At Least We Have a Shower...The First Few Days

As the night of our first day living in Rincon came upon us, the lights spread out and across the valleys of Aguada and down to the beaches of Agaudilla. I didn't know there would be so many lights in the distance, they made our view even more amazing than I had remembered. We bought a nice king size tempurpedic mattress from Costco, however didn't think to buy a fan. We setteled into bed and looked out at the lights. It was hot and there were mosquitos, but we easily fell into sleep, the exhaustion of the trip our best pillow.

Sometime in the night, however, I woke up to Cyndi crying. She told me she was worried that we had made a mistake and it was all her doing. The dogs were nervous and uncomfortable and we were in a strange place and didn't know anybody and the amount of work to do to make the house comfortable was overwhelming. It was raining and the coqui's, small frogs that make a noise at night that sounds like a cross between a bird and a cricket, were doing their thing, the dogs couldn't get settled and the heat and mosquitos were starting to be annoying. She put the weight of our success at building a life here on her shoulders all in one night and I knew that wasn't fair. She had the right idea, it was up to us to understand the challenges and face them one by one. The dogs would calm down, we had 2 months and a decent budget to get the house where we wanted it to be. The rain and coquis and strangeness of his place is why we had come and we needed to look forward to the adventure we had chosen to take upon ourselves. We made a promise to better communicate and support each other and the the thought of staying here started to become less worrisome and we both fell back to sleep, but I don't think the dogs did.

The next few days our bodies adjusted to the heat and humidity and we bought and installed some ceiling fans. We had a lot of work to do and a limited budget so we needed to prioritize, but the fans would give the best bang for the buck. We drove to the town of Mayaguez, about 30 minutes south and bought our appliances at Sears in the Mayaguez mall. Mayaguez is the largest town near Rincon with a population of about 100,000 and a university that is the Caribbean's leading scince and engineering institution. It's also known as "the city of pure waters" which locals say contributes to the quality of its most famous export, Medalla beer.

2 day later, the Sears delivery truck was lost and we had to meet them at the Lazy Parrot. As I wrote before, the addresses in Rincon are almost meaningless and directions usually involve local landmarks more than streets and numbers. I had a case of Medalla I wanted to get chilling so I quickly drove our rental car through the rain a mile to the Parrot and led the truck back to Sector Cuchillo Pina (our street). We got our refrigerator and the beer was getting cold, we had also bought a BBQ from Home Depot so it looked like I might get to cook soon.

The local market in Rincon is a chain called Econo and the parking lot is always full. They have local meat and produce as well as stuff from the states, but they also carry a lot of the overly processed food we stopped buying in the last few years. Partially hydrogeneated oils, mono and diglycerides and high fructose corn syrup are in almost everything on the store shelves back home and here wasn't much different, so we bought mostly just basics. Our first dinner cooked in Rincon was garlic and olive oil marinated chicken, cooked on the BBQ with fresh bread from the EC Bakery, washed down with a cold Medalla. We gave thanks for all that we had achieved in our first few days on the island and looked forward to the challenges ahead.

Rincon, Here We Come....

Cyndi sold her business in Laguna Beach. She had to in order to pay for the work needed on the house. She could always build a business in Los Angeles, but her plan was to build her massage therapy business in Rincon, whether I was with her or not (I think). She was able to secure a website http://rinconsportsmassage.com for her massage therapy business in Rincon and built a web page that described her work and that she would be available after August. For my part, I guess I was dragging my feet and when confronted with the possibilities of a life in Rincon or staying in Los Angeles, the easy choice was always LA. But Cyndi is tenacious and after realizing we could rent our house out short term and my job, however good I may think it was, wasn't all that, basically I had nothing keeping me in Los Angeles.

We decided to rent the house on craigs list for 2 months while we went to Rincon to work on the house and explore the possibilities of staying permanently. I would come back after 2 months to return to my job for awhile and Cyndi would stay in Puerto Rico. The biggest issues we faced were getting the dogs there, to ship or not ship one of our cars and of course after 2 months in Rincon how long would I stay in LA?

Though Puerto Rico does not have a quarantine period for dogs and the only paperwork we needed for the dogs was proof of a rabies shot and a certificate of health from the vet ($25), the dogs were not as easy as we thought. We were planning to go to Puerto Rico in August and American Airlines will not allow dogs in the storage area of the plane if it is hotter than 85 degrees. We scheduled a red eye flight that would land in San Juan at about 9:30 in the morning, but most of the weather forecasts we had seen called for the temperatures to be between 80 and 90 degrees. One of our dogs, Sancho is a retired service dog and has a vest and identification, so we felt comfortable taking him on the plane. The other dog was still a puppy and we planned on crating him on the plane, however American Airlines couldn't guarantee that he would be allowed if it was too warm. We worked for 3 months training the 1 year old dog to be a service dog and eventually he got a vest and identification and we decided to take him on the plane with us as well. It was going to be an interesting flight.

Cyndi was dead set on shipping her BMW to Puerto Rico. She did some homework and found a company that would take it from LA and get it to San Juan for $2000, about $1000 less than most everyone else. I didn't think a BMW convertible would be the best car to have in Rincon, I felt she should sell her car and save the $2000 and buy something when we got there. But Cyndi's arguments were valid; the BMW was reliable and she has had it for over 9 years, knew it was in good condition and well taken care of. Trying to buy a car in Puerto Rico could be difficult and could take time to find the right car, what would we do then, car rentals would add up quickly. Cyndi also felt that with everything else being new and different maybe her car could provide some comfort. So at the end of June, a guy came by the house in Los Angeles, loaded the Beamer up on his truck and drove off. I guess I get an I told you so on that one as shipping the car turned out to be a bigger problem then we ever imagined.

We also shipped a few items via the post office, Cyndi doing her homework at the USPS web page to know the maximum size of boxes we could ship for the cheapest price. Initially we thought about shipping our sofa and furniture, but from Los Angeles the shipping price was prohibitive. There were a few things we wanted to ship as we weren't sure of their availability on the island; Cyndi's massage table for example, and we also wanted to have a few essential items when we got there like sheets and towels so we wouldn't have to spend our money on those things right away.

The address of our property wasn't listed on our title, there was just a fine description of the parcel and where it stands in relation to others. Getting the address was difficult as most everyone uses landmarks or kilometer markers to describe where they live. So we shipped the boxes to General Delivery, Rincon , Puerto Rico 00677. Sure enough, 2 days after we arrived the boxes showed up at the post office and we had a few of our comforts from home.