Nosara Feb 2009

Nosara Feb 2009

Just after Ginger and Mark left to return to Boston, we began experiencing hurricane force winds. It lasted 5 days and was quite scary. I was afraid to go out with the debris flying around and the roof was rattling like crazy. About one quarter of the roof blew off and now we are dealing with the repairs. Ginger and Mark spent part of their time in Samara which is more developed than Nosara and has safer swimming. Their daughter, Molly, was pulled out by a current in Nosara the first day they were here and we all got a scare. Having no infrastructure in Nosara means no regular lifeguards and no current or storm warnings. When it is windy here, there are snow storms in the northeast and however bad the weather is here, at least it is warm.

We are continuing with selling the house and trying to move. We are listed with a couple of brokers but it seems that people are waiting to see how the economy turns out before they make large purchases. So we have to wait too. We were all set on the Puriscal-Ciudad Colon area in the Central Valley until our friends Peter and Lisa came by. They just moved from Nosara to the Ciudad Quesada area and they love it. They have a 100 acre farm with a stream, sheep, cows, views of the Arenal volcano, and a chapel (it used to be a monastery). We would like to buy a few acres so we could build a house, a pub, and maybe have a few sheep, black if possible. We would be 2 ½ hours from San Jose, which is a little more than we would like, but everything is cheaper there. There are fewer expatriates and no tourists. Instead there are hardworking Tico farmers and Ticos with a lot of money, i.e. the ones that own the bus lines, etc. There are also a lot of volunteers who come from all over the world to work on the farms. We will visit soon and see if the pub would work. Everything else sounds good.

We are expecting visitors next month, my friends Julia and Lorraine from Beth Israel Hospital, NY--another nurse friend, this time from the Bay area, Terri and her friend Joyce are coming this month. And Joe’s nephew Chris is coming in March, the first of either of our families to visit. We are preparing for our 3rd anniversary party on Saturday. We had a pre-wedding party last week. Hosting other people’s parties has been great so far—we do the bar, they do the food and music, they pay for our staff and give Joe and me a meal in lieu of a rental fee.

I have some new psych referrals and the bar is going great. My women’s group continues to move along. I write articles on sex eduction for the local paper—they translate my articles but I am not sure how widely they are read in Spanish—I am told the locals get headaches when they read. I have written and sent out essays to be published in the Sun magazine. (Nothing accepted yet). I think I need a teacher. If I go to NY to work again this spring, and I hope I do, I will take another class with the Gotham Writers group.
My email contacts on Google were eliminated for two months and now they are back making it much easier to send emails. We are in our last phase of being in Guanacaste so if you want to see this remote part of Costa Rica before it disappears with the paved roads, come now. Please write back when you can. Take care, Joe and Helena