Life Transplanet

We ended up going to a bar nearby called the Rum Shack.  Well I guess it is more of a resort with a bar, its behind the Lazy Parrot.  Cassie and I walked over and watched the band and hung out for a while.  It seems to be a pretty popular tourist location. 

I didn’t catch the name of the band, but they were pretty good. 

We then spent today looking at a few properties.  Both were about what we expected.  One of the smaller places in Aguada was nice, but a little on the high priced side.  It has a few acres but its on the side of a hill.  It is terraced and could work out for growing plants pretty well and that is one of our requirements.  We would offer a lot lower than what they are asking for. 

Also since we were by the beach, we went again.  Here is another gallery.

I am working on a video to upload, its huge though so it will take some time. 

We woke up a little earlier today (around 9am which still feels like 6am in Colorado) so that we could drive down to Rincon again and meet up with Nick and Miri. We met at the Rincon organic farmers’ market then went up to their house in the hills and out to lunch at the Rum Shack. It was great to talk with a couple who has made the move and talk about the funny things about Puerto Rico and what makes it an interesting place to live. Their house is beautiful with an outstanding view. Hopefully we will meet up again while we are here and they can come meet with us in the mountains. It was nice seeing them in person and making new friends.

Later that afternoon Britton and I thought we would go to the beach since we were here anyway, so we went to Steps and Tres Palmas beach to watch some of the surfers. The beach is pretty rough since it has a coral reef breaker, so after hanging out there for a while, we went back to the main baleanario and swam for a while. Now we are back at Surf’s Up, but Nick and Miri told us that we can get free Wi-Fi at the Rincon main square which will come in handy I am sure. Anyway, we have been having a great time and Miri also gave us the name of a real estate agent to talk to as well so we might do that in the coming days too. We have been playing it day by day, but I think we need to get back to Awilda because she picked some gandules and wants to have us try arroz con gandules with her and Estrella tonight.

We arrived here without really any delays or problems. Our flights were on time and we arrived in San Juan around 8pm on Wednesday evening. We sat next to a nice man on the plane named Dios Dado who invited us to visit him in Vega Baja sometime during our stay. We got our rental car after the car saleman dude tried to talk us into $10 a/day more for liability insurance. We called our insurance agent and three of our friends who work in insurance while were waiting in the lobby to finally find out that no, we didn’t need it. So thanks everyone who saved us $150!

We then got lost and wound up in Guaynabo City when we were trying to get on the 2 or the 22 to get out of the Metro area. Finally we did and drove to Arecibo where we stayed at The Villa Real Hotel and arrived there at about midnight Puerto Rico time, which is 3 hours later than Colorado. We basically had the choice of sleeping in our car or in that hotel. I am not sure which would have been better! The hotel was cheap, but awful. The sheets were gross, the floors sticky and the shower had NO hot water. But we were tired and we fell asleep pretty easily even though it was really noisy outside.

The next morning we drove to Lares and proceeded to get very lost. Lost in the jungle, for sure. At least it was daytime though. Even though Cassie had been there before, she couldn’t remember how to get there and we kept losing cell reception with Awilda who was trying to talk us through it. Finally after going around in circles and nearly winding up in Las Marias, we arrived at the property.

There are a lot of flowers and plants. Here is a coffee (cafe robustica) plant that is in bloom. They smell really really nice!

There are a lot of poor people that live in the mountains around the property. They seem to be happy and definitely aren’t freezing or starving. They just dont have new clothes and some people dont have teeth. The property is very beauitful and there is a lot of food just spilling off the trees and onto the ground. Most people in here have satelliteTV for entertainment. The small guest house is nice. I think they did a lot of cleanup before we got there (sweeping, grass cutting and wiping things down). The water in the shower is a lot warmer than at the hotel we stayed at. Cassie didn’t scream this time when she got in the water.

Today we went for a drive to San Sebastion and Rincon. So far this is the first chance we’ve had at getting online. We are at the Surfs Up coffee shop.   We stopped at the beach for a while.  We may look at some properties near the beach while we are here too.  It took a little less than an hour to get to a beach, but when we got there we realized we would like to spend a lot of time there.  The title still hasn’t gone thru on the property we are looking at so we still have an option of buying something else if we prefer.  Not sure at this point.