Adios, Vista Esmeralda!

On August 6, Nancy & I sold our house in Costa Rica. With all the documents signed and stamped a dozen times, we passed our mountain retreat outside of San Ramon to three Costa Rican sisters.

We bought the lot and partially built house in 2003 when Nancy took Minnesota community college students down for a Spanish immersion semester. I returned in June of that year to shoo the local horses out of the building and restart construction. (The original owners had run into financial difficulties and needed to sell.)

In January, 2004, the first year of Nancy's phased retirement, we returned to Costa Rica where our "completed" house awaited us. My body knew there was trouble ahead because the night before we boarded the plane I broke out in hives for the second time in my life (the first being when I was a kid and Mom sprayed perfume on me).

We spent the next four months dealing with builders, repairmen, and craftsmen, trying to get the house finished...or at least the plumbing to work correctly. I cleaned 120 square meters of tile on my hands and knees, using acid to remove grout, paint, and crud because the workers never bothered to put down tarps when they worked.

Nancy got quite proficient at speaking rural Spanish and using words such as wrench, O-ring, faucet, leak.

God, we worked hard. But then, mid-afternoon, we'd take a break on the veranda, swaying in hammocks, breathing in the fresh mountain air, and looking over coffee and sugar fields to the volcanoes in the distance. Ahhh, we'd landed in paradise!

We still own the lot just below the house. It's a little piece of security, I guess, a bit of holding onto possibilities. When we stayed a few days with our friends Joanna and Jose up the hill, the glorious mornings, the fabulous birds, the fecundity of soil, and the spirit of a community built at the edge of a cloud forest, tempted us to think...hmmm...someday...

But for now, we say adios, Vista Esmeralda. Thanks for wonderful memories and (now) funny stories!

Becky