Life Transplanet

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

Yesterday we set out to complete one of our goals for the trip, to get the property ownership transferred to our name for tax purposes.   The Centro de Recaudacion de Ingresos Municipales (CRIM) or translated, Agency for the Collection of Municipal Taxes is where you get this done.

I am never quite sure what to expect when we go to government agencies here but they all generally have the same florescent lit waiting rooms with lots of people waiting, standing or sitting in plastic chairs.   I showed up to the CRIM office in Aguadilla in the afternoon.  Cassie got antsy and left me waiting in line and she went outside for a bit to walk around -as the ocean was just across the street.  I was standing in line…waiting…then I started to question if I was in the right line.  I noticed that everyone around me had papers that looked like bills….The room with the chairs had people with manila envelopes.  Then it hit me..”AH….I am not in the right place!”

I asked a lady if she spoke English.  She responded no…So I did my best to ask if we were in the line to pay.  I simply asked “Pagar?”.  She responded “Si”.  So I then pointed at the room and asked “registro?”.   She said something to the effect of “Si”  and talk to the ”recepcionista”.

I understand more Spanish than I speak and I need to improve, but I was working my way around none the less..lol. Since I didn’t have my “muleta” (Cassie- my crutch) I had to make do.

I spoke to the recepcionista and she put me on the list.  Cassie came back and joined me in the waiting room. We ended up being the very last ones to be helped that day.  I think normally we would have been turned away, but not sure.  I got the impression that they gave out numbers earlier in the day, then stopped at some point.

We waited for about an hour then spoke to a CRIM employee that was doing the change of ownership for us.  We were taken into a little space with about four employees, in drab cubicles, bad lighting and boxes piled to the ceiling. There is a form to fill out and some questions you have to answer.  They also made a copy of the deed we took with us.

Since we had 4 cuerdas there is an extra charge.  We weren’t sure about the exemption stuff or any other legal status issues, we just kind of went in blind.  We most likely ended up paying too much, it came out to $38/yr for property tax.

Honestly, I was just glad to get it taken care of.  For $38 I’d just pay it to be done.  In the future we can just pay CRIM online like the water and electric bill. That would be awesome to never have to go back there again. I hate waiting in lines at government agencies no matter where I am…and when there is a beautiful beach on the other side of an imposing and depressing concrete government building it really made us want to leave.  All in all though this wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

This blog post about what to expect at CRIM was helpful for me too here’s the link.

Today is my birthday so we figured we’d go out to dinner. Not so easy. A lot of places are closed on Monday and Tuesday in Rincon.  We ended up making a nice little tour of the town stopping at various restaurants..lol.

Checking to see if Casa Isleña was open…Nope.

Checking to see if the Harbor Resturant was open…..Nope.

We tried Ode to the Elephants too, but they aren’t open till Wed.  So finally we went to Villa Cofresi.  That turned out just fine.  Sun setting over the ocean, live music, good food and even a piece of birthday cheese cake.

I got to thinking about it and I don’t think that I’ve spent a birthday outside of Colorado!  So this was a first for me.  It’s been an interesting life and journey thus far.  I didn’t ever expect to have accomplished half the things that I have!  It’s fun to look back on life and look forward to more and celebrate the opportunity to be alive.  That’s the best gift of all!  Well that and this table to sit at:

This year’s birthday gift (very useful)

We have been making the place a little more comfortable each day.  Today we got a table from Sams.  It’s nice to have a place to sit other than the bed..lol.  Plus it’s an outdoor table so we can use it on the roof/patio too.  We got an electric shower head / heater as well, that I will post more about later on.  Suffice to say it’s more comfortable to have warm water rather than cold swimming pool water in the morning!

Overall it was one of my favorite birthdays!

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.

We got into Aguadilla at about 1:30am last night (local time).  The flight was uneventful to Newark and from Newark into Aguadilla.  We got our rental car and headed for the property.  It was pretty dark and traffic was light (obviously).  We got here and vines had covered up the front gate.  I got out of the car and started tearing them off by hand.  I got enough of them off, so that the gate would slide open and drove on in.

Rental Car This Morning

The weeds appear to have grown quite a bit in 8 months.  It’s about what I expected to see though and isn’t too bad.  We were able to drive the car right in over top of the ‘weeds’ and park.  I went into the small cabana not exactly knowing what to expect.  It looked about the same except the paint on the ceiling had continued to flake off, so there was quite a bit of paint chips on the bed and floor.   A quick sweeping took care of that.  We dusted off the bed and got out our covers/blankets we stashed from the last visit.  Other than a few weird noises we went to sleep pretty easily.

The Concrete “Cabana”

I feel that the first order of business will to be to get a trimmer and maybe some paint / paint supplies from the store.  That way we can start to carve out a nice spot for ourselves, then expand the spot as we move along.  We also want to get some plumbing done and maybe some more bees removed while we are here.

The bees that were removed on the last trip have stayed gone, so that’s a good sign that it won’t be a futile attempt.