Life Transplanet

Don’t worry, we did spend some time at the beach too!

Well we had a list of things we wanted to do on this trip; some for fun, some for utility. Of course, we often put off the fun and do the work first, but I think we did pretty good overall.

Here were our goals: what we didn’t get to are in red, and what we accomplished are in green.

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK) (A reminder to be careful what you wish for!!)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)

So as you can see, we got quite a lot of the major items taken care of in the time we were there. In addition to these things we also:

*Found our trees that we had planted last time and cleared away the vines and growth from around them
*Weed-wacked the whole fenced area and a little beyond the fence line
*Met with a variety of friends in Rincon/Moca for dinners and poker
*Tried new restaurants
*Planted more sprouted coconut palms
*Planted our avocado pits from the Avocado Party (we’ll see what happens!)
*Found a nearby hardware store in Rincon with prices better than Home Depot and a discount day (10% off on Saturdays) for women!

We still haven’t quite made a decision one way or the other about the wood house. We go back and forth and forth and back, sometimes in the same conversation. There are so many pros and cons to either decision. Getting the bees out of the house really helped us feel more comfortable in it and around it. We could see more potential, and less of a desire to “just get rid of it”. Still not sure though. We would have a long way to go to make it feel like home. Next up for it will be bat removal!! Yikes.

I think we have a pretty decent plan to get the cabana very livable and then we can make our big decision on the wood house. It is definitely cool to have a wood house, as it makes it seem more like Hawaii-style housing: warm and inviting and less like concrete storm bunkers, but as we have seen with all the animals in the house it may be a little TOO inviting.  As you can tell we’re still in limbo on that one.

The wood house from the roof of the cabana

In addition to the bats and the bees, we also had some unexpected canine visitors on our last day there, but they were friendly:

It’s funny how easy it is to become complacent and ungrateful for all the things you have in your life. Even all the little things. Like screens on your windows, hot water in your shower, consistent electricity and Internet, and running water in your kitchen sink. You realize how great you have it once you no longer do. Another of our goals on this trip was to hook up hot water to the shower and get water to the kitchenette sink in the cabana. We are slowly making this place more and more comfortable, and we are clearly appreciating all those little things from back home more as well.

Hot water heater showerhead!
For the hot water there are a variety of ways you can do that here. There is a reason why houses in the tropics don’t have hot water. Houses here in the Caribbean tropics of Rincon/Puerto Rico do not need a furnace so there is no central heating components (or any natural gas bills) but along with that means there is usually no huge water heater hooked in. So you can get an instant-on, a solar water heater, or if you just want a warm-ish shower, then you can get an electric water heater that attaches to the shower head and plugs in to the wall. While not the “best” per se, it is definitely the easiest for a do-it-yourselfer like us.   Britton can tell a little more about the shower water heater, but all I know is that it is SOOO much better than “YIKES! It is so cold in here” and just splashing water on you to avoid the complete chill-down. When we were here last summer it wasn’t so bad to be without hot shower water because everything was a lot hotter, but here in the winter it cools down to the low 70s at night with a slight chill in the air making it not so welcoming to jump into water that is nearly 30 degrees colder than your own body temperature.

We also set about getting water to the sink in the kitchenette of the cabana. We were surprised that there wasn’t water already hooked up when we bought the place since there was a sink and cabinets. So we contacted a plumber (Julio) who had been recommended to us by a real estate agent here. I can see why he recommended him. He and his wife were on time, friendly, gave us an estimate and stuck to that estimate, was a steady worker and spoke English (and Spanish) and even gave us a receipt! When we noticed a small leak, he came right back and fixed the problem. Service with a smile.

Here’s under the sink area before (with a hole drilled)

Julio and his wife working outside

If we had tools and knowledge of how to work with concrete we might be tempted to try and do this ourselves, but as we don’t it was nice having some professional help. Plus it took all day long -from 9am to 4pm- for the expert to do this work, so we don’t even want to guess what it would have taken us (Britton). While it cost us money, it is an investment in the property. We also found out while he was back there working in the concrete that it is plumbed for a solar water heater so we may install one in the future. Then instead of just the shower having hot water, so would the bathroom and kitchenette sink. But as it is now, we are happy to have running water in general!!

We love running water!! The finished product

Because this is post-construction, the pipes are exposed, but it is the back of the house and not visible unless you actually go back there.  He had to hammer drill (is that the right tool name?) through the concrete in order to tie into the pipes from the bathroom and then connect the outgoing water to the main pipe. (I am not a plumber, so I am not sure if that is the right jargon, but you get the idea.) As you can see, the piping doesn’t need to be buried because it never freezes here. All those little things we’re not used to in Colorado

Under the sink now

On our last trip here in May/June we managed to get ahold of someone from the University of Mayaguez to help us remove the bees that were in the walls of the upstairs bedroom in the wood house (you can read more of the Bee Backstory here). In summary, we found out that there wasn’t just one hive of bees, but FOUR! So our new university bee friends were able to remove one of the colonies, but couldn’t get the other three. When we came back for this trip we really wanted to get the remaining three hives out of the walls.

We tried calling our bee guy, Jose again, but he apparently didn’t have time or didn’t want the work, so we thought we wouldn’t be able to get the rest of the bees out this trip. Then we lined up the plumber to work on the sink in the studio cabana (we’ll write about that later) and just happened to tell him about the bees in the house. He said that while doing plumbing he often runs into bees in the water lines/boxes and knew of a guy who loved bees and could easily remove them for us (for a fee).

Staying away from the bees-at the beach

And so that is how we met Enrique. Enrique definitely does love bees and was enthusiastic and ready to remove all the rest of the
three hives right then and there. He went in to do the job with no bee suit, no gloves or any protection. He apparently just tore down the wall panels where the bees were located, grabbed the queen with his bare hands and the rest of the bees followed into the cardboard boxes. He made really quick work of it.

He told us they would be agitated in the move and that we might want to leave for a few hours to avoid being stung.  So in that time we went down to the beach and hung out, got some food and came back. In the same time it took the methodical, cautious and precise Jose to remove one hive, Enrique took out three! We returned and there were a lot of bees still buzzing around but Enrique assured us that it was safe to go into the house to see his finished work because the remaining bees wouldn’t sting if they didn’t have a queen to protect (I was still a little freaked out by all of them buzzing around my body).

He had removed all of the bees from inside the walls as well as their honey and comb. He offered us to keep the honey and comb, but we weren’t sure what to do with it. We did get to taste it, and it was really good -sweet and waxy! Britton managed to take a little video of Enrique showing us the removal and the honeycomb afterward. We are definitely relieved to have the bees gone and hopefully by tomorrow all the orphaned ones will realize their queen is gone and they will scram as well.  Although we are a little sad to not have all the thousands of little pollinators working on our fruit trees. Maybe someday we’ll get a hive of our own…just not inside our house

We went down to Home Depot in Mayaguez (the nearest main city with all the modern amenities you could think of) and picked up a trimmer and some more supplies to finish putting screens on the windows of the cabana. Then Britton got to work trimming the whole “front yard”.

It’s not really a yard in the same way you would think of a lawn in the states. The front area is more of a parking place, but with all the growth from the last 8 months it made it like a yard. Before he whacked the heck out of it though, I wanted to check if there were any plants that I knew of that were good. I still don’t know all my tropicals as well as I do my backyard Colorado plants, but I can tell a mango tree from a citrus or a banana (and there are a lot of mango seedlings too!).

So without further ado: Like sand through an hourglass, these are the weeds of our yard. Please help me find out what these are or correct me if I’m wrong in my guess:

Not sure what this is, but it’s really pretty!

The Traveler’s Palm has about three babies sprouted at the bottom of it.

We found more sprouted coconut palms and the one we found and planted last time we were here looks to be doing good.

Here’s the one we planted last time we were here. I know these are coconut palms but does anyone know the type? I think they are the “water coconut” variety and not the meat coconut. How can you tell the difference? How can you tell when they are seedlings?

Anyone know what this is? Is it edible?

Mother-In-Law’s Tongue -this is a houseplant in the states but here it is a yard weed!!

There’s a ton of these types of plants on the steep side of the property. I’m thinking maybe Ornamental Ginger plant? Is the ginger in ornamental gingers edible or good for you?

These aren’t weeds, but they are Mandarin Oranges we found on a tree on the property!!

This one looks just like houseplants I have seen often. Not sure of the name though.

This is just what we found on the first 1/4 acre. We still need to trim down a little further and see the plants we planted last time and take off some of the vines from other fruit trees that we know of on the remaining 3 3/4 acres! It’s amazing how just looking at weeds can be so fascinating. I guess that’s why we go places out of our comfort zone. We learn something new from even the smallest things.

Well….We tried to head out to Puerto Rico today but the Universe stopped us.  We have our bags packed, our plane tickets bought, a rental car reserved and we had been screened by security at the airport.   We even got on the plane!  There we waited.  It was announced that something was wrong with the air conditioner.  Then after about 2 hours of sitting in the plane at the gate, it was announced that something had to be fixed that controlled the cabin pressure.

I am more inclined to think that the pilots didn’t have AC and they didn’t want to fly..lol.

So we had to de-plane, reschedule our trip for tomorrow and call my mom to pick us up.  (Thanks Moms! Cassie’s mom for taking us twice and my mom for the emergency pick up today)

Waiting in Line at DIA to Reschedule Our Flight

Hopefully things work out better tomorrow.  We are going to get in touch with the airline too, as they wasted an entire day for us.  Maybe they will respond with something in return, but I’ve never gone thru this so I don’t know what that might be?

Until Tomorrow (DIA)

It reminds me of a Dr Seuss book I read once (an excerpt from Oh, The Places You’ll Go)”

You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!That’s not for you!

Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.


Waiting in the Living Room (aka our Hotel Lobby)