It's a Jungle Out There

The sun comes up early in paradise, so we are turning into early risers ourselves.  I don't know what it is about being near the equator, but our bedroom faces east and it's impossible to sleep past 6am.  Or it might be the monkeys screeching in the trees outside our room.

We found this great place on housecarers.com that is located in the jungle town of Ojochal on the Southern Pacific Coast.  The house-sitting gig is convenient for the owners and a huge benefit for us. Basically we have a free place to live for 6 weeks, and we only have to cover utilities.  

The house is set on 500 hectares of protected jungle forest (that’s about 2 square miles).  We've seen dozens of different birds, some frogs, geckos, and lizards.  We hear howler monkeys in the mornings, but have not seen one yet, much to Michael's disappointment.  Howler monkeys don't really howl, by the way, they sound more like a very hungry stomach growl.  

It is a two-story house but the first floor is a basement/laundry room/garage/dry storage room.  (All the houses here have to have a dry storage area because of the insane humidity.)  The living area is on the second floor, and is surrounded by a deck/veranda/balcony on all four sides. There are two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, and living room.

Notice all the exterior walls are covered with windows.  That’s because the views are amazing.  I can see the ocean from the kitchen window (that little strip of darker blue between the trees), and we watch the sunset from the living room.  

The bedrooms look into forest or the landscaped yard which has all manner of tropical fruit trees, palm trees, flowers, and a fish pond. 

The groundskeeper and his family live just down the driveway from us, and they are very friendly.  We speak more Spanish than he does English, but we communicate alright.   

We are a little way out of town, and so far the only down side is that the road to get to our house is very rough.  It takes 4-wheel drive and good amount of tooth-rattling through the steep, pot-holed drive to get anywhere.  Oh, and part of the driveway is washed out by a shallow river.  It is the dry season now, though, so the river is very easy to drive through.  We have walked across it, stepping on big rocks, a few times and didn’t even get our feet wet.  But in the rainy season I guess the road is impassable in the afternoons. (It doesn’t rain in the mornings? I don’t know, that’s just what I was told.)

Also the Internet is really slow, which is one of the reasons I haven't posted much this week. This town only got cell phone service 3 years ago, and all the internet connections are 3G data through the cell towers.  They get overloaded pretty easily.  So instead of getting dropped calls you get kicked offline. Constantly. Also it's slow.  Nowhere near the 1 MG download speed they advertise.  

That’s life in paradise I guess.  I’m not complaining! 

This weekend we’ll be going to a bi-lingual church in the bigger town up the road.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  Apparently it is a non-denominational church with a soup kitchen, and a bi-lingual school that are affiliated.  Sounds like the kind of place we could find like-minded people. 

Thank you all for the comments, emails, and messages you've been sending.  It helps us feel not as far away, and we really appreciate that.  We love you all! Cheers!