Another crazy, busy week in paradise!

Wow – it was a busy week! For those of you who are loyal readers, my apologies for getting this update out later than usual. I think you’ll understand when you read it!

As advertised in the last blog, we did try our hand at making the DR version of Jimmy Dean pork sausage. It really wasn’t bad for our first attempt (and it was still better than anything we could get here!). We need to tweak the ingredients just a bit and we’ll be set. Our new motto: if you can’t get it here (or can’t get anything comparable), learn how to make it!

Too bad we don’t need beef for the sausage…because for some reason the cows that normally graze in the fields surrounding our development have decided that they now prefer to walk through the neighborhood, indiscriminately munching on bushes, flowers, and grass – and leaving telltale patties in the middle of the street. What’s interesting is they typically do this at night, but none of us have seen any of them in the development during the day.

We think they are getting in up near the front gate by Al and Glenda’s so we gave Al a spool of barbed wire that we had left over from when we had our fence built. He was going to use it to cordon off a couple of openings up that way…so hopefully that will be successful and we won’t have any 4 legged visitors of the bovine kind again anytime soon!

How are the plants (sticks) doing, you ask? They are actually all looking good for the most part. One of them is getting eaten by something. Glenda tells me it is slugs so I did some online research and found a good use for my used coffee grounds. We’ll see if it does the trick! Check out the flowering tree – AND the stick (yes, those are little leaves coming out the sides). Maybe there is something to this “plant it and it will grow” thing??

On Tuesday we had to call Peter the Plumber (yes, his name really is Peter) to have him come see if he could get the toilet in our master bath to work…it wasn’t flushing correctly. We had tried everything, including the DR version of Liquid Plumber (it’s called El Plummerito) – but to no avail. See…even life in the tropics can be crappy (sorry, couldn’t resist)!!

Peter said he’d come by Tuesday afternoon, but then he called around 3 to let us know that his work truck had broken down so he couldn’t make it until Wednesday. This is one of those times you are SO glad you have a house with multiple bathrooms!!

Wednesday a.m. was quite crazy. Peter showed up as promised right at 10, so we showed him the non-functioning “throne” and left him to do his magic. Next, Al had called a puerto y ventana hombre (door and window man) for us. We wanted him to come and measure to give us a price for the casita. We’d had another company that had come out, but they never called with the price!

Luckily I’d seen this shop in Charamicos, a small village we go through on the way to Puerto Plata and the phone number was on the front, so I wrote it down as we passed by. The shop is near Casa de Tornillos (House of Screws – yes, that is the literal translation – and, by the way, it is a great place to get keys made and find drill bits, etc.) Anyway, I digress….

Mr. Rodriquez of Puertos y Ventanas de Rodriquez showed up at the house at a little after 10. He measured and gave us a price on the spot….which, even better, was less than what I’d budgeted – and even better yet, he said he could have them ready Friday! So we sent him on his way to start building our ventanas y puerto.

We were really glad that the door & windows were coming in under budget because by this time Peter had discovered that the problem was not in the house, but rather, was outside…somewhere between the house and the septic tank. Long story short, the “root” of the problem was just that – roots – and lots of them!! In true Dominican fashion, the sewer pipes from the house run to a concrete box buried in the ground that is called a junction or inspection box. I learned more about sewers than I ever wanted to know (and you may to if you keep reading)!

So…the sewer pipes are not joined to the pipe that runs into the septic tank. Nope, they all meet in the junction box where it fills up with the lovely stuff that goes through the sewer lines and eventually it flows into the pipe leading to the tank. Well, that box wasn’t sealed correctly so it and the pipes were FULL of roots from the palms that are planted along the fence where the box is located.

Peter and his guys dug all of that out and fixed it so we shouldn’t have the same issue in the future. He also discovered that our septic tank wasn’t built correctly. He said we could leave it along and it might be ok, but he recommended that we eventually get the tank pumped and while it is empty, have someone (him) come and fix the problem. Not sure what that will cost, but we now have another item to add to our list.

He wasn’t able to finish everything that day, so he left and said he’d be back in the morning to wrap it up. Steve and I were a little nervous about what his bill would be since he’d been at the house for about 5 hours!

In addition to all that, I had a call with a prospective client – doing some virtual assistant work, and a call with my DaVita boss. Good news – I did get the VA project so I started on that Wednesday night since the agreed-upon deadline was Friday morning!

Thursday, Peter came back and finished putting things back together. When Steve asked him what we owed him, he apologized that it had taken so long (so Steve is thinking that it was going to be very painful) and told him it would be RD$3800 (that’s 3800 pesos – or about $109 US). Can you believe that??? He was here at least 6 hours, had to get parts and had 2 helpers with him. I’m not sure you could get a plumber to show up at your house in the States for that!! We will definitely call him back to do the septic tank repair and any other plumber-type work we might have in the future. We were glad to have that problem taken care of and spent the rest of the day doing work stuff.


On Friday morning, as promised, Senor Rodriquez arrived with our door and windows and got those installed. I finished the client’s project and since we had several items that had come in to our mailbox (for us and Al & Glenda), we decided to head into Puerto Plata to get them.

Friday afternoons are always crazy on the roads (kinda like home) so we typically avoid this, but it did make for some interesting picture taking.

Oh – and check out the pothole…yep, the same one that had a “warning” tree stuck in it not long ago that got filled in…but isn’t anymore!


This is a DR shoe salesman - yep, the bag is full of shoes too!

This family was all in pink...even the dad!


Friday night we went to a “Nice People Network” meeting/dinner. It’s a group that is run by a guy here that meet every other Friday and it’s a way to network and advertise your business. We went to one meeting with Pam and Dennis shortly after we got here, but weren’t in a position at that time to ramp up any business-related discussions. Well, time has gone by and we’ve put some work into getting our property management company set up. And since this meeting was at a restaurant just up the road from us (and one we’d talked about trying out), we decided we’d go.

Now mind you, neither Steve nor I like these kinds of things. It’s kind of like giving presentations in front of large groups – I can do them – I just don’t LIKE to do them. But we agreed that we would go and hopefully at the very least we’d have a good dinner.

Well, dinner WAS good and we actually met some very interesting people. First there was Robert. We actually looked at a villa that Robert has for sale (still). He’s now decided he may try to rent it out, so we agreed we’d go back and look at it and see if we can find him some renters. Next – Christian. What can we say about him? Well, he was mildly entertaining when he first sat down, but after about 30 minutes of no-stop chatter (no conversation, mind you – he WAS the conversation), it became rather annoying because no one else could get a word in edge-wise or talk to anyone else at the table.

Fortunately, Tony (the guy who runs the group) sat down and introduced us to a woman, Magdelena, who has a villa for sale as well as two condos in Cabarete that they rent out. We chatted with her for a bit and she asked if we’d like to see the villa. Here anyone can sell real estate (no license required), so we thought even though we aren’t actively pursuing sales, it wouldn’t hurt to go look.

Shortly after we agreed upon a time and she went back to her table, her husband walked by and Tony introduced him to us also. We started talking and he asked why we had moved to the DR. We told him that we’d wanted to simplify our lives – get out of the rat race. He laughed and said he wanted to do the same. Turns out he owns a telecom company in Miami. He and his wife travel to the various office locations – staying in each place about 15 days a month. So they are in Miami, Madrid (Spain), Bogota (Columbia), and Bolivia and here on a regular basis!

He told us he was reading a great book “The 4 Hour Work Week”, which I had read about 2 years ago. So we launched into a discussion about different things in the book – one of which is the concept of passive income. He asked what I thought about that and I told him I liked the concept, but am still trying to come up with ideas on how to put it into practice. He proceeded to tell me that he has several ideas and suggested that we get together for dinner when they get back to the DR in mid-September so we could talk about them. Needless to say, Steve and I decided that meeting Camilo and his wife probably made the whole dinner worth while!!

On Saturday we went to see the villa for sale. Magdelena was running behind, but told us to go on out and the caretaker could show us around. The villa is absolutely stunning! It’s a 5 bedroom, 6 bath, ocean-front beauty. It has a gorgeous infinity pool as well as direct access to the beach. So if anyone knows of anyone looking to buy such a place, send them our way!! They are selling it completely furnished, too. Here is a picture of the view from one of the upstairs bedrooms:



They also have a lot next door to the villa for sale. So we went with the caretaker to look as well. We were about done looking around when the villa phone rang. The caretaker answered – and called me to the phone (?!). It was Magdelena. She was just getting ready to head our way, but then thought perhaps we’d like to see the condos they have for rent as well. We agreed and headed into Cabarete.

Well, needless to say, the condos were almost as fabulous as the Villa. The first one has a magnificent ocean view from almost every room. It has 3 bedrooms and the complex has a beautiful pool and direct access to the beach. Check out the view from the living area:




Last she showed us the studio condo. It sits in the building right behind the bigger condo, so no ocean view, but access to the pool and beach are included as is maid service. The studio is set up very nicely and has everything you could want/need for a nice vacation stay…or a visit for a few months. Unfortunately the battery in our camera had gone dead – and no, neither of us had thought to bring a second camera! I took a few pictures with my cell phone, but need to figure out if I can send them to myself since we have a pay-as-you-go cell plan….hmmmm.

We spent some time visiting with Magdelena and getting details on all of the properties. Now we just need to find buyers and/or renters…so keep that in mind!!

After our trip to Cabarete, we headed back to our villa to drop off the camera and grab the cooler for another trip into Puerto Plata. One last package…and for Steve, the most important one…had arrived – his new ice cream maker! Since we needed to go to the grocery store anyway, it was a good excuse to go into POP again.

We also stopped by the cell phone store to get Steve’s blackberry set up on a DR plan. We had been there once already – only to find out that his BB needed to be unlocked. We took it to a guy in Sosua (he did mine) and had that done, so thought we were all set. Well, after waiting for an hour we finally get up to one of the desks…only to find out that the phone still isn’t unlocked so they cannot help us! Needless to say, we were less than impressed and will be paying our Sosua friend a visit.

We headed home with groceries and the ice cream maker. Next on the agenda – put the Kreepy Krauly Kruiser together. What is that, you ask?? Steve says it’s the ultimate in lazy…I say it’s not. It’s an automatic pool vacuum. If you’ve ever owned a swimming pool, you know what a chore it is to vacuum the pool. It’s not difficult, but it does take time and frankly, I’m personally not always in the mood to do it – or as is the case more often than not, when it needs to be done, you don’t have time.

Two of our neighbors have these things and love them. So Steve researched them and we found one online for a decent price. He had some gift cards from his birthday and decided to use some of the money to buy one. That was one of the packages that we picked up the day before. We put it together and sat poolside, watching it crawl around cleaning the pool….very cool!

A little later in the evening, I heard Linda at the front door. We went out to see what she needed and she pointed out several cows in the empty lot across from our house and next to theirs! Turns out there were about 20-25 of them. She asked if we could help chase them out of the neighborhood. So armed with flashlights we got them all gathered up in one lot and “herded” them (Dominican-style with rags, sticks and me whistling and the others clapping their hands and hollering) down to the far end of the development (away from the gate – remember, there’s barbed wire up there now, so they didn’t get in that way). Lo and behold, they headed toward an opening in the fence – that wasn’t there before that we know of.

Well, that was all fine and good until about 2 a.m. when Sierra started woofing. She has this little “woof” that she does – it’s not a bark, but just a way for her to let us know that something isn’t right. I got up and she’s looking out the sliding door of our room – toward the empty lot to the side of the house. We have a really good light out back, so I could tell there wasn’t anyone in our yard, but I could hear crackling in the lot. Then it dawned on me – the cows were back. I looked out the kitchen window, which faces the front, and sure enough, there were cows in the lot across the street as well.

Needless to say, they made a MESS – in many ways. We had cow pies in our front yard as well as all over the street. They also chomped our plants, broke branches and just decimated a bunch of things in our yard as well as Tony and Linda’s. The other houses down on this end have fences or walls around the front of the house, so the cows weren’t able to get in there. Of course, they were gone when we got up in the morning, but we knew we needed to take our barbed wire and do some fence fixing.

First we went to breakfast with Al and Glenda. Remember when they took us out for our anniversary a few weeks ago? We decided then that we would try to do breakfast once every couple/three weeks, so this was our Sunday to do that. After a nice, leisurely 3 hour breakfast, we headed home to fix fence.

We stopped to talk to Tony on our way – and he’d already been down to do the same thing. Interestingly, it had already been fixed! He reinforced it some and noticed that a couple of the fenceposts were broken, so who knows how long it will last. But he was going to call our friends at Century 21 to let them know…and see if they would do anything with it.

So we headed back home to give Dusty a haircut. It’s amazing how quickly his (and our) hair grows here. He was pretty shaggy – and hot – so it was time to practice my shearing skills. He was quite the trooper, standing for me for about an hour and a half, and I was quite happy with how he turned out. I’m still nowhere near professional level, but he doesn’t look too bad – see:



Sierra enjoyed just lazing poolside:


After eating a late lunch/early dinner, we went for a swim as did Sierra. Then she and Dusty got their Sunday shampoo and conditioner! Once Steve and I cleaned up and had ice cream (yep - the ice cream maker works great!), we were both ready to call it a day.

Monday we worked and worked and worked – on our “real” jobs (the ones that we get paid for) and on our business (property management). I’m still working on the website…getting up to speed on cascading style sheets (aka CSS) which is about as fun to read about as watching paint dry. I hope to have it up in the next week…wait – I WILL have it up in the next week – if it kills me!! I will send the URL in the next blog update and you can check it out.

I’m going to close for this update. Have a good rest of your week and we’ll be blogging with you soon!!