We moved in!!!

Well, we finally found a house and moved in. HOORAY! We ended up in a small bungalow in Barrio Mercedes, which is just a few minutes outside of Atenas proper via a rather bumpy road. It is basically a new house, so everything is clean and everything works well (except for the odd leak here and there - but the guy is supposed to be coming tomorrow to fix those, so hopefully we'll see him within the next week or two.) We're happy to have a fairly well-built home because that is often not the case with houses here in Costa Rica. It seems that if they can cut corners on construction details, they often do). It was not fully furnished nor did it have cable or internet installed, but the owner agreed to install both, plus he let us pick out some new beds, a TV, DVD and Microwave which he'll just take off of the rent. So we're really fortunate to have stumbled across this place and are certainly happy to know that our beds and bedding and all brand new.

The house has 2 bedrooms/2 baths - one quite large master bedroom with a very good sized ensuite, and a small second bedroom where we got bunk beds for the kids. (they get a kick out of that). The living room is fairly large, there's a good sized kitchen with large breakfast bar (no table though) and a small laundry room (there is new washing machine, but no dryer... Yes, I have to hang the clothes out to dry. Most people don't have dryers here, which is fine if you get your laundry out to dry on the line early morning before the afternoon rains hit, but you're stuck with hanging them out for a second day if you miss the window of opportunity.) The house also a large veranda on the front of the house, which is very typical, as most people spend a good deal of time living outside, and we plan to do the same. Many people have what we would consider indoor furniture like couches and a table and chairs outside on their verandahs.

Oh, and did I mention the pool? Yeah baby! It's small, but oh so refreshing on those muggy afternoons. And the kids are perfectly happy to share a room in exchange for getting a pool.

Our property has a few mango trees (although unfortunately mango season is just about over,) some sort of orange trees and even a small jalapeno-like chili pepper tree on the property... I broke one of the ripe ones open and basically just touched it to my tongue and it was SMOKIN' hot. Spicy home made salsa coming up... Yum yum.

There are also many coffee plants on a lot of the neighboring properties and it's quite cool to see the large clusters of ripening beans. We also have a small heard of cattle living right across our little road - not the most sociable neighbours but at least they aren't noisy like the freakin' rooster 2 doors down!! He has about the most feable crow out of any rooster I've ever heard and I really don't think he has any concept of time. He tends to crow about once an hour starting at 3am, then a little more frequently once 5am hits. Nathan thinks he sounds like dying cow!

The one minor downside to living in such a lush location is that we do get quite a few bugs and critters around. We were told that they have pulled a couple of tarantulas (Megan shudders at the thought,) a small snake and a couple of scorpions out of the pool to date but we have not seen anything like that yet.

The very first day we moved in, we had a big thunderstorm (go figure...), and when it started to rain, I just happened to be looking out the window to where the downspouts go into the drainage basin in the ground, and up popped a huge toad. While I was sneaking up to get his picture, his BIGGER buddy popped up. I have a picture of it below, but it's a little dark and you don't get very good perspective, but it was easily one of the biggest ones I have ever seen.

We are kind of on a rural street with neighbouring coffee plantations and fruit farms all around. The neighbors a couple of doors down have horses and chickens and, of course, the rooster (el gallo diablo.) That's one thing I have noticed about Costa Rica that is very different from Calgary or Canada - it's very noisy. You hear roosters and dogs and crickets and frogs and birds and dirt bikes and often trucks with air brakes (if you are near the highway), etc. etc., but it doesn't seem all that bad. It sort of all blends into a different kind of white noise and doesn't bug you very much... at least not so far. Most of the noise is non-man made and it kind of makes me think how "alive" it is (or, on the other hand, how lifeless it seems in our sterile suburbs back home).

Enough... Here's a couple of pictures: