Quandary #1 - "There are some things you must not live with - the Kitchen"

It's been 7 plus years since we opened our front gate to our first guest. His name was John and, as he was good friends with the former owner, he forgave us our initial cluelessness. In response to a question from John, we'd say something like, "well we just got here, what did she do?" It helped a lot that John had been here longer than us and could teach us where the on/off switches and such were.

"Yo John, is this what she made for breakfast?"

Over the next few weeks in the blog, I wanted to ponder some of the "quandaries" we have dealt with at the Pura Vida. Some of these are obvious, some are lessons learned and others were great revelations based on circumstances we had no control over.  Of course we must not forget serendipitous events that we were lucky enough to stumble upon.

The first of these I will label "there are some things you must not live with - the old Kitchen". If, one day, you decide to buy a small hotel in the neo-tropics you will be faced with many decisions for which you will not have the band width, the money or the experience to make the correct decision.

The story began like this:

CHAPTER 1
5:35am  DAWN IN COSTA RICA, EVERYWHERE

It's 5:35am, it's dawn in Costa Rica everywhere.  Maximus Optimist (our 4 month old baby Tico Shepherd) is stirring - not the best sign - he is pretty much house trained now, but you never can tell. His stirring means I have a mission to better fertilize the far end of the garden and our future parking lot.

It will only become a parking lot if we can sneak in some constructores early one weekend to clip some trees, level some ground a little, cut a 30 feet hole in the "living fence", install (quietly) an electric gate for the coches de huespedes, make a small concrete ramp over the ditch from the road and maybe slightly reroute a part of the stream (aka municipal water pipe leakage) behind the Katydid Casita.

If we do this quietly one weekend, nobody will complain.

But back to the house training of our young boy Max.

It is 5:40am. I stumble over Max, bump into a stack of boxes "about me height" and curse quietly as I stub my toe on the residue of a leather dog bone. I slide over one my socks which had somehow become a chew for Max. It is obvious we had only been here a few days as, today, I don't even know what socks are for.

Teeth cleaned, fast not gleaming. I grab any item of clothing -a shirt from a box and some shorts, grab the sandals off the "me height" stack of boxes yet to be unpacked and me and Max head down the short staircase.

We live in a fortress guarded by big dogs and iron bars and gates at every orifice. Which means EVERYTHING has a lock or a padlock. Every lock is different, every padlock is different and some areas of the house have not been visited lately due to this small challenge. I sometimes feel like a medieval dungeon keeper as I fuss through keys of many shapes and sizes trying to access something that I'm not sure goes anywhere useful.

The stairs to the roof, for example, have not been accessible for 2 weeks due to the loss of a key to that padlock. Well, you may ask, who needs stairs to the roof anyway?

Turns out we do! Seems as the constuctores tore out part of the kitchen ceiling, they discovered that not only was the ceiling rotten to the core, there were also large chinks in the roof itself 2 or 3 feet above it.

As the internal ceiling was being ripped out, I asked the supremely stupid question to "el constructores" . . . viz: "If I can see light through the roof, does that mean it leaks?" Fortunately, el constructores speak absolutely no English except "good morning, Senor Berni" and "is it hora feliz (happy hour)?" Which means my question about the huecos in the techo (holes in the roof) is not taken terribly seriously.

To continue. After walking gingerly down the dimly lit stairs to the iron gate (part of fortress Pura Vida's second line of defense), I feel around into the wooden cubbyhole near the door to the back stairs. There I find 4 keys, I insert one in the big brass padlock and open sesame. My lucky day perhaps?

Max rushes down headlong into his buddy Toro who heard us open the door milliseconds before we even touched the door. Toro is one very very large and very alert (and potentially dangerous) canine. Toro is all German shepherd with an extra large head and shoulders supporting a jaw with teeth from a movie set. I should mention here a line from an old Peter Sellars movie, "but he is not my dawg!".  We are boarding him for the previous owner.

Toro and Max greet each other like long lost lovers - Max licks, Toro growls a deep menacing "IAMTHEBOSS" statement of fact. Off they run across the new restaurant floor covered in paw marks now from some nightly frolicking by Toro (the master shepherd), Tarzan (the subservient shepherd), Sugar (a
dachsund trained as a guard dog) and Blackie (a dachsund with no training in anything).  I should note that Sugar, Tarzan and Blackie are not our dogs either but that's another story.

This is the canine managerie that makes up the nighttime guard patrol. Max leads and Toro follows out onto the "FUTURE-HOME-OF-A-SMALL-POOL-IF-WE-CAN-AFFORD-TO-PUT-ONE-IN".

Toro hears a sound at the far gate 2 seconds before the small animal that made it, made it. He turns on warp speed and 1 second before the sound reaches me is already doing 25 mph leaping bushes and small trees towards the back gate.

Max and I ignore the commotion - we have a fertilization run to do.

Later we head on up to the Casa at a gallop. I fool myself that this is good exercise. Jose-Luis (the gardener/manager) is up now and both of us proceed to make breakfast for the two guests from last night. They are John and Dee in from Houston, Texas on an expedition to buy wood bowls and crafts and import some to the USA. The guest has stayed here 10 nights out of his 11 in country - is this a trend I hope? He has also agreed to be featured on our web site if ever I get the web editor working again in this country. My travails with the local internet service, the problems with the electricity *(not to mention the 2 prong plug problem) and the problems with our local phone (that was somehow simultaneously connected to 4 houses) all have conspired to kill off my web editing aspirations for the last few weeks.

The bell rings - the "ding dong" chime means it is the front door. It is 7am and it is "the egg man" - I wave at him and mumble "no huecos" or "huevos" or something. My Spanish is no help but my gestures are working well. The Texans show up to eat before heading out for Sarchi. We apologize for whatever we have none of right now.....e.g. "no tables", "no kitchen" and we apologize for things we have too many off....such as "too many things that crawled over their roof last night" etc. They are happy with the place and will be back in a day or so to stay again. Go figure.

The bell rings again - a different tune - the "brrrrrrrrrrrrrr" sound means it is the back gate. It is 7:15am and it is los contructores. We hired them a couple of weeks ago (about 4 days after we arrived) and they have been at it ever since. They come in by bus or taxi every morning - they live 2km away in Alajuela and have no car. They also have little in the way of tools, clothes or anything else to call their own. Their leader is Ruben, the master electrician or Arnoel, the master builder. It is not clear who leads really. I really wouldn't know a master builder if I fell over one, but I know when I see classy work and they are it! [7 years later your editor would like you to know that the previous sentence is that of a deranged and excessively optimistic gringo so happy to have arrived in his new country and actually see any kind of progress. In hindsight, our readers should know that we had to pretty much undo everything our first constructores did.]

I say, "Buenos Dias! Arnoel!". Arnoel says, "Good Morning, Senor Berni!" - we exchange strong early morning handshakes accompanied by genuine "Costa Rican welcome" smiles - they have worked for 10 days straight for 12 hours every day.

We try to get them to take some time off but they have nowhere to go.  They refuse. They'd rather work. All three have residency problems and are trying to start a new business with a whole lot of sweat equity. Ruben has a wife and young son, maybe 10 in Pereira, Columbia. Ruben misses them so much - it is so sad that this man has to start again from nothing after running his own construction company

Arnoel has a girlfriend in Medelin, Columbia who he will marry soon - we are invited to the wedding. He is a political refugee fleeing the narco-trafickers. El Cubano is the third member of the trio - his hometown is in the only town in Cuba that we visited a couple of years back – Santiago. Our digital photos of Cuba brought tears to his eyes one night over a few beers. [It should be noted by your editor that 7 years on, I now believe pretty much nothing Arnoel ever told me but he was a pretty fun guy.]

After the "good mornings" the constuctores head off to the kitchen where "who knows what" awaits them in the old walls, old ceilings or old floors of the Casa. After living with the kitchen for a few weeks we had finally decided to rip out some of the old concrete shelves, craters, pits and creature dens that housed the inherited kitchen accoutrements. Strange things went on after we left the kitchen at night and, whatever it was, it had to be exorcised. It's not that we wanted to do it but the potential of whatever lurked in there needed to be banished for once and for all.

It is 8:15am. The "ding dong" rings at the front. It is Walter, the carpenter from Tuetal Norte - our village (I believe).

[Small editorial digression, it really tells you how clueless we were - we didn't even know what village we lived in. This is actually easier to accomplish than you may think in a country with no addresses.] I'm not really sure (at the time) if we are in Tuetal Sur or Norte. Walter has the new kitchen cabinet to replace the 30 year old gold Formica monster in the kitchen. He has four people with him and a friends truck. An older guy, maybe his father, two 15 year old boys from the village and a 4 year old - an observer from what I could tell. Walter owns no truck or car just a 175cc motorcycle - hard to be a carpenter on a 175cc bike, I must imagine, but he always smiles anyway.

Ligia (the maid of 6 years inherited from the previous owner of the Pura Vida) has reserved the old white and gold Formica monster (with creature holes in its base) that is soon to be demolished to make way for the hyperspace bypass (sorry, new cabinet). Ligia lives in humble dirt floor surroundings - we pay her about $1.20 an hour, which is a significant raise over her previous pay. She has six kids and a drunk husband who periodically shows up sober to help cut trees or repair a fence. We then pay him about $1.05 (400 colones) an hour for a day of toil.

He then spends this on some kind of cactus juice or beer, gets drunk and comes back to hang on the front gate calling for "Jose, Jose, Jose"..... we tell him "Jose no esta" and he stumbles off down the road to Tuetal Norte (or Sur?) looking for someone who will listen to him. Two days later he'll be back cutting bushes and the saga will repeat.

Walter unloads the new cabinets he made by hand - a lovely feel to the external wood, cedar, although, to save on cost, the guts of the cabinet is plywood with a nice light stain. The cabinet will take up a whole wall maybe 4 meters long by 3 meters high - it will house our pantry and it will be impervious to whatever ate the old formica cabinet.

We hope.

Walter grabs a hammer and starts hacking at the old white and gold Formica monster. I mumble something in pidgin English to him about how Ligia had been looking forward to her new cabinet that he has just smashed up one side. He points out that this thing is anchored by screws and nuts and glue and nails and (I think) he tells me in Spanish that he has no devices suitable for removal of nuts or screws or glue or nails other than his large hammer. At least that is what I think he tells me. I have many such conversations in this country.

I dash off looking for some wrenches for the nuts and maybe a small crowbar I remember packing - alas I find none of these things - our container of boxes (which arrived a few days earlier) has left a box residue everywhere and nothing at all is to be found anywhere.

I return to the battle zone, Walter is oblvious - the white and gold monster must die and it is. He has now acquired the vigorous assistance of Jose-Luis who is mashing the other side of it. Bang, bang - bang, bang - smash, bang, boing......bang!!! The wall behind is not of concrete like the rest of the place - it resembles 3/4" thick cardboard. Holes in the wall are appearing - holes big enough to let in small cats and very large insectos.

This is not good.

From a future episode: