Housing

It just occurred to me that I've never shared much about our housing situation and the semi miraculous circumstances that brought us to where we are.

Puriscal is a fairly small rural area. The main source of income is farming. Before we arrived in Costa Rica, the branch president graciously offered to let us stay with him (he has a very large home) until we found a more permanent place to live. The housing market here is very difficult, because most people do not do any type of advertising. Sometimes they put a sign up on the home, but even that is not very common. Therefore, you have to rely on word of mouth to find a place to stay. There is Craig's List on the internet (used mostly by gringos), and also the local newspapers. However, there really is not much advertising done for housing. We spent a lot time looking for housing with very little success.

We did hear about a house where the owner began building it, but presumably ran out of money before it was finished. This partially finished home, so the rumor went, could probably be purchased for very cheap and then finished for not much more money since labor here is extremely cheap. Karen wanted to find the home and look into buying it. I did not want to bother with the purchase of a home, since we are only planning on staying for a year. Besides, we really didn't know where the house was, we only had a vague notion. However, Karen felt that we needed to take a look. Eventually I conceded to go look at the house. We drove around for a while and finally arrived at the home we believed to be the one. As we arrived at the place there was strong evidence leading us to believe that the home was occupied and probably not for sale.

At this point, Karen said something very much out of character. She said "why don't we drive around?" This question surprised me. I'm the one who usually likes to drive around and explore, while she normally gets annoyed at me for even thinking about it. However, on this day, that is exactly what she said, and I did not argue. We drove down the dirt road past the home, took a right turn which turned out to be a private road that led down to three homes in a secluded valley. As we approached the first home, it became apparent that this was not a road that continued on to anywhere. As we sat there trying to decide what to do, a woman came out and approached the car. She had a European look to her, so I asked if she spoke English. She answered that she did and invited us to come in. They had been renting this house for several years, and were planning to move out in December. They told us that the next door neighbor would be moving even sooner. She showed us around and it was perfect, much better than any other place we had seen.

To make a long story short. We had to rent another place for a month while we waited for the neighbors to move out. The new home was bigger and better than any other other place we had looked at in Puriscal and it cost less to rent than other place we had looked at! How's that for amazing?