Counter Install

Hello again!

We had a good visit to Costa Rica in late April. Primarily we needed to be there for our Homeowners Association annual meeting since that is an important gathering so that all homeowners have better chances to meet at one time; plus to conduct important community business.

Dick and I had intended to hang ceiling fans, light fixtures and get plumbing set so we could stay in our casa. Unfortunately we learned that our electric rough in was fraught with issues and needed to be ripped out and replaced. Given that bad news - we did not pursue our plans and wound up staying in a hotel the entire trip. Now that was not a horrible thing since we had also planned for Dick's mom, sister and brother-in-law to spend the second half of our visit with us.

Still some things were destined to come together and this post is part of that. In early April our kitchen cabinets were installed. And as we were arriving and for the first three workdays, our windows were going in as well. Plus, we had arranged for the countertop to go in WHILE we were there.

This first photo is of the countertop guys arriving to our driveway, and starting to unload the two pieces of granite. For those who are familiar, we chose Ubatuba granite which oddly is cheaper than laminate in Costa Rica. Our only cheaper option would have been tile - and in fact that is what we're planning for our laundry and vanity tables.

In the third photo you can see not only the two countertop guys lifting the larger section of granite into the corner, but two of Alberto's window crew jumped in to help as well.

I think this is one of the cool things about the local worker culture there. The granite guys didn't go up to the window guys to plea for help. Rather, the window guys recognized that help would be needed, and just stepped in to lend a hand. I know that occurs in the states in many places as well. But we all know of other cases where people will just watch other struggle, and never help out. This was not the first time I had seen this behavior there.

In this final photo, the installers are securing the big corner section on top of the cabinets.

I'll have other photos in a later post of the sink hole being cut.

What we love about being able to post this blog is that you can see the windows in place, and counter top in place. Once electric is redone, the countertop tile backsplash can be installed. More on that in a future post.

Thanks for following our blog! If you're new to it, please check out the navigation on the left to prior blogs. You'll need to go all the way back to May 2008 to see the START.

Ricardo y Jeeeem

Monkey Tour

During our April trip where we were joined by Dick's mom, sis and bro-in-law; we took one morning to enjoy a monkey tour in the mangroves near Quepos.



These tours are pretty cool as it is both educational and entertaining. The boats are simple with light covering for the drizzle/rain that frequently characterizes that area. You'll see some deterioration as this is right on the ocean, and salt air is very corrosive.



As you can see, in this particular section the monkeys came right onto our boat, and onto US as well.

I fear our guides were not following the letter of the law and enticed the monkeys to visit. While I admit, we enjoyed that closeup view; these are wild animals and such interactions are not healthy for either the monkeys, or the humans. It appeared though that our guides were aware of the various monkey families along this part of the coast, and actively looked for this one family who DO interact with humans. We did not see them trying to "convert" the other monkey families to behave in similar ways.




Once we heard the couple of siblings on the roof of our boat, this was the first view, one of them peering over the edge to see who was below. Cute!

These other photos show the non interacting family coming close to the boat on branches. They are a curious lot, and want to see who is around and what they're doing.

Thanks for reading.

Ricardo y Jeeeem