Week 12 - WOW how time flies!

This week started off quiet…we both had some work to do (the paying kind!) so spent a lot of the day in front of our computers. I decided since we’d had mucho dias de sol (many days of sun) to call Raphael and ask him to come paint the casita. Hopefully I understood him correctly and he will be at the house on Wednesday! We’ll see!!

Our new neighbors, Jackie & Damian, decided to venture into Santiago on Monday. We were a little surprised that they didn’t leave until after noon since it’s a good 2 hour drive each way – and personally, we try our best not to drive much after dark here (we had told them that as well). Why, you ask? Many of the motos do not have taillights and very few have headlights and those that do you can hardly see until you are right up on them. Coupled with cars that either can’t or won’t turn their brights off, it gets a little dicey!! We were a bit worried about them when they had not yet returned at 9 p.m. – then shortly after that we heard them pull in.

Needless to say, they now know why we recommended they not drive after dark! Apparently they didn’t leave Santiago until it was nearly dark – so not only did they have to drive, but it took even longer because you have to go slower in the dark. They had gone with their realtor, who drove the stretch from Santiago to Puerto Plata – which they said was pretty scary. Then they dropped her off in Puerto Plata and drove the rest of the way home. I think they have learned the hard way about driving after dark here!!

Mid-morning Tuesday, Rafael 1 (as we refer to him – he’s the guy who did our iron work) showed up to give us a price for the iron work on the casita & propane storage. We were pleasantly surprised when it came in at about ½ of what we thought we might have to pay. We were surprised as well to hear that he would be ready to install everything on Sabado (Saturday) since the last time it took about 10 days. One step closer to being done! He also gave our new neighbors a bid to do a repair and put up a door for them.

Later in the day, the dogs were barking like crazy, and when we went to investigate, our neighbor Tony was at the door. Not sure if I mentioned this in a previous post, so here’s the background. We bought the house from 2 guys – Robert and Orlando. Orlando is Dominican, but when his brother who lives in the States was in a bad accident, he went there to help take care of him. In the meantime, Robert decided he didn’t like it here anymore, so they agreed to sell the house. When we came house hunting in March, Orlando’s car was parked in the driveway and we were assured that it would be moved by the time we got here – even though it wasn’t running – and that Orlando would be back in June to get it.

And it was moved from our driveway…someone had pushed it down to one of the vacant lots in our subdivision next to Tony’s house. Once when I was out walking the dogs, I noticed that there was a lot of stuff in the back seat, covered by towels or bags or something. Well, Orlando DID come back to get the car and when he was going through the items Robert had left in the car, he came across the satellite boxes & remote that go to the satellite dish that is on our house! So Tony brought it over to us – and we got to meet Orlando. He seemed to be a nice guy. Unfortunately Orlando wasn’t able to move the car since there seems to still be a problem with the computer…so he was going to try and find someone who could just haul it off for him. So we’ll see what happens there!

We also found out that Jackie & Damian are having second thoughts about the house they were planning to buy and have decided they want to look at more. They like our neighborhood and there are a couple of houses for sale here, so we put them in touch with Pam and Dennis. And the really cool thing – if they buy something through them, Pam & Dennis said they’d give us a cut. They were taking them to look at the houses here plus a couple of others close by this afternoon. So we’ll keep our fingers crossed!!

It was kind of a crazy day with our old world colliding with our new world. We both had lots of work to do “back home” so tried to do that between interruptions here, which included a call from Matt who was seeking some Excel help. I think we figured out the problem…never a dull moment!

On Wednesday Raphael #2 came to paint the casita. Luckily we’d had several days of sun & no rain. We had bought a special sealing paint for the roof – which is quite a bit more expensive than regular paint, but it’s supposed to be the best thing for preventing leaks. He had taken one gallon up with him & when he finished using that one, he asked me to hand him up the other gallon. Mind you, he doesn’t have a ladder here, so he had climbed up using trees and the fence so it was definitely easier for me to hand it to him…or was it…?

Because the casita is quite tall, I had to stack a couple of the leftover cinderblocks to stand on in order to get the can high enough for him to reach. He grabbed it with one hand – and I don’t know if I heard him gasp or what, but I jumped off the blocks – just in time to see the can land about a foot from the blocks! The lid had popped off and paint splashed on the wall of the casita, some on the ground – but amazingly, the can landed upright and we only lost a small amount. And better yet – NONE splashed on me nor did the can hit me on the head!!

So I took the roller from Raphael and spread out the paint that had splashed on the wall. Then, after wiping down the side of the can, handed it back up to him (he could grab inside the can this time!) and proceeded to sprinkle some sand on the paint that had spilled on the ground to help keep it from getting tracked all over!

One would have thought we’d had enough bad luck for the day, but now we could see storm clouds building in the distance. And yes, wouldn’t you know it – after Raphael had about 90% of the roof painted using that special, expensive paint - it decides to rain! Fortunately the paint dries quickly, but it still washed some of it off...dripping white drops off the side of the casita! What a pain! The rain finally stopped and he worked on painting the walls & inside of the casita. We decided we’d have him do what he could for the day and then we'd finish it. It's just too hard to coordinate with the weather, his schedule, our schedule, etc. Those darn DR gods – and Mother Nature – they were not being our friends today, for sure!!

We were pleased, too, that he had brought back the jackets and rain pants that we had lent to him and Luis. We were a little concerned that they had misunderstood and thought they were a gift – and even after I asked Raphael if he could get them back from Luis, he indicated that he hadn’t been able to get in touch with him. But today he had both sets – freshly laundered as well!

Our new neighbors are turning out to be quite interesting. As I had mentioned, they were interested in seeing some other houses, so Pam & Dennis made arrangements to show them several late on Tuesday afternoon and ended up having dinner and a few drinks with them. They also agreed to pick Jackie & Damian up on Wednesday around 10 a.m. to show them a few more houses. When Pam & Dennis arrived to get them on Wednesday morning, there was no answer at their door, but their car is in the driveway – and their keys were in the front door (for both the house and the car)!

Pam & Dennis came to see if we’d heard/seen them, which we hadn’t. So we went back over with them – knocking on the door again. No answer. Wondering if perhaps they had gone across the street to Tony & Linda’s, I walked across and Linda tells me that they had, in fact, been there the night before – and went home, quite sloshed, at around 3 a.m.! Needless to say, they were dead to the world for several more hours. Thankfully they weren’t driving, but we’ve been kidding them that next time they need a designated walker to make sure they get into their house WITH their keys safely inside next time!

And the final surprise of the day…Rafael 1 (the iron work guy) called to tell us that the iron work was ready and asked if he could come on Thursday to put it up. We happily agreed. I went next door to confirm with Jackie & Damian and they too were pleased he was ready so quickly. Rafael said he would call when he was headed our way Thursday morning.

Thursday morning…Rafael called shortly after 8 to tell us he’s on his way. I walked next door to tell Jackie & Damian. They told me that they needed to run to the bank and would be back in a few minutes. Rafael and his crew arrived and started working on our casita & the propane storage. When it looked like they are about ½ way done and the neighbors still aren’t back (2 hours later?!), I called Jackie. Turns out they decided to “run” into Puerto Plata and do a little shopping while they were out – but she said they would be home shortly!

About 30 minutes later, Rafael was ready to do their work and they were nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, he was able do the work without them being there (although it made it much more difficult for his crew). Jackie and Damian did finally show up – after Rafael and crew were done & loaded up, ready to go. We felt bad that he had to wait for them (and we didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay their part), so we were all relieved when they did get back and paid their bill! Here’s what the casita looks like now…with its new iron work and a coat of primer.




Later that day, our power went out – which isn’t an unusual occurrence here by any stretch of the imagination. But it was a little suspicious that it just happened to go out when there were some guys poking around in the meter box at the street – trying to get the power on for a house that is under construction a couple of doors down. Steve went out to see if perhaps they had anything to do with it and apparently they had been randomly flipping breakers! He let them know that we were not terribly happy with that and asked them to leave our breaker alone.

All was good – until around 8:30 p.m. when we had yet another power outage. This one only lasted about 10 seconds, but when the street power came back on, our lights would flash every few seconds and our inverter (our back up power) would click at the same time. We tried resetting the inverter, checked breakers, even called our neighbor Al who is very well versed in all of this stuff – but he, too, was baffled. For some reason, we were not getting street power even though it was on! The good news – our electrician, Michael, was supposed to be at Al’s house at 9 a.m. the next day and Al said he’d be happy to send him to us first since the work he was having done wasn’t urgent. We told him we’d let him know what the status was in the morning.

We resigned ourselves to running off the inverter for the night. We’ve been told that it’s not good to run the ceiling fans on the inverter because it’s hard on them, so we turned them off (which we do anyway if we are here when the power goes out). We have a couple of floor fans that we can run and those are what we used when we went to bed. We also tried to make sure everything else that might draw on the inverter/batteries was off or unplugged.

Well, about 2 a.m. I woke up. Not sure why, but I quickly noticed that it was pitch dark, the fans were off and it was hotter than heck in our room! I got up, flashlight in hand, and checked the inverter…it said “batteries low” (or in our case, I think they were dead!). Of course there wasn’t any breeze outside to help bring some cool air in, so we tried our best to sleep in a very warm room. There was a nice rain shower around 4 a.m. (I think) which helped cool things down a bit, but needless to say, we were awake quite early (or did we ever really sleep?)

Oh, and did I mention that when the power is out we don’t have any water? That’s because there’s a pump required to move the water from our cistern (storage tank) to the house – and it runs on…yup, you guessed it…electricity! I was also concerned about the refrigerator and how long it would stay cold, especially as warm as it was in the house. So once we heard our neighbors up and around, I went over to ask them if we could run a power cord from the outlet on their front porch over to our house so we could plug in the fridge until Michael could come see what was wrong. Thankfully they didn’t mind and we actually had a 100 foot cord we had brought with us that worked perfectly!

With the fridge back on and coffee made (yes, the coffeemaker is electric too!), we decided to look at our “to do” list and see if there was anything we could do that didn’t require electricity. Although we could have done some painting, we wouldn’t have had any way to clean up brushed when we finished, so with everything somehow tied to needing power, we scrapped that idea.

When Michael arrived shortly after nine, wouldn’t you know it…the street power was off for everyone! Because of that, he couldn’t check to see where our problem was, so he went back to Al’s house to work on his job (he needed the power off for that anyway). Once he got to a stopping point there and the street power was back on (around noon), he came back. The problem was out at the meter box…a bad connector! Hmmm…wonder if those guys didn’t like Steve giving them an earful and sabotaged it?? Fortunately it was a relatively quick and inexpensive fix and we were back up and running by early in the afternoon.

We had planned on working that morning, then take the afternoon off to go to Cabarate to watch the World Cup Kite Boarding competition, but we decided we had better do the work we had needed to do in the morning and if possible, try to catch the competition on either Saturday or Sunday. So we stayed home and after working for a few hours, cleaned the pool, had a nice dinner and called it an early night!

Saturday we headed into Puerto Plata to pick up some packages, get paint supplies, and groceries. We had a nice lunch on the malecon - the street that runs along the ocean. There is a nice tree-lined walkway on the ocean side and restaurants, stores, apartments/condos on the other side. It gives you a good view of the ocean and typically entertaining people-watching as well. We were joined for lunch by a cute little kitten. And of course, we saw the usual interesting sights along the way…


It’s not unusual to occasionally see someone riding a horse or a mule along the road, nor is it unusual to see what we call “the penguin man” – the guy in the red outfit who walks along the streets selling ice cream (that’s what is in the bin he’s pushing). But it is somewhat unusual to capture them both in one picture!





We also saw what we believe is a traveling store of sorts:









And again, not usual to see women riding “side saddle” on the back of a moto. I can’t figure out how they keep their shoes on – let alone stay on the back of those things with the bumps and the drivers weaving around cars, potholes and other motos!!







This guy has an inverter & what looks to be a bracket to hold the batteries (which the moto behind him was carrying – unfortunately I didn't get a picture of that).



After we got home from Puerto Plata, we put up our new retractable clothesline (yay – no more worrying about strangling ourselves with the one we temporarily rigged up!), put in our new door peephole (so we can see who’s out front without opening the door first), and hung up our broom/mop organizer.

We had stopped by Al & Glenda’s to see if they needed anything from Puerto Plata and they invited us to dinner with some of their friends on Sunday afternoon. I think we’ll go…so we may not make it to the kite boarding competition this year. Oh well – there will be other opportunities!

I’m going to sign off for now. We had quite a bit of rain Saturday evening so it was nice and cool inside and out, but we also had no power (yup, again). So in an effort to save our batteries for more important things (fans!) should the power stay off too long, I’m going to power off my computer and say good night!