Despite all my best intentions to keep our blog regular and chronicle the slow progress of our house construction, months have passed and I have not made a post.  But today I feel inspired so here is an update.

Thanks to the help of many people, we raised the funds to raise our roof!  For that we are so grateful!!  Just in time too…..as we are now in full rainy season and it rains every single day.

And, we even managed to get our floor installed!  We had purchased sustainably harvested nispero for our floor back in the spring.  Nispero is a tropical hardwood that is nearly unparalleled in strength and durability, as well as beauty.  But when we uncovered it from where it sat under a tarp we discovered that it didn’t look very good.  The boards were crooked, the tongue and grooves were far from perfect, and the wood had yucky watermarks all over it.  The floor company we hired to install it raised their price significantly to agree to work with this wood because it was so difficult.  We went through another great round of despair over the cost and stress of another stage in our project. It was really important to us that floor be NICE, but this wood did not seem NICE at all….. It was so bad that at one point we debated whether to just buy different flooring.  But somehow we perservered, and after the floor was sanded several times……thankfully the beauty of the wood revealed herself and we now find ourselves with a GORGEOUS nispero wood floor.  The color is very sweet with honey and rose tones.  Just like the fruit of nispero, which I have recently tried and it super sweet and rich.

Next on the list of projects was to sand and varnish the yayo posts that are a central feature of our house.  Remember back in the spring when we waited (and stopped our entire construction project) for TWO WHOLE MONTHS for these posts to be delivered????  These are what we waited for.  The reason we fell in love with this wood is because it has lots of undulating curves and grooves in it.  We just discovered that they are fun to look at, but not so fun to sand!  The sanding required days of tedious work.  Luckily for us, we found two new wonderful workers, Xavier and his son Francisco, who did a fantastic job sanding them for us.  Once sanded and varnished, the yayos radiated with beauty, and now I feel glad that we waited for this wood.  Their uniqueness adds a touch of Elvish beauty to our house that is truly magical.

In the midst of these projects, we have succeeded in dealing with the mystifying bureaucracy that is the Costa Rican Electrical Company and we now have electricity in our house!  This is no small feat, and has required more hours that you would believe of going around and around with different versions of information and actual installation of electrical wires and gadgets, plus many more hours waiting in line at the office, plus many glasses of wine and beer drunk to relieve ourselves of the accumulated stress of navigating our way through this mess of a maze. At one point it even involved a whole day of digging up cables that we paid twice to be installed correctly, only to find that in the end we had a muddy mess like this to deal with.  (Actually this photo was taken after it was significantly improved and cleaned up)

 

If this wasn’t enough major news to share, the other big development is that we have moved to a small guest house next door to our construction site, so that we could be present to work and manage the construction better.  This has been a long overdue move and now we are able to fully engage ourselves in all aspects of the manifestation of our house.  From the time we wake up at dawn to when we fall asleep we are thinking, working, or planning some aspect of the completion of our house.  We are planning on moving into our casita November 1, with or without walls.  The walls (or lack thereof) are a whole other story, which I will explain in a future post.  Our move, like most moves tend to be, has been quite stressful and chaotic.  The combined conditions of living on the side of very steep hill, in a very small space with no storage, during the rainy season that involves a lot of mud and wet clothes, and an 18 month old toddler has made our daily reality very dirty, wet and exhuasting.  But hey, as they say here in Costa Rica….PURA VIDA!! 

So as I indicated in our last post, we are pretty stressed out about the construction of our house right now. Since that post, things have unfortunately gotten worse instead of better. We have had a complete falling out with the person who was “managing” our building project, and have decided to not continue working with him and the crew of workers he had provided for us. The ending of that relationship has been stressful to say the least. We have lost quite a bit of sleep and money over it, and probably have a few new gray hairs because of it. Major bummer. I could go into all the gory details of why it didn’t work out, but I’ll spare you the pain. Suffice it to say that one of the things we have learned in this process is not to go into business with someone who you think is your friend but you really don’t know that well. Don’t trust unless you have previous experience to know a person is trustworthy.

Somehow through all the yucky drama of our dissolving business relationship, our house is finally ready for the roof to go on, but now we are totally out of money and don’t know how we are going to pay for the roof. An even bigger major bummer.

Despite our best efforts at making this all work on our own, we have unfortunately arrived at this point where we need to ask for help. All the beautiful wood we have used in the framework of the house is getting damaged daily by the sun and rain, and we need to get the roof on as soon as possible. Perhaps you will consider helping us. In return, you will have a place to stay in beautiful Costa Rica when our house is finished! It is going to be an awesome house in the end, once we get through all this, I promise!

Here is the link to our fundraising campaign: http://www.gofundme.com/bwtfto

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts and we look forward to welcoming you to our home!

Here are a few of the things that we have learned so far in our process of trying to build an eco-friendly house in a Central American country.

1.  It REALLY helps to be fluent in the language if you want to manage a building project.  It’s not just recommended, I now consider it to be mandatory.  If you don’t you will just end up very confused and frustrated and you will not feel in control of your project.

2.  If you are buying wood be sure to visually inspect it before paying for it.  Be sure you have the right to reject pieces of wood if they don’t meet your approval.  Treat it properly before installing it.

3.  To maintain good vibes with workers, lavish your appreciation on them liberally.  Act even more grateful than you really may be.  Not that they don’t deserve it…..our workers have been putting in 10 hours days in very hot temperatures and they definitely deserve praise and appreciation!

4.  Despite your appreciation, know that it is often necessary to double check every thing, even if it doesn’t seem like you need to.  While this can sometimes result in workers feeling like you don’t trust or appreciate them, you still need to be vigilant. We have found errors in things as simple as counting to 12.

5.  Choose very carefully who your builders will be.  Try to find someone who can communicate well (not always an easy task, we have found)  and that you can give direction to.  Try to see samples of their work beforehand.  Ask around about their reputation.  Understand that most carpenters and builders do not have much experience in alternative building techniques and you may have to look hard for people who are experienced in the type of building you want to do.

6.  Have a ton of patience.  Things take longer than you think they should and for some unknown reason, that is just how it is.

 

I’m sure we will have many things to add to this list by the time we are done, stay tuned for more helpful hints from our experience!

After almost two months of “mananas”, our wood has finally arrived and construction on our wee casita is underway again! Yahoo for the Yayos! The wood we have been waiting for sooooooo long is a unique wood referred to here as “yayo”.

It has a twisted, gnarly appearance that gives it a somewhat enchanted quality, like a tiny gnome or fairy could pop out of one of the pocketed undulations in the wood at any moment. We think they are going to make very unique and stunning posts for our casita.

Hopefully, this next phase of construction will go quickly and before long we will have a roof!

Here is a random post about some of the curious differences one finds when living in a foreign country. Many of these things have no major significance, but I find it fascinating when they challenge my assumptions about “how things are done”. “How things are done” is not the same everywhere in the world, which is one of the things that makes traveling so interesting! Take eggs, for example. In the U.S. eggs are packaged in cartons that completely encase the eggs on both top and bottom. The cartons used to be in a type of cardboard but nowadays it is becoming common to see them in several layers of plastic that will be around for thousands of years as trash. Probably when you buy them in a store they will put them by themselves in their own plastic bag(or 2), lest anything else in the bag bump into them and break them.
Here it is common to buy eggs in no carton at all, they are simply put in a small plastic bag and there you go. Or sometimes they are sitting in a cardboard type egg carton but covered on the top only with plastic wrap. And you can buy them by the kilo, so you can decide if you want to buy 3 eggs or 29 eggs, you are not limited to 6, 12 or 18. We Americans are so used to seeing them in so much packaging that we think it must be impossible to transport them any other way without them all breaking. But indeed, I can attest to the fact that I have been buying eggs for many months now with such minimal protection, and so far only one has broken getting it home from the store! And remember, the average road has potholes the size of watermelons everywhere! No matter where you are, it’s a bumpy ride!

But listen to THIS story: last week I was driving on a highway (with big potholes) and a few cars ahead of me I see a small pickup truck with the back truck bed piled HIGH with something. At one point some things fly off the back of the truck and hit the car directly in front of me. That car suddenly puts on their brakes, and I and all the cars behind me all have to slam on our brakes to not have a collision. It was a close call, but luckily, no one collided. The car in front of me gradually managed to pull over to the side of the highway and when I passed it I saw that the front of their windshield was covered in egg cartons and broken eggs! And then I passed the truck and saw that the truck was loaded up with about 30 layers deep of eggs just sitting in cartons with no other packaging or even boxes or crates to contain them. They were just crammed in the truck bed all willy-nilly. They were stacked so high they were almost falling over the top railing of the truck bed!! The top layer was basically higher than the front cab of the truck, which is why it went flying off to cover the windshield of that car! I was totally shocked and amazed at how dangerous that little scenario was.

I’ve been pondering this for some time now, and it seems that if lots and lots of eggs were breaking while being transported to the store and also from the store to people’s houses, people would come up with a better way and put them in more packaging. Economically it just wouldn’t make sense for an egg seller to lose half his eggs on the way to market. So it must be working well enough for everyone…..It’s working just fine for me, as long as I don’t get hit by a few dozen flying eggs as I’m driving down the road!

Other egg differences here…..
the eggs are not sold refrigerated (I learned that eggs can keep for quite some time unrefrigerated, but once you refrigerate them, you need to keep them that way or they will go bad)
There are no white eggs here, just brown.

We spent the whole week last week in a small, colorful little beach town on the southern Caribbean coast. This part of Central America is much different than the rest of the country, with a distinctly island flair that is more similar to other Caribbean islands. There is basically no major commercial development here — no Mariotts or McDonalds, not even a marina. The local people here have had unusual success in saying “NO” to international developers that want to come in and profit off their little slice of heaven here. Instead, there are locals with a bamboo shack on the beach selling coconuts and fruit, lots of innovative, little independent restaurants, colorful street vendors, and unique little cabins, funky hostels and small hotels where you can stay and enjoy the laid back lifestyle of this land of jungle and perfect beaches.

The beaches here are among the best I have seen anywhere. There is one after another, each just as perfect and idyllic as the last, and most of the time you are sharing the beach with only a few other people, if that. The first time I went to this beach at Punta Uva I almost had to rub my eyes in disbelief, it was so perfectly beautiful it seemed like it was out of a movie set or some distant past.

One of the things I love best about this area is that it is flat and there is just one road, and everyone bikes. There are more bicycles than cars on the road. It is wonderful! Where we live it is mountainous and a major, strenuous workout to bike anywhere, but in this area it is a leisurely bike ride to get anywhere you need to go. Our baby LOVES going on the bike and would bring me his bike helmet first thing in the morning as a message “come on Mom, let’s go on the bike!” So every day, that is what we did!

One of the most exciting things we saw while we were there was a mother sloth with her baby just outside the little house we were renting. Apparently she had just crossed the road and when we saw her she was on the ground heading toward a barbed wire fence at the edge of the property. Her baby was hanging onto her belly looking quite cozy and comfortable. She started to climb the fence, and halfway up took a nice long break, looking totally relaxed and calm. It is really something to see a sloth’s face up close. They really do look like they are smiling! And the meditative, peaceful demeanor they have is unlike any other animal I have ever seen. You can’t help but fall madly in love with them and feel inspired to adopt their slow, blissfully relaxed attitude. She did not seem afraid of us, even though we were close enough to her to touch her. This photo was not taken with a telephoto lens, that is how close we were to her!

She stayed “napping” on the fence for so long, we finally left her in peace and went back to what we were doing in the house, but I was wondering how she was going to climb over the barbed wire fence with a baby on her belly…..I went back out to check on her about 10 minutes later and somehow she had succeeded and was all the way at the top of a coconut tree next to the fence!

We loved it so much in this area we are considering going back and spending a month. As long as we have to wait for so long for our house to be finished, we may as well enjoy exploring Central America……

p.s. For those of you wanting cute baby footage, here is Ju-Ju enjoying the ocean in a perfectly baby friendly beach we found that does not have big waves. Alert: naked baby butt! What can I say, it was just too much effort to get a swimsuit on him as he was running around in glee!

DSC 1163 from Wee Happy on Vimeo.

When we first moved down here for good back in September, we knew that we were going to build a small, simple house as quickly and cheaply as possible. We thought that in 2-3 months the structure would be up and we’d be all moved in by early 2014. We had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted, we just needed to get blueprints made up of our ideas and we’d be all set…..

5 months later we finally had the design worked out, blueprints in hand, and all the special stamps required for the building permits. Construction team was in place, and they estimated 3 months to have the house ready to move into.

That was 3 months ago and this is what our house looks like now:

Yep. We have a foundation and the beginnings of the first floor. That’s it.

Why is it taking so long?
Well, let’s see. The foundation took WAY longer than they expected (or told us) because there was a lot of difficult rock to remove to be able to put in the concrete posts. Then there were things like Easter vacation, a whole week off for everyone. And for the last month, NO WORK has even been done on the house because the wood that they need to do the next step is caught in some version of bureaucratic limbo and can not be transported until it has all the necessary papers with the right stamps on them. First we were told they just needed one paper and that paper would arrive “manana” (which literally means “tomorrow”,but here it seems to be used to mean “sometime in the future”). The following week a new paper needed to be sent, and who knows if that one even arrived. The next week they said the wood was coming any day, and this past week they said they need one more paper that should be there manana and the wood will arrive the manana after that…..
So at this point, who knows?! The wood could really be here manana, or it could be 2 more weeks!!

Soooooo……welcome to building a house in Central America! Pura Vida! Now I understand why when we first started our building process and were telling people who have built houses here before that we were going to have our house done in 3 months that they all laughed at us.

A note on the excessive paperwork for the wood….because we are using wood that has fallen naturally in the jungle somewhere it needs extra permits because they need proof that it was not illegally cut from a protected forest. If we were just buying cut lumber from a lumberyard we would have our wood already. As frustrating as it is, I appreciate the local regulations around not over harvesting rare trees. Also, it is theoretically possible our house could be done in 3 months if we had every little detail taken care of before construction started and were going with a larger construction team. We are taking care of some parts of the general contracting ourselves and no doubt things could be done more efficiently than they are.

So now that we are on the “one year plan” for completion of our house, I’m starting to relax a bit more about the whole process. It was hard for me to let go of the time estimate we originally had, but clearly that is lesson number 1 in building a house (it always takes longer than you think.) Or is “it always costs more than you hoped” the number 1 lesson? Anyway, we still have a lot of design decisions to make about the interior of the house and this give us more time to really consider details that we want and source materials for the next stage of building. And, it just so happens that we are in a big cash flow crunch, so it’s all perfect. (grrrr….)

Well hello everyone! I know, it’s been awhile since we wrote. Lots has happened. Maybe someday I’ll get around to the full update here on the blog, but in brief, we had a baby, moved to Central America, and now we are building a house! So it’s not like I wasn’t writing because there wasn’t anything going on!

Today I’d like to start writing about the construction process of our wee house. A little house is called a “casita” in Spanish, and so I’ll be referring to our wee casita. Our casita is indeed wee, coming in at a whopping 500 sq. feet (plus a bunch of storage in the basement) You may think that is small, but it’s HUGE compared to our sailboat! One of the long term advantages of having lived on a very tiny sailboat is that everything else in comparison is so big!!

As is the tendency, we do have bigger dreams for the future. The long term plan for our casita is to live in it while we plan and build a bigger house on the same lot that will eventually be our permanent home, and the casita will be a guest house or rental when people like YOU come to visit us! But first things first. Right now just getting the casita done feels like an extraordinary task, given that this is the first time we have ventured into the realm of house building and we are doing it in a foreign language with almost no money.

One of our main priorities in building this house is that the materials be sourced from local, sustainable materials. We are building our house in a newly forming “eco-village” and the entire community is focused on sustainable, green design, which we are very excited about. Luckily for us, in our community there are some people who are amazing resources for us to find materials that are not commonly available on the larger market. Through the connections of our building manager and neighbor we are getting amazing tropical hardwoods that are all sustainably harvested. Almost all of the wood is coming from trees that have fallen naturally on their own, so we are not contributing to any deforestation through our choice to build our house with wood. Some of that wood is even coming from right down the road. We recently went to visit the site where some very large trees were knocked down by a flooding river several years ago. These trees are now being cut and hauled over to our building site, where some of them will become our roof rafters!

Here is a video showing some of the boards being hauled up from the river by some very hardworking men. They had to cross a tricky river with large rocks, go under another large fallen tree (I had a difficult time understanding why they didn’t cut up that tree first so it would be easier to get the wood farther down the hill out. They had some reason that didn’t make sense to me in Spanish) and up a steep hill to bring the wood to the road where it would make the journey of about 5 miles to our building site.

DSC 0912 from Wee Happy on Vimeo.

We will be posting more soon about the interesting, sometimes arduous process of building a unique house in a foreign country! And we’ll post cute pictures of our adorable baby too! Just not in this post….

It was time for our sejourn on the Pacific Coast to come to an end. We decided to make the return to San Jose a grand adventure by flying on one of the local airlines. There are several flights a day with Nature Air to get from Quepos/Manuel Antonio to San Jose. It wasn’t really that much more expensive than hiring a driver to take us in a car, and we were super excited to see the landscape from the air in a small plane.
And when I say small plane, I mean small, as in very WEE! It only seats 10 people, and, as it turned out we were the only 2 passengers on board! So we got the best seats available, right behind the pilots.

Of course Cap’t K was so excited, as he is a true lover of flight. I was excited too, although I have to say I was also very scared. Especially when we hit some turbulence coming over a ridge of mountains and we practically all hit our heads on the ceiling of the plane! But the view was fantastic, and it was thrilling to be so high in the air in such a small aircraft. I don’t think we stopped smiling the whole time, which wasn’t really very long….the flight only last about 30 minutes!

All in all, we were thrilled with our little experience and would gladly ride on Nature Air again.

Once we were back in San Jose, we reconnected for a few days with our sweet friend Eileen, staying at a little bed and breakfast for a few days that is owned by a friend of hers. Then we got to move into our new “casita” in Ciudad Colon, where we will be staying put until after the birth of the baby. Ciudad Colon is a cute little town on the outskirts of San Jose, right on the edge of the mountains. The little house where we are staying is literally on the edge of a steep mountain ridge, and on the edge of town. It’s a great location that makes you feel like you are way out in nature, but yet town is just a kilometer away.

The house is basic, and yet has everything we need to be comfortable, including a hammock on the porch! Here is what it looks like:

Shortly after we settled in we met with our new midwife that we have decided to use for the birth.

Her name is Rebecca and she came out to visit us along with our doula, or birth assistant, Natalie. I think that between these two fine women, the outstanding Cap’t K, and the doctor we met with a few weeks ago in San Jose as back-up (as well as the owner of the property, who is a retired midwife and doctor) I have an excellent birthing support team!! I feel so grateful and happy to get “nested” now in this nice comfy place knowing that our plan is in place.

Even though this area is known for adventure travel, we are not here for that reason….I at least, am relaxing and laying low more than I probably ever have in my whole life! And loving it!

Here we are in beautiful Central America!

In keeping with our desire to have this experience in Central America be about easeful retreat in preparation for the birth of our child, we have chosen a different way to travel than we normally do. We have been taking the easy route, relaxing as much as possible, keepin’ it simple. All my life I have traveled off the beaten path and was proud of being able to rough it. Camping, backpacking, sailing on a tiny boat, suffering… But not this time. I’m 8 months pregnant and all about cushiness and relaxation! For example, even though we took the cheap-o red eye flight down here, we made arrangements ahead of time to have a driver waiting for us at the airport to take us to our hotel(and bring our suitcases upstairs) the first night. No stressful car rentals or driving for us! (travel tip if you are going to Central America for the first time: do not try to rent a car! It’s just not worth the stress of driving in a place with no street signs. Cabs are not that expensive. Just get a cab.)

Our first day was spent taking care of the most important business at hand — getting ourselves established with a doctor and hospital here. We had planned in advance to go with an American OB/GYN doctor and a private American style hospital in San Jose. We also decided to hire an American doula, or birth assistant, to help us navigate our way through the health system here as well as be present for the birth, assisting us in whatever way we need. We immediately loved the doula, and felt at ease and confident about working with her. The doctor we felt a little less enthusiastic about, although he is definitely competent and friendly. Now that we are here, we are going to investigate a few other care providers as well.

The next day we headed for our first destination, a small town on the Southern Pacific Coast. We traveled with a small group of people who were also headed to the event we were going to, a small fire circle festival. What a lovely place! Located on a steep mountainside with a stunning view of the Pacific Ocean, Selva Armonia featured beautifully designed permaculture gardens in a lush jungle setting. They are completely powered by solar energy and the buildings were unique open structures made of bamboo and cob.

And the ForestDance event turned out to be a nourishing feast of soul food, with beautiful, loving people creating music, dancing, and sacred ceremony together for a whole week. Just what we had been craving!

They even had a special ceremony one night to bless us and our baby. I don’t know if I have ever felt so honored and blessed in my life. Our baby received some very special energy there that I’m sure will affect him as we prepare for his entrance into the world!

After ForestDance ended, we traveled with our dear friend Eileen up to the area around Manuel Antonio National Park. We found a fabulous little rental apartment in Quepos, a small town on the coast. We had a 2 bedroom apartment with a balcony overlooking the ocean, as well as a sweet little swimming pool and patio area in our “front yard”. It was delightful!

I had injured my foot quite badly on our last day at Selva Armonia, and I was hobbling around painfully the whole week, barely able to put any weight on my foot at all. So I barely left the property the whole week, instead lounging by the pool and taking it super easy. Cap’t K started calling me Gimpy Blimpy, since I wasn’t moving around all that easily even before I hurt my foot due to my ballooning belly, which is really huge at this point!

One day we all went on a touristy boat ride, just to be able to GET OUT ON THE WATER, which of course we miss. (although I’ve been thrilled to be enjoying the comforts of a real house, like a big bed, hot water, and flat floors) The giant catamaran tour took us out in the ocean where we were likely to see humpback whales and dolphins. We had the treat of seeing a mama and a baby humpback whale jumping out of the water and splashing their tails.

On our last day we did make an effort to go out and visit a famous National Park, which is the most popular national park in Central America and reputedly “one of the most beautiful places in the world”. There are two stunning beaches there, surrounded by lush jungle and populated by monkeys, blue morpho butterflies, amazing birds, and hundreds of other species of fabulous creatures. The highlight of the day for me was getting to see a 3-toed sloth.

What a charming animal. You can’t help but fall madly in love with them! I felt a particular affinity to it’s slow moving nature, since the heat and my late pregnancy status has been making me feel VERY slow indeed!

The walk through the park turned out to be bit much for me, and I was completely exhausted by the time we made it to the beach, but it was worth it to swim in the ocean on one of the most idyllic tropical beaches in the world!