Monday, Sept. 22-Leaving Nosara for the US

I left Nosara Sept. 22 for an extended trip to the US, to be followed by three weeks of language classes in San Jose. The time I had in San Jose allowed me to begin writing about my experiences again. I have waited until now to transfer these writings in the form of this blog. The entries are labeled by the date they occurred, and it will be easier to follow my journey if you start from the earliest date and move forward.


A young couple, Kate and Julio, are staying in our house looking after our cats Leo and Isis during late September and October while we are away. The cats have been a great source of entertainment over the past year although they like to bring small iguanas into the house for their amusement and slow torture, if I’m not quick enough to slide the screen door shut upon their approach.

Sandy, a retired vet who now lives next door, told me the cats are bringing the lizards into the house to show me they are contributing to their food supply, or something endearing like that.

Sandy and Rourke are next door in our middle house for a 12 month lease, starting last August. Rourke, in his late 40s, retired from various family and other business ventures in Canada and Florida. They had explored Guanacaste during the past summer, and found Nosara to be the most agreeable spot they found, based in part on the quality of the restaurants. I got a pretty good lease agreement from them, and considering how the economy has steadily been tanking, I’m very glad to have a year of rent locked up. They shipped down a crate full of their stuff, creating a massive storage problem for me and Janethat hasn’t yet been fully resolved. Their intention is to buy property and establish themselves full time, and it will be interesting to find out if they stick to that plan. Life here has its share of challenges, as well as the rewards, and not all of the challenges can be solved with money.

The principle case in point here has been the telephone and internet service, which have either been down, intermittent, or marginal during August and September, and problems have continued since I last checked a few days ago with Agnes. They seem to be rolling OK with it, although it has been a source of great frustration for me.

Other frustrations associated with maintaining three houses include a small mudslide that occurred behind R&S’s house during an intense rainstorm a few days before my departure to the US. There has been some erosion of the unreinforced hillside that each of the three houses is built into. It only seems to be a problem with our third house, but many cubic yards of dirt were liquefied and came flowing out from behind the house onto the deck and dangerously close to the pool. There haven’t been any further problems, in spite of continued heavy rains, and I’m hoping that we can fix the problem with some reinforcements short of building a retaining wall, which would be a huge and expensive project.

I’ll need to make a lot of digressions, since there is a gap of almost a year in my narrative.

Julio, a Tico from Monte Verde, whose lightly-accented English is due to a year he spent as a high school exchange student in Ohio, drove with me to the airport in Liberia. His girlfriend Kate teaches yoga at the spa at Harmony Hotel, where Jane will also have a position when she returns to Nosara in November after departing in August.

I didn’t know Julio and Kate that well, but other than the yoga connection through Jane they were part of a small group of us who had been gathering for a Monday night potluck dinner organized by Zac and his wife Tata. They are both acupuncturists and opened up an office in the past year. I first met Zac when I went to make an appointment for Jane, who had been feeling ill with some flu-like symptoms.

I met Zac again at Kaya Sol on a Thursday night where he was playing guitar and singing. Truth is, I didn’t recognize him at first, as a few of us were hanging out in the road smoking after his set and the light wasn’t that good. But I was impressed that he was also a musician.

Now he and his wife had organized these pot lucks, and not only was the food great, afterwards he would bring out his guitar and some of us would sing along. It’s a sweet, mellow scene that I look forward to rejoining when I return.

I arrived in Washington, and stayed with Elliot that night upon my late arrival, having picked up Jane’s BMW which she left at Dulles with the key hidden in the back seat. Jane was at a yoga conference in Denver with Joy Burch, the young yoga teacher from South Carolina, who moved to Nosara to teach yoga and work at the Nosara Yoga Institute. Jane had recently sold Joy her yoga retreat business, Inward Bound.

Jane had a rough period since returning to the States in August that involved moving our US 'stuff' from her sister Lindsey’s house in Ruxton, a suburb of Baltimore, to a friend’s house in Bethesda. She also managed to have moved some assorted furniture, as well as a few items and clothing I left behind, to a Baltimore warehouse owned by Lindsey’s son Bo. This was precipitated because Lindsey expected to lose her house due to bankruptcy that appeared unavoidable. At least as important, Jane didn’t want to be around Lindsey’s crazy energy, which has lately been spinning potentially out of control.

Elliot and his girlfriend Nannette had visited me back in late February. I was then staying in our first house Heartwaves 1, the two bedroom, since the other houses had renters, and Jane was off on her travels. I was happy to have them visit, but Elliot doesn’t care much for the beach so I wasn’t sure how they’d enjoy their stay. They took some walks on the beach, and slept in very late, and enjoyed the fresh fruit smoothies and salsas I made. Their visit overlapped with the visit of Lindsey and her contractor friend Marc for a two week visit in February. I had offered the bedroom to Marc just prior to the arrival of Elliot and Nanette.