It’s strange to be the boss. In the states, I have always been an underling, never holding any real power, and never in charge of people’s livelihoods. Being a Gringo, we are looked at as being really wealthy, regardless of our household income. The truth is, that when you consider that most people here make about $2/hour, most Gringos are wealthy. Yesterday this really hit home. We have two painters working on the house, and our cleaning lady was here working. Then our gardener showed up, and we had 4 employees working here asking for direction and approval. The gardener sta [View Full Entry]

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On Saturday night we met 2 young expat couples to go to a festival/carnival in the local town. On first glance it looked like any other carnival with some dangerous looking rides, overpriced “tchotchkes” and games that are impossible to win. After a few minutes we began to notice that a lot of the stands were selling masks that some of the kids and many of the drunks were wearing. We found out that these masked “marauders” actually run through the festival during the daily parades beating onlookers with pig-bladders that they inflate with either water or air. Today w [View Full Entry]

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It sometimes feels that all we do is shop. Last week we bought 6 sinks for the new bathrooms, and a ton of lighting fixtures. We finally got our microwave, and have even started to buy some of the non-perishables for the inn. Today we went out and bought 26 gallons of paint… enough for the entire house. Unfortunately, we still cannot find anyone to paint or build for us. I guess starting a business is always expensive, but while some businesses have a lot of long-term expenses, our business requires most of the money to be spent up-front, and that’s [View Full Entry]

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This past week we spent the beginning of the week preparing for House Hunters to come and tape our house. It was a mad rush of cleaning up to make it look like we had never brought anything of our own into the house. We started taping on Wednesday, and that continued through today and really ate up a good portion of all of these days, leaving us with little time to take care of necessary errands. The taping was so much harder than any of us had expected. Rachel had a hard time saying what she liked and disliked in [View Full Entry]

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We never made it to the contractor, nor did we get to do any fun/touristy stuff on Sunday or any other day this week. Sunday we spent the whole day driving around Costa Rica looking for stores that we never found. It should have served as a preview for what lay in store for the rest of our week. Monday, we drove around shopping for all sorts of stuff, finding some of what we had been looking for to turn the house into a working inn. We also had our first Spanish class scheduled, but in true Tico style the teacher [View Full Entry]

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The most common expression used by expats (yet the locals talk about it as well) refers to the punctuality, speed and efficiency with which things get done here in Costa Rica, this expression is “Tico Time”. Ticos are native Costa Ricans, and they move at a pace which could infuriate the most saintly among us. A 20 minute errand can turn into an all day affair depending upon your luck. While I have experienced this phenomenon before, the first time I really felt affected by Tico Time was this past Friday. Rachel and I decided to open a bank account. It [View Full Entry]

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Now I am back here with Rachel for a 4th time this year. We have begun setting up a lot of the house. After bringing down 260lbs worth of stuff, we have started a number of small projects. Fortunately and unfortunately we cannot start anything too large because we are GOING TO BE ON NATIONAL TELEVISION! We were selected to appear on the show “House Hunters” on HGTV. They are filming us for a high-definition special called House-Hunters International, and shooting will begin on the 16th of August. Because of this we cannot start to do too much work until they [View Full Entry]

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July 2nd 2006, my father and I came back here to close on the house here. Rachel still had not seen it, but I guess once your with someone for 1/3 of your life, you begin to trust that they know what you’ll like and what you won’t. The trip with my father was great. It was a true Tico (native Costa Rican) experience. We shopped at all of the local places and we almost even fit in, at least until we tried to talk to anyone. We got some projects accomplished and then we began the touristy part: My father [View Full Entry]

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My first trip to prospect for property happened in April. I came down with my father in law and his close friend. While it was a great opportunity to bond with him, it was unfortunately a disaster in all other respects. The houses that we looked at were horrendous, very far from civilization, up huge mountains and on roads that shook our teeth loose. To top it all off, the realtors car overheated, making the trip that much more “exciting”. Coming back from that trip, we were ready to call it quits. Things were just dire, no properties, and out a [View Full Entry]

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This weblog will provide a bit of background on Rachel and me and the opening of our inn. It will take you from brainstorming to the formation of a more official plan to open our inn, it will continue through its progress as we design it and prepare for our opening, and hopefully through our adventures as innkeepers. Some background on us: Rachel is a registered nurse, specializing in pediatrics. She received her degree from Rutgers University and has worked at Robert Wood Johnson and St. Peters Hospitals in New Brunswick, NJ, Newark Beth Israel Hospital and most recently at J.F.K [View Full Entry]

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