Container is OUT OF HERE!!!

THANK YOU TO ALL OUR FRIENDS WHO HELPED US!!!!!
Without their help we wouldn't have made it.  No way could we have boxed, wrapped, numbered, carried and loaded it all.  Thank you all so much, we are both very grateful for Kay, Jim, Norm, Ed, Tammy, Chris, Ben and Grant.  The weather was tough but gratefully it didn't rain.  Snow and cold was bad enough but rain would have been worse by getting the cardboard boxes wet, weakening and damaging them.  So we are grateful we just had snow and cold; oh so cold!  But most of all grateful for our helpers!  THANK YOU!!

Whew!  Packing a container with your household goods for an ocean voyage  is much harder than moving to the next city.  Everything has to be packed to survive being tossed about by rough waters.  When we had our moving sale people were anxious to tell us about, "Our friends went overseas, and lost about half of their contents to breakage..." John heard the story of one guy who was really reckless and put a kitchen range up high on top of other stuff plus didn't secure his car well.  The car was "totaled" from the range falling into the back window and the car bouncing all over the container.  Every side of the car had damage.  Sorry, that is just stupidity!!!

These stories caused John to be extra extra careful about packing the container.  He went the extra mile securing things.  I imagine that they will never find another container so well secured. 
BUT this caused him so much extra work that he hasn't slept much for many days; often coming to bed 2 or 3am, tossing and turning with worry and getting back up at 5 or 6am.  So neither of us has had much sleep and looking forward to schedules more normal.  He was a real trouper, never complaining about the work or the cold or the snow. 

Moving Day brought the most snow we had all season. I was too busy inside packing and forgot to take picture during the snow storm and loading, this is the next day. 

If any of you decide to move overseas we can give you plenty of advice.  If we had to do it over again we would sell more stuff in moving sales.  And put important things on first to avoid the risk of being left behind towards the end.  But on the other hand, a motivating factor that moved us to pack as much as we could was trying to replace items with the quality we had already or even finding what we need.  Southern Costa Rica is not a shoppers paradise; more a tropical paradise.

I am already realizing some things that are on their way to Costa Rica should be here with us, such as important papers or numbers,etc.  John just came to me and realized our file cabinet didn't get assigned a number for the inventory list.  Everything has to be inventoried and a value attached to it so they can charge us import taxes.  I will get an email off to our Costa Rican 'friends' to fix the error.  We are also finding plenty of things we wish were in that container. 

A car hauler had to be hired to put the car into our container.  It was 11:00 pm before it was loaded as John wasn't ready until then.  Bitter cold that night.  John worked all night long securing the car, coming in only when he couldn't feel his feet anymore.

 

How appropriate...Look at all that snow and the container is heading off to a tropical location. 

As the truck left our driveway our container experienced its first jolt, dropping off the culvert and mowing down the "Rocky Gardens" sign.  This is just the beginning of the tossing it will experience, good thing John took time to secure things well.

 

Really Soon....!

We are busily packing so we can be ready for the container to be loaded; it is arriving in 5 days, Dec. 13th.  It will be picked up the following Tuesday morning.  We are paying extra so we have plenty of time to load.  We have heard too many horror stories of people trying to load their container too quickly and loosing half their stuff to breakage.  John will take extra care in making sure our stuff arrives in the best condition possible after an ocean voyage. 

We are getting a 40 foot shipping container that will also hold our car.  It will go by train to New York and then onto a container ship.  It will take 4 to 6 weeks to arrive in Costa Rica.  Then everything other than the car will be loaded into a truck and brought to us in the mountains.  In the meantime, we will be camping here in the Michigan house for 4 weeks and likely another 2 weeks at the rental house in Serenity.  It will take an extra 10 days to 2 weeks for our car to be released from the officials; they will inspect & plate it and get it ready for our pick up. 

We had closing yesterday on our house, now we are renters.  YIKS!  $2,400.00 to stay here for 38 days!  John can't leave work yet as he is the only engineer designing and constructing a new machine.  But our flights are booked for Jan. 13th, and then he will have to hand it off to another guy whether done or not.

We have to number everything along with an inventory list so Costa Rica can calculate our import taxes.  You might be wondering if it is worth it to ship your goods in addition to paying import taxes.  Yes, we have been told it is worth it.  Not only do you have the emotional attachment to your stuff (that makes you feel more at home in your new house) but you probably can't get the quality items you can in the States to re-purchase everything. 

I am looking forward to sharing pictures of loading our container with you.  Check back next week.
Adios!

The Countdown Has Started

We have less than a month before we load the 40 foot shipping container with everything we want to take with us to Costa Rica.  Every thing must be packed carefully, more so than a move to the next town.  The container will be on a ship that could incur rough seas so breakage is a real problem.  I will pack the household goods, John is tackling those things that reside in the garages and barn.  We both have a big job ahead.  All boxes must be inventoried and numbered as we have to pay import taxes on it all. 

We have sold a ton of stuff; this will be a much lighter move than any moves we have had in the past.

The car we bought for Costa Rica will go into the container last so it will be the first thing off the container when it arrives in CR.  The guy we have hired that lives in Costa Rica, Kevin, will make arrangements to have the car inspected, licensed and fees paid to ready for our pick up.  Kevin will also arrange to get our goods loaded into a truck to take down to southern CR and up the mountain to Serenity.  The fee he charges is well worth it.

We will camp out in our Michigan house for a month, finishing up details, visiting people & selling things that didn't fit in the container plus John has a big project at work to finish.  We will have 2 suitcases and 2 boxes of stuff to live 6 weeks with, 4 weeks here at the house and 2 weeks more in CR.  We are trying to get by with minimal things but need some cooking and eating utensils and other important daily use items.

Our flight out of here is Jan. 13th, 2013 at 6am.  We will stay in the San Jose area that day and night
so we can get a fresh start to head to southern Costa Rica and not arrive in the dark to the house we will be renting in Serenity Gardens Eco Village.  We will be some of the first residents; we know the house we will live in, been past it several times. 

If you look closely through the palm trees you can see a house off in the distance.  That is the house we will be living in while our house is built.  The house has two streams along the property, this one pictured and one closer nearby coming from another direction.

The rental house is next to two beautiful rocky streams and a lovely landscaped area; I am expecting to be quite content. Each day will seem like a vacation!  Always thought it would be nice to live next to a stream or river.  I have our grippy water shoes ready for river walks!  The rivers and streams in CR are not cold like here in Michigan, the water feels nice.

View from what will be our closest neighbor's veranda.  The house in the background is the house we will be temporarily staying in.

The house we are renting is unfurnished so we will be anxious to receive all our goods. We can live in it the whole time our house is being built just the next village road over, real close so we can keep on eye on the project.

This is a view from the road next to our temporary house.

  This is the Octagon house, our nearest neighbor.

 

As you can see from the pictures, Serenity Gardens is not some crazy place some have pictured we are going to.  Granted, it is remote and a bit of a climb to get to but once the village starts to fill up and the community center finished, it will feel like a real neighborhood.  Just different.  And we always have Osa Mountain Village (the sister community) to visit.  Almost all the villas in OMV are sold and filled with lovely people, many of whom we have met and email back and forth with.  As the crow flies OMV is not far from Serenity.  What makes it a bit of a drive is going down our mountain and back up the mountain OMV sits on.  But they are in the same mountain ridge.



Sold Our House!

Wow!  That was fast!  Last week we listed our home, Rocky Gardens, so we can move to Costa Rica.  Saturday a showing...Monday morning we got a call that we had two more showings.  Then a call comes in that the family that saw the house on Saturday was making us an offer.  John wouldn't budge on the price, said it was too early.  I agreed.  Wait...phone call...Yes!

When the people heard there were two more showings on Monday they agreed to our listing price.

What can I say...it is beautiful here.  We just needed to find a family that could see the beauty, have the finances and ready to roll up their sleeves to work!  It is a lot of work to keep this place looking nice.

The sun came out just for them on Saturday afternoon when they arrived.  All day it had rained but when they got here it was lovely.  Mom and their two little kids went right to the chickens before even coming inside and after viewing the house, they got to play in the backyard on the play sets.  Perfect!

I am a bit surprised at my reaction to the sale.  I really thought this would be more painful but it is not; I am excited!  See, this is my dream home.  The first time I saw the property I fell in love with it.  But I am ready to go on our new adventure, ready to build a new house.

Lots of great memories, Lots of great people!

It sure has been exciting living here at Rocky Gardens!

 

 

This land is blessed and put out a load of yummy veggies!

And many of you worked very hard to make it happen.

 

If you were part of Rocky Gardens CSA, thank you for all your hard work

 and being part of a truly amazing 11 years. 

Adios!

 

I will continue to post our adventure here. 

 

 

 

Getting Ready for the Big Move

We have been very busy clearing out all those many things we aren’t taking to Costa Rica.  We had accumulated oh soooo much stuff!  The money we earned from our Moving Sales and Barn Sale will help pay for our move to CR.  I can’t tell you how good it feels to have empty closets and a basement without tons of stuff it in.  We need to have one more Barn Sale but right now our efforts are on getting the basement and garages up to snuff for potential buyers. 

 

We listed the house two days ago and are anxious to sell.  The first floor and upstairs are near picture perfect but a corner in the basement and the 2 garages still need attention.  Plus John has to install a new kitchen range!  The oven has not been dependable and can’t be fixed, they can’t get parts.  So we had to buy a new range for the new owners.  Rats!

 

View the following video to know more about where we are moving to in Costa Rica.  It will also help you understand why we would make such a drastic change in where we live. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7MYN01NuA8&feature=em-uploademail 

 

Our residency applications have been filed and now we have to wait about a year to get our Cedula, our official certificate stating we are Costa Rican residents and not just tourists.  This is not the same as Costa Rican citizens; we will only be official residents.  It was an arduous endeavor, mostly because it was hard to open a bank account which we needed to have to apply.  Since we aren’t collecting either Social Security yet nor have a pension, a bank account was necessary to prove we can take care of ourselves.  It only took from early July to late September to get the bank to take our money and produce a letter for immigration.    

 

Ground has been broken for the community center at Serenity Gardens.   Can’t wait to see it completed, the renderings look so inviting with several pools, community building and gazebos. 

 

Here are some different pictures from our visits to CR.

                                                           Manuel Antonio Park

                                                 Scarlet McCaws Flying Together as Mates
                                    

Sunset on the over the Pacific Ocean

                                                             One Crater at Poas Volcano
                                    

I just love Toucans!  They look so unreal!

 

Manuel Antonio Park

July Business Trip to Costa Rica

On July 4^th we left for Costa Rica for business, not vacation time, to get the process underway for building and applying for residency.  Why residency?  (And no, we are not giving up our US citizenship, only applying to become legal residents of Costa Rica.)

This is what we see when driving to our nearest town, Pejibaye.  It is an amazing drive though the mountains, very picturesque but at times very narrow road.  I had to remind myself the first trip that there is no snow and ice to worry about on these mountain roads.

 

There are many reasons to become a resident but here are few off the top of my head.

·         You don’t need to leave the country every 90 days as you would with just a passport.

·         We can participate in Costa Rica's excellent health care system.

·         If there are any problems with the law, such as an accident, things go much easier if they know you are legally a resident and can be easily located.

·         We won’t need to stand in Passport Control when entering CR.  Yahoo!!!  The line is horrendous, at least a thousand deep each time we have gone there.

 

We needed to go to the US Embassy for paperwork filing, a police department for fingerprinting, get our pictures taken and open an account with a CR bank to deposit money to show we can take care of ourselves and won’t become a burden to their system.  (If you have Social Security or a Pension, this is not necessary.)  Now our CR attorney will have all the many documents we had to accumulate here in the States translated into Spanish.  He will file the paperwork and the process is underway!  It will take about a year for us to receive our Cedula, legal resident certificate.

 

When you hire someone to help you with this process they walk you through it so you aren’t floundering out there on your own.  We had a set price of what it cost and they picked us up and took us where we needed to go.  It wasn’t really all that hard, just seemed daunting until we made it through everything.  It took 2 days to accomplish, aside from the work we had to do at home getting a police report and notarized copies of legal papers.

 

John picked these Mandarin Lemons across the road from our lot in Serenity.  They looked and smelled like oranges but WOW! what a punch when I popped a section in my mouth!  I squealed very loudly!  But they made a great drink back at the villa using cane juice they gave us in our distribution of produce and eggs for our stay at Osa Mountain Village, Serenity's sister community. 

 

After our time spent in San Jose (CR's capital) for the above meetings we spent 5 days at Osa Mountain Village meeting with the developer about Serenity Gardens, meeting our architect, meeting builders and talking with residents of Osa about all the little tricks they have learned.  Such as, we will be able to call back to the states and you will be able to call me for free if we get Magic Jack.  You don’t need MJ, only us!  How cool is that?!?!  (I will also be available by email too, we will have internet.)    

 

The biggest news from the developer is that one road in Serenity will have commercial power, not just off-grid power.  And we have a lot on that road!  (It was the lot we wanted to build on first so it works out fantastic!) This means there won't be delays due to lack of off-grid power in starting our house.  Permitting and obtaining machinery for off-grid power has taken much longer than they were first lead to believe.  Not a real surprise but nonetheless disappointing.   So we will have a house at Serenity Gardens with full power, we are elated!  I am excited, John is pleased.  Who knows, we just might stay in this house!

Our view from the lot we will build on early next year.

 

John has been asked to be on the energy team for Serenity Gardens to help move along the off-grid system.  We have been offered free housing (a new house in Serenity by a lovely river!) to come down as soon as possible.  This means we can be on-site to build our house!  Perfect!

Currently we are thinking January 1^st but really don’t know.  We have so much to do here to get the house ready to sell, sell most of our belongings and pack.  It really is a huge undertaking when you have not only a home but a farm too.  With my foot and torn tendons messed up for over 3 months, I have accomplished little.  I can’t even keep the gardens weeded!  My front cottage garden looks like a jungle.  I can’t even look at the side garden.   I had such big plans for this summer’s perennials beds! 

 

This is the front of Serenity Garden Eco Village.  There is a river along the rocks but you can't see it very well.  I have sturdy water shoes ready for us to try out the river.  There will be a pool at the Community Center but the river is just so pretty!

A house at Serenity, the Octagon House.   Very cute, very nice inside, but too small for us.

Now we are back home and I am just starting to walk again after having my foot reconstructed and tendon repaired.  Getting around Costa Rica on crutches was a pain but going through the airports as handicapped is simply divine!!  We were whizzed through long lines and even upgraded to first class on our flight home!  What a special treat that was!   Sure would like to experience first class again!

Brahman cattle are common in Costa Rica.  Isn't she cute?!?  Love those pink ears!

Found our Costa Rican Car

This week we purchased our car for Costa Rica.  It is cheaper to buy one here, ship and pay import taxes than to purchase one in CR.  Cars in CR are very expensive. Plus here we had the help of cars.com, a wider selection and can speak the same language.  We felt much more comfortable with buying here. 

We needed an all-wheel drive vehicle since we are going to live in the mountains.  Plus we wanted something with good MPG.  John has a 4 wheel drive pickup but we wanted a car since it will be our only vehicle.  John’s 2008 Dakota pickup is going up for sale (only 28,000 miles!); my van is a lease going back early 2014. 

We got a 2012 Honda CRV.  Foreign vehicles are common in CR, not the Big 3 vehicles.  Very uncommon to see US made cars in CR.  So to take, say a Chevy, one would have a hard time getting parts and finding someone to work on it.  We sure will miss the ease of use of a mini-van, love my mini-van!  Have bikes will travel!!  And anything else you want to haul, so easy!

But we wanted high gas mileage.  Good Deal on the CRV!  You know that old story of buying a used car from a lil’ol lady?  Well, we really did get a hardly used car from lil’ol lady.  An 87 year old lady had it, turned it in early and only had 7,785 miles on it.   

The CRV will go in our shipping container of household goods, the last thing to be loaded in a 40 foot container.  It will take from 4 to 6 weeks to receive the container down there and be processed.  So we either live here without the things we need, or live down there without the things we need.  We haven’t figured that dilemma out yet but I am sure we will tackle it with humor.  (And with a little bit of stuff!)

Diane

Pictures from first visit

Visiting a volcano, Caribbean in background.

This is our favorite lot and will build on it when we are living on site.
The front of the house with big deck will look out on this valley.  Breakfast on our deck looking over this valley!
  I can hardly wait!
 

We bought two lots, this one will have our first house.  Although you can't see it, off in the distance is our nearest town, Pejibaye.  It is about the size of Holly and a 25 minute mountain drive.

Since we can't be in Costa Rica to build a house, we decided to buy two lots, both about 3/4 of an acre.  We will live in the first house while we have the second house built.  The second house will be the house we keep.  We will either sell the first house or rent it.  Our lot is at 2700 ft above sea level, so it isn't as hot as when you are at the beach.  Mornings are from 55 to 69 degrees, days 70s to high 80s.  Serenity Gardens is near the South Pacific, you can see the ocean from the Community Center; which is at the top of the mountain.



Starting our move to Costa Rica

Years ago John and I became interested in Costa Rica after a farm member raved about the medical care his wife received in Costa Rica, the beauty of the country, the friendly people, and the FRUIT!  He loved the fruit!  So I researched it and I remember sitting at my computer telling John, "We would essentially be living in the jungle, can't do it!"

But we were still intrigued and made arrangements for a vacation in Costa Rica.  Two weeks before we were to leave (took 6 months for the vacation to arrive after we reserved flights!) I found the web site www.serenitygardensecovillage.com.  I called John at work all excited and we both did all the research we could for the next two weeks about Serenity and it's sister community Osa Mountain Eco Village.  

Although we had reservations at another place for the first week, we took 4 days to stay with the residents and developer at Osa Mountain.  Serenity didn't have a place to stay as the roads were just starting to be put in and no houses yet so we just would visit Serenity but stayed at Osa. 

We took the next week going back and forth...yes, no, yes, no... should we move to CR?!?!  Every day we would wake up around 5 or 6am, discussing things, thinking about it, going over everything we could think of.  We had another week in CR and during all our tours and outings we had our eyes and minds going full tilt, wondering if Costa Ricans liked Americans, could we live with the culture change, could we adjust to the shopping, banking, food, roads, etc.  We would have to learn Spanish, although in Serenity and Osa Mtn. mostly North Americans live so English will be spoken in our little Eco Village.  But could we really learn Spanish?  John and I felt we were going through life just fine not knowing another language and now we were creating a lifestyle change that would make the hard work of learning another language mandatory, at least enough to go to town! Yiks!

But those 4 lovely days in southern Costa Rica at Osa and Serenity were so intriguing and John would be able to retire!  We could travel!  We finally decided that we were at an age that if we wanted an adventure we had better go for it or lose the opportunity. 

So here we are...
Selling my dream home (this was to be our retirement home, we designed it around our needs and wants. Really thought I would leave this house kicking and screaming!)

Selling our stuff (we will ship a large container of household goods we don't want to part with)

John wakes up worried about all his tools, what does he take? what does he sell?

We have to jump through hoops, many hoops, to apply for residency and hire a CR attorney.

We have to choose someone to help us move our stuff in a container.

We have to find a All-Wheel Drive car to take to CR.  Used cars there are so expensive that buying one here, paying for shipping and import taxes is still cheaper!

We have to choose a CR builder.

Design a house with someone in CR!

Allow someone to build our house without us there!!  How scary is that?!?!?

But most of all, leave our family and friends and hopefully convince them that we have a guest room waiting for them for a lovely tropical vacation in Costa Rica that will be super inexpensive since the guest room is for free!


 Serenity, we
will have hydro-electric power