Today we lit one thousand dollars on fire.  Two beds, an oven, a bunch of kitchen stuff, three liters of Toñas to ease the pain and poof!  Reality came tumbling down.  These purchases compounded with the discovery of our propane refrigerator costing significantly more than we anticipated has prompted a new feature on this blog - the Paypal Donate Button.  In an effort to not sound like total dirt bags, we are calling this our solar fund.  We realize that not everyone can live out their dreams in a far away country off the grid, so we are giving you the opportunity to help us do it, but enough of our digital third world pan handling.

In other news Ian's parents Jon and Kathy have requested that I no longer put pictures of bugs on the blog if we ever expect anyone to come visit. So I will leave you with the last critter photo you will see on here (for at least a week.)

The tarantula in our kitchen

Canon Macro Setting

Bless my sister for finding the macro setting on my camera.  Here are a variety of mostly unidentified creatures that have graced us with their presence.

  

Unknown shiny creature that wears a see-through circular cape and suction-cups itself to doors, windows, what-have-you.

Red-wasp, dead, - known to cause fever.

Blister Beetle, aka "Maya bug" to the locals - urinates on your skin and leaves an acidic burn - it's urine is, in fact, documented in this photo.

Pretty spider

Big, fuzzy spider - inside.

Cocoon?  Shiny.

Our bedroom light and the bug colony surrounding it - door closed.

Itchy in Gigante

It's been a fairly uneventful week with the exception of Lady Gray experiencing her first real mechanical issues in our time of ownership.  The clutch is leaking and we're officially on foot again.  Uggggh.  How spoiled and lazy one becomes.  A mechanic was supposed to come take a look at it today, but apparently he was having troubles with his motorbike.  I'm not sure if we should be weary of that fact or not but regardless, Monday is the day as few Nicaraguans work on Sunday.   In the meantime, we are dangerously close to being out of propane, our Gigante money stash is tapped out and our food rations are dwindling.  If anyone is going to Rivas like, tomorrow, please let us know.  We need a ride.  Seriously.

There has been a lot of progress on the house this week.  The drywall is being hung, the spaces between the floorboards have been filled, the water should already be connected and the electrical sockets have been installed, but not wired.  We bought some more plants at the Rivas School of Agriculture including two plumeria trees (the official flower of Nicaragua) and an avocado tree.  We also bought a bunch of Eureka palms to line the front of the deck which will also hide the underside of the house.  I hope Ian's dad Jon, is smiling.  We know how you love those Eurekas!  All in all, it seems to be coming along much quicker these days.  The most recent debate is whether or not to buy a very expensive propane refrigerator, or to buy an equally priced second solar panel to power a much more inexpensive electric fridge.  We seem to be leaning in the direction of the latter.  As the time of move-in draws nearer, these are the conversations that have ensued.  Admittedly, very exciting.

On the surf front, there was a fairly decent swell this week.  Ian scored some mackers at Pangas.  I finally busted out my 6'3" rounded pin and am in love.  I can't believe it took me this long to ride it.  Not to mention, there are a pair of penguins on the underside of it and two half naked ladies staring up at me from the nose.  It has a much different artistic air to it than the demented skull of my Lost fish.  And it's faster.  I got a great feel for it at Amarillo over the last couple of days and have been having better luck going left.  Yea for new surfboards!!!

And finally, let's talk bugs.  I'm not sure which of the foul creatures I should start with.  We stomped out another scorpion running across the floor of our bedroom last week.  The flies have been absolutely atrocious.  Yesterday, as I was making another batch of bagels, I became so maddened that I finally resorted to Anna's mom's ancient Chinese fly detractor trick - a clear plastic bag filled with water and pennies hung on the wall over the butcher block.  That, and half a bottle of Raid seemed to do the trick which incidentally, led to Puna devouring their insecticide-coated carcasses scattered all over the kitchen floor.  Raid is like candy to her!  Then there are the beetles.  Two inch beetles that somehow slip through the window cracks and explode entrails when you smash them.  Then there are the locusts.  Last night there was some weird cross between a giant horned beetle and the largest roach known to mankind trailing four-inch antennas on either side.  In our bedroom.  We thought he was dead, but this afternoon as he lay on his back near the doorway, his arms were still moving - ten hours after his initial blow.  And worst of all, the zancudos.  Smaller than a gnat, these f*#^ers bite and you can't even see them.  Everyone in Gigante is covered in bites.  Itchy bites.  Very itchy bites.  And last but not least, there was the poisonous snake that Felix slaughtered in the yard the other day.  Ah, the tropics.  At least we're not working.

Nica Wedding Crashers

Hey everyone!  We've got a couple of fun things to talk about on this gray Sunday afternoon.  Let's start off with this picture of Chanelle towing her friend Jason off the side of her driveway.  I wish I had a photo from where the stuck truck started from but this vantage is nearing the end of Team Canada's efforts.  Chanelle's boyfriend Jeremy, is also from Vancouver Island and worked for nearly an hour shoveling mud and repaving different areas of the driveway with rocks in order to pull the car from a very precarious angle off the side of the hill.  We're still not exactly clear how the truck managed to find its way into the ditch in the first place, but it was definitely dark and stormy when the incident occurred.  Luckily the truck was towed out unscathed but unfortunately for Chanelle, it seems that her burly Land Cruiser is forever stuck in four-wheel drive.  Keep your fingers crossed that it's only something minor.

Well, the next order of business is comical indeed.  As you all know, yesterday was May 1st.  In Hawaii, this is also known as Lei Day and on the mainland of course, it's May Day.  Here in Nicaragua, they have Maypole celebrations which designate the start of spring, or so we thought.  Yesterday morning as we were making breakfast, Juana and Felix (our Nica maid and gardener) stopped in to invite us to some festivities at the local church.  Eager for culture, both of agreed that it would be something fun and different to attend.  Felix told us that he'd be back up to the house around 2:30 and from there, we could all drive down to the church together.  At two o'clock it began to rain.  We weren't sure if Felix was going to show but we showered and dressed in our finest garb anyways.  Sure enough, at half past two, there he was in his button down yellow collared shirt, rearin' and ready for a ride in the Isuzu.  We weaved down the dirt road to Amarillo and parked at Felix's dads house which was familiar to us both from our past walks to my favorite surf break.  Felix's dad turned our to be the old man we've seen sitting on the porch, every time we pass by.  The rain had ceased at this point and we waited at the house for Felix and Juana's kids to show up.  As we were waiting, a shocking discovery was made.  In so many Spanish words, Ian figured out that we were attending a wedding - not a Maypole celebration.  And it was Felix's brother who was getting married!  Classic.  What unfolded before our eyes, was a beautiful Nica ceremony involving not one couple getting hitched, but two.  A dual wedding complete with an out of tune electric guitar and a mariachi style synthesizer.  It was awesome.  At one point a ten year old boy got up on stage and rocked some mean vocals on what I'm assuming, is a traditional Nica wedding song.  After the painfully long (but fondly memorable) ceremony, we were invited back to the family's house for food.  Being the only gringos in a crowd of almost two-hundred Nicaraguans, we decided that we were satisfied with our experience and that attending the family's reception might have been a little weird.  Who knows though.  Maybe not attending it was weirder.  What we do know now though, is that we're not just the white people that walk the road with surfboards to Amarillo anymore.  We're the white people with surfboards that were at the Nica wedding on Saturday.  Hopefully, that's a good thing.  We're thinking it is.  By the way, maybe I'm an idiot, but Maypole celebrations are a pagan tradition and come from Europe.  I'm pretty sure they don't celebrate it in Central America.  And here are some photos from the wedding.

      

Lastly, I found these suckers in a pile of clothes today.  One dead.  One live.  Sprayed it with some Raid to slow the bastard down, then flushed him down the toilet.  Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiack.  I hate scorpions.

  

Monkeys and Spiders and Scorpions, Oh My

As we're slowly settling into a routine, there are a few adjustments that have taken some getting used to.  First off, we have a maid and a gardener that Chanelle employs Monday through Friday.  It took a while for me to relinquish my love of certain household chores, mainly dishes and laundry, but I've quickly realized that vacation time is valuable and can be filled with things like crosswords and surf and cooking and blogging.  Plus, it allows us to give extra work to a local family who seems more than happy to be helping us out.  Felix Mora is the gardener who constantly refers to himself in the third person and who is also, madly in love with Lea.  He asked if he could have one of Lea's puppies and was more than disappointed to find out that she no puedes tener hijos.   Felix is married to Juanita, our maid.  Two days ago, while Juanita was cleaning our kitchen, she found a scorpion in the box containing the dogs food.  Luckily, nothing happened and she removed it from our casita but warned us that if the dogs ingest one, they could die.  Poor Chanelle lost her two pound teacup chihuahua puppy not two weeks ago to a scorpion sting, which leads me into the other part of our adjustment.  The tropics.  As I was properly warned before arriving, this country has everything in the bug/reptile/bird/mammal department that you could possibly imagine.  Not only is Chanelle finding scorpions in her house daily, yesterday she came across a tarantula underneath her dog's towel.  This, compounded with the story of her house guest seeing a boa wrestling a bird at the end of the driveway in the middle of the night, and her dog Junior coming home with a face full of porcupine quills, has appropriately risen my guard.  Ian and I are both covered in mosquito bites and frequently remind each other that itching is not acceptable.  Howler monkeys are something new and different for everyone, including the dogs.  A seemingly large family congregated in a nearby canopy two night ago, and did their howler thing all morning long.  Last night, the dogs went nuts over a herd of cows that made their way into the yard.  After much barking, Ian went outside and threw rocks at them.  It seemed to solve the problem and sleep was finally had.

We've met some great people already.  Yesterday morning, a guy named Jason who helps run Chanelle's hostel, gave us a ride down to 2-4+ Panga Drops.  The paddle out was tough for me but, I eventually made it, then spent the next hour scratching for the horizon as the walled sets came plowing through.  The lineup was friendly though, and I got a second to talk to Panga's keeper, Jack.  After he jokingly noted that it was my time for a wave, I thought it would be in my best interest to balls up, get inside and catch a little one before I gained the quick reputation of crowding a lineup at my new home break.  Within a couple of minutes, I caught a fun little left and called it a session.  Baby steps.  Ian got a ton of great waves and is super stoked on the spot which is great because hopefully it means we'll be surfing there together more.

We were able to go see the house again and get a better idea of a timeline.  It sounds like we still have at least six weeks to go because the windows have just been made in Granada and need about a month to dry.  They were putting in the plumbing while we were there, and we were pleasantly surprised to see a septic tank.  The structure itself is looking amazing.  It sounds like the appliances are going to run us around two thousand bucks.  The refrigerator and stove can both run off propane and the solar panels are included in the cost of the house.  They're still experimenting with how much power the panels can store and there is still talk of a wind turbine going into the neighborhood.  All in all, we can't wait to call it home.    

Ian found a 4x4 Isuzu on craigslist today for $2500 and is going to check it out with Roger in the next couple of days.  Roger is a consultant for La Vista and was born and raised in Nicaragua and according to Ian, speaks better English than most Americans.  He has a reliable mechanic in Rivas and is willing to help Ian out with the process.  We had a serious conversation about a vehicle today and decided that if we want to start a business, transportation will be essential.  Money is the main issue and between the cost of appliances in the new house, food and the pending vehicle, we'd be cutting it pretty close by the time we leave in October.  Nothing is set in stone and I will always be plagued with concerns over money but only because it's been a personal issue of my own in the past.  Ian however, always takes the positive perspective which is why I love him so much, and will always make me believe that he's the Bodhisattva in this relationship.  

So, I'll slap up a couple more photos.  It sounds like we may have some visitors in the near future.  Our friends Kevin and Brett are interested in buying down here and we're excited at the prospect of having neighbors we already know.

The three pictures above, are photos from Clint's casita that is just about ready for move-in.  We like what he did with the shower and are considering copying it for our own bathroom.  These are local stones that he found on the beach.  I think it goes nicely with the natural elements of the wooden house.

Lea's hole.

View from the balcony of our rental casita.  There are some pretty awesome sunsets here.

More pics of our own casita, coming soon.  Pics are taking a while to load ....