is based on the tides. Ideally, they try to start the walk at about halfway in between high tide and low tide, and in the middle of the night or very early morning. Depending on the timing, it could be as the tide is coming in or going out. Ramie had his first night turtle walk scheduled for 2:30am Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, David is out of the country and Val & Marshall are both sick, so Ramie reached out to a person who has helped fill in on understaffed walks in the past. Fortunately, she was willing to help again, but unfortunately they didn't have any luck finding any nests. Ramie got home at about 4:30am and, while normally he would stay up and continue on with his day, I think he was still tired from the weekend and went back to bed for about 2 hours while I worked.
After Ramie got up again and had his coffee and he got to researching. We’ve been discussing it recently and finally made the decision that we needed to buy a new washing machine. Not because our current one was broken, but because it really has a way of making Ramie mad. It's a high efficiency washer, but it doesn't clean the clothes very well and sometimes we end up having to wash them twice because it leaves streaks of detergent in the clothes. We decided to just bite the bullet and buy a different machine. In typical Ramie fashion, he did the online research first, and once he had an idea of a couple machines that would be in the running, he headed to the store here in town to see what they had in stock.
The store is not big, so it could be hit or miss on whether they have one or not. The websites are not very representative of what they have in stock, online I could see that they may have 20 washers, but in the store they may only actually have 4 or 5. It turns out that they only had 2 of the machines that he was interested in. He got home and we talked about it, weighed the pros and cons, and decided which one we’d buy. Ramie went back to the store just a couple of hours after his initial trip into town to pick it up. It didn’t take long at all, and he was home with the new one. I took a short break from work to help him remove the old one from the laundry room and set the new one in place. He finished installing it on his own, and in no time he was trying it out for the first time. Once the first load of laundry in the new machine was going, he cleaned up the old one, snapped some pictures of it, and put it out on the local FB pages to try to sell it.
That afternoon, out of the blue, Deiner called Ramie and asked if we wanted to meet him for dinner in town. He was down in Uvita today because it’s Wednesday, and Wednesdays and Saturdays are the Uvita farmers market where he has a booth where he sells the Don Emilio coffee, some chorreadors (traditional coffee makers) that he makes, and some purses, bags, and other crafts that his wife and family make. The market was over for the day and on his way home he decided to stop for a bite to eat at a restaurant right near our house. I didn't particularly feel like cooking and was planning for leftovers for dinner anyway, so we told him we’d meet up in about 10 minutes. We had a nice dinner and conversation but made it fairly quick since it was starting to rain and Deiner still had to drive up the mountain to get home, which is a lot easier in the daylight and when it’s not pouring rain.
Friday 6/28- Val and Marshall are still sick and today there was no one else available to walk with Ramie, so he asked if I would be his partner. The walk today was at 3:30am and I hesitantly and begrudgingly said yes. We got up at 3, and were out the door by 3:15. This early in the morning there is no time for coffee beforehand, plus I don't really want to have to go to the bathroom in the dark in the jungle, although in the dark and that early in the morning I could do it right in the middle of the beach and no one would ever know! We did the 5 mile walk in the dark and in the rain. After the first 20 minutes we were soaked, and it wasn’t even light enough to see by the time we were finished. We didn't find any nests, either. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t particularly like walking in the dark, and something about this walk made me very sore. This may very well be the last walk that I do this early. Give me the 4-5am walks! Since I’m also working my job and not an "actual" volunteer for the turtle sanctuary, only a fill-in helper when Ramie needs me, I’m going to be picky like that! We were back home by about 5, I took a quick shower and started work a little bit after 6, just in time for a regular workday.
After his coffee and cookies routine, Ramie got to work doing a deep clean of our bedroom. By deep clean, I mean he took everything off the walls, moved the bed, wiped down the walls and ceiling, and dusted every surface. It took him a few hours, but he got his chore done before noon. The bedroom probably hasn't been that clean since we moved in. After the early morning that we had, followed by a full day of work for both of us, it was time for a relaxing afternoon.
Saturday 6/29- Happy Gotcha Day, Skye!
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After yesterday’s walk and as sore as I was from it, I needed an adjustment, so we went to see Benny the Chiropractor. Afterwards, when we came back home, we didn’t leave the house again the rest of the day. We did the regularly scheduled weekend chores and blog writing and, after enough work, we jumped in the pool which we haven't done much recently because it's always raining.
Sunday 6/30- What do you do when it’s tough to get new “stuff”? Well, you make the old stuff last as long as possible & fix it whenever you can. With all of the long beach miles Ramie puts on his water shoes, he’s wearing through both his water shoes and his five-fingers, or they are just falling apart in general. We were able to get our hands on some shoe goo, though, and this morning Ramie tried to fix all of his shoes to hopefully make them last longer, at least through the next couple of months until we make it back to the US and he can get some new ones.
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| The soles are falling right off, but overall they are in good condition still. |
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| Gluing the sole back on.. Gotta try to save a $100 pair of water shoes. |
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| The other shoes were starting to do the same. He put my sandals inside them to try to keep the form while the glue dried. |
The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of June rainfall total was 29.16 inches
Wednesday 7/3- Ivan was supposed to start working on replacing Katie and Adams roof today, but the guests that were currently staying there asked for a late checkout. Since Ivan likes to start at 6am he pushed it off until tomorrow. Of course, today was beautiful and sunny all day, that would have been perfect for removing and repairing an entire roof. Let’s hope that those clear skies continue the rest of the week!
Thursday 7/4- Happy 4th of July to our American Friends and Family!
As I mentioned before, Ivan and the crew were scheduled to work on Adam & Katie’s roof today, and were at the house bright and early, just as they always are. Ramie went over there to get them started and situated and then hurried home. Today we were going to San Isidro to do our shopping run. It was an uneventful shopping trip and we were home around 2pm.
When we got home and the car unpacked, Ramie went to check on the progress of the crew’s work on the roof. They had finished about 2/3rds of the roof and were packing up for the day since there just was not enough time left in the day to remove the roof over the master bedroom and replace that before our typical afternoon rains would start. Since the house has 2 different roofs, it kind of worked out. Before they left, though they used the plastic that was originally on the other section to cover, and hopefully waterproof, the remaining section. Of course, as predicted, it did rain later in the night so let’s hope that none of that rain got into the house!
Friday 7/5- Ivan’s crew was back this morning at 6am ready to finish this roof project. Once they got started, Ramie checked the house and thankfully there were no leaks during the rain last night. By around noon the crew was finished rebuilding the roof. Ivan and Ramie are sure that the bigger gutters and new slope to the roof will make a huge difference in the drainage of the formerly flat roof and will stop all of those damn leaks!
Val & Marshall messaged us this afternoon to ask if we were interested in going to dinner at La Choza, the Mexican Restaurant that we used to go to when we visited Uvita on our vacations, and of course we were happy to go along with them.
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| La Choza advertises itself to have the largest tequila selection in the area. Marshall always likes to get himself a good sipping tequila when he goes out to dinner and I'm never the type to pass up on tequila, so we ordered a shot. This is the fancy way that they serve it here. It was a darn good shot! |
Saturday 7/6- When he woke up this morning, Ramie wasn’t feeling very well after our night at the brewery. Yes, he was hung over and, and last night it was very evident that he shouldn’t drive, so I drove home, which doesn't happen often! The reason that Ramie ended up over-doing it last night was because the musician kept trying to get a drink from the waiter, but the waiter kept forgetting, so, when the waiter was back out in the area, Ramie would raise his hand to try to get the waiter's attention, but instead of getting his attention and coming over to our table, the waiter would just bring Ramie another beer. Finally, after the 3rd beer to Ramie, the waiter remembered to bring one for the musician instead. Of course, Ramie wasn't going to tell the waiter that he didn't want the beers, so in the end he really did do this to himself, but told himself that it was for a good reason. 🤷
This afternoon we also had been invited to hang out with our neighbor Karen (as opposed to Karen with the rental property). It was originally supposed to be a group of the neighbors, but the others couldn't make it so it turned out to be just the 3 of us. Ramie was feeling somewhat better by early afternoon so he threw together his famous coffee cake to bring with us this evening, and Karen was making some bocas (appetizers). We were in charge of bringing our own beverages and we both opted to bring something non-alcoholic. We spent about 4 hours hanging out and had a lot of fun chatting and hearing each other’s stories. Up until now it really had just been saying hi in passing when outside.
Monday 7/8- It’s Monday and we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming. I worked and Ramie would work on a small but necessary project of replacing the lights on the outside of the gate. When we purchased the original lights that we put up on the outside of our gate, we didn’t realize that these particular lights take a special LED bulb that is made only in Italy and not available for sale anywhere that we could find, either in Costa Rica or in the US. If we had known this when we bought them, well, we wouldn’t have bought them. Anyways, we decided to take the wall lights from the back yard patio area and put them on the outside gate wall to test them, to find out if they are waterproof enough to use out in the elements and last out there without being ruined. If they do get ruined, we’d buy new ones for the back patio & new ones for the gate when we are back in MN in October, otherwise these will stay out there, and we will buy new ones for only the back patio when we’re back in the US. It took Ramie a good chunk of the day to get this seemingly simple project done because it turned out that the lights weren’t wired like we’d expect in the US and there were also no junction boxes in the wall. Ramie had to get creative with the concrete pillar to get these replacement lights mounted!
Today Ramie also got the quote back for the removal of a huge a tree up at Karen’s property. While it wasn’t ideal to have to remove this big tree, it was located right at the corner of where the future house would be, and really would be in the way. He forwarded the information to Karen who gave her approval, and reached out to Michael the builder to coordinate the day that would work best to have the tree guy come out and request that some of the items already in place for the building of the house be temporarily moved so the large branches didn’t fall on them.
Wednesday 7/10- It’s Wednesday which means another turtle walk day for Ramie, today he was up at 2am. Unfortunately they didn’t find any turtles or nests and have been on a really slow streak since the big Green turtle nest that they found a while ago. Since it was a super early one today he went back to sleep for a little bit when he was finished. Today he also had to go to Karen's construction project to meet with the builder, look over the start of the build, and talk about the progress and any issues that there may be at this point. Thankfully, all went well and things were progressing, although slowly because of the rain. That’s to be expected this time of year, but the Tico workers are used to working in this weather and do what they can to keep everything moving forward. 
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| Because of all of the rain and cooler (comparatively) weather, there are mushrooms growing everywhere! |
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| And the plants are growing great!! |
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