HOT!!! Wow – it’s been very warm the last few days. We get to a point where we try not to even look at the thermometer because it just makes it worse, but to give you an example, it is 8:15 p.m. as I’m writing this and the heat index is 90 – which actually feels relatively cool! For those of you who aren’t familiar with that term (heat index), here’s the link to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index. And for those of you who are used to the heat in Colorado (but it’s a dry heat, right?), you know that when it’s hot, it just hot – wet, dry, whatever kind of heat. Unfortunately you can’t even jump in the pool to cool off – because it’s like bathwater! Oh well…guess that’s the price we pay for living in paradise, true? I’m sure we won’t be feeling so bad when it’s in the 80s here and it is freezing back home!
I’m not sure if this little, teeny, tiny gecko was trying to cool off or what, but he was floating in the pool when I went out tonight. Poor little guy was paddling like mad, trying to get to the side, so I scooped him up and put him on the edge of the pool. He sat there for several minutes – probably trying to get his breath and wits about him – so I snapped this picture of him. He was a cute little guy! We’ve seen lots of very little geckos lately – don’t know if they hatch this time of year or what, but there sure have been a lot more little ones around than before. They are fun to watch and every once and a while Dusty will see one and try to chase it. Guess who wins that race?!
Luckily it was a relatively non-eventful week (after the “fun” of last week), but it was busy and we accomplished a lot. Since Century 21/Perdomo (the management company for our little neighborhood) isn’t doing any maintenance, a few of us homeowners agreed that we would have some of the work done and pay for it. So on Tuesday, Jean Claude, the neighborhood gardener/laborer, came to work. Steve and Al put him to work digging a hole – looking for a water pipe that we believe has a leak (there’s typically water sitting in this one area at times that there hasn’t been any precipitation at all…hmmmm).
Dave – cover your ears – he was digging this hole with a pick axe and a spade – with no shoes on! He comes to work with croc-like shoes on and a couple of the neighbors have boots that he can borrow, but for some reason, he wanted to do the digging with no shoes! Thankfully he finished with all 10 toes intact – even after creating a hole that was about 6 or 7 feet long, a couple feet wide and almost hip deep. Unfortunately we still haven’t found the water line. So the decision was made to wait and see if we get more water in that hole – and perhaps we’ll be able to tell where it’s coming from and have him dig in that direction. After almost a week, it’s not showing signs of doing that for us. Not sure what’s next – but I’ll leave that to the experts!
After Jean Claude (aka JC) finished digging, we had him do some work at our house. The grass in the front had grown out onto the street, so he cleaned that up. And he did such a nice job of getting it off in large pieces that I was able to take the “sod” strips and put some in the back over the area that had to be dug out last week for the sewer repair. Hopefully grass is like the other things here – stick it in the ground (or on the ground in this case) and it’ll grow. Plus this grass has some great fertilizer to work with! Speaking of growing – check out the stick in the picture below. Yep – the leaves are even bigger just since last week!
Remember the sand pile we had in the back that the dogs were enjoying? Well between their digging and the rain, that pile was spread all over the top of the concrete pad we had put it on, so we had JC scoop it up and put it in a pile again, then move all of the extra cinder blocks from the casita construction over and created a sort of dam to keep it contained. We had had some fencing across that area to keep the dogs out but since it was down, Sierra took the opportunity to lay in that nice sand pile in the shade.
We all took a break and had some lunch. We take turns feeding JC when he works for the neighborhood and it was our turn. We had bought some small containers of Pringles (they don’t get stale so fast that way) and most of the store-bought cookies (like Oreos) come wrapped in smaller quantities, then in a larger package, so we gave him one of each. As we were eating, I asked if he had family here (he is Haitian) and he said he had 3 little girls. He finished everything I had made for him except the Pringles and the Oreos. He told us he was going to take them home to the niñas. I’m sure that those were things that they likely didn’t get on a regular basis (if at all), so I went in and got two more of each so each girl could have one of each. And another for JC – he had worked hard! We were impressed that he was so thoughtful about his kids. Wish we could have seen their faces when they got their treats! It’s interesting to think that something that seems so simple and basic to us can be such a treat for someone else. Sure does make you appreciate what you have!
For the rest of the afternoon, JC worked on clearing out some of the common areas where the grass and weeds had grown out of control. While he was doing that, I went on a rock hunting expedition. There are some really cool coral-looking rocks here – I think it’s called colichi (sp?). There’s lots of it around, but it’s not easy to find because the weeds and grass is so thick. But I figured out if you walk around in the empty lots around here, you can feel the rocks under your feet, then with a little weed pulling action, viola! I took Zuki up to the area in the neighborhood where Al and Tony had told us there were lots of these rocks and loaded her up twice. Some of the rocks I used out in front of the house to put a border where JC had cleaned up the overgrown grass.
Then the rest we used out back to finish the border along the back under the palms. On Thursday we ordered the gravel for the back and to fill in some low spots in the driveway. That afternoon they brought it – 4 cubic meters worth. Steve and I discussed having JC come help us move it, but decided that since he wasn’t always as careful as he needed to be that we would do it ourselves so we wouldn’t lose all of our new plants. Guess what we now had planned for Saturday?
On Wednesday we met with a potential client for the property management company – the guy whose house we looked at when we came on our house-hunting trip. He’s an interesting fellow…will be interesting to see what we can do for him. He’s already turning out to be high-maintenance. Not good!!
We actually have spent quite a bit of time on the company – working on the website. It’s getting closer to being ready…had me stumped for a while, but I figured it out finally! On Friday we didn’t have power for 7 hours. The good news was that our batteries held up just fine and we were able to do the work we needed to do.
Saturday morning…rock moving day. We tried to get an early (relatively) start so we could beat the heat as much as possible. We finished up the back yard around noon and decided to call it a day since it was 90+ in the shade at that point. Showers and a siesta rounded out the day. Check out our handy work - before:
And after:
On Sunday we didn’t start quite as early since we only had about ¼ of the rock left to move. It only took us a little over an hour to finish. We were glad to get it done and took it easy the rest of the day.
Today we went into Cabarete to meet with a woman who has several properties that might be a fit for someone we’re trying to locate a rental apartment for. We took that opportunity to look at the town from a different view point and made a note of several of the properties and where they were in proximity to some of the key “hot spots”. Check out these dogs we spotted on the back of an ATV!
We also were able to take care of the first step in getting our revista. That is a sticker that is required to be renewed annually that goes on the windshield of your car. First you have to go to a specific bank to pay for the revista – which costs 45 pesos (which is about $1.25). There are branches of this bank in many of the towns, but the problem is that the bank doesn’t always have the form. So it’s kind of hit or miss – but the DR gods were smiling on us today because the Cabarete branch had them.
Now we have the form and receipt of payment. Next we have to go to one of the government offices in Puerto Plata and actually get the sticker. That should be an interesting experience!! I’ll be sure to post an update for you.
Other news – our neighbors, Tony and Linda, left today to go back to the UK for 6 weeks. They are Archie’s mom and dad and they also take care of our dogs when we need them to. They have some friends staying at their house to look after it and Archie – Maxine (aka Max) and Richard. I’ve met them a couple of times and I’m sure we’ll get to know them better while Tony and Linda are gone. Hopefully our puppies will like them as much as they do Tony and Linda – just in case we need someone to look in on them if needed! Al and Glenda would do that for us, but neither of them are real dog lovers. They don’t dislike them, but Glenda grew up on a farm and the dogs she was around were working dogs, not pets. Linda and Tony, on the other hand, truly like the dogs. They don’t mind if Dusty jumps on their lap to get petted – in fact they encourage it! So we’ll have to see how Max and Richard are. We’ll keep you posted!
That’s about it from here. Stay cool and have a good rest of your week!
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