Monthly Archives: October 2013

Paraiso de Gato

Pretty Kitty outside

Meow, let me get you caught up with how things have been going for me. I have a sneaking suspicion that I can’t quite confirm that my humans drugged me for the trip here to Puerto Rico. When we first arrived, I hardly remember a thing. And truth be told, this is the way everyone should travel. You get knocked out and wake up where you want to be. No hassles, or at least none that I can remember. But still, I find that rather rude of them not to tell me.

Anymeow, yesterday I finally felt up to the task that I was born to do. It took me nearly a week in bed for the jet lag and drugs to wear off. I mostly hung out in my bed that I generously share with my humans because they are so cute and warm.

As I got more and more comfortable with my new abode, I began practicing for my night out. While in the living structure I have begun catching and mortally wounding the occasional cucaracha that would attempt to breach our security.

Cucaracha
Poor sucker never saw it coming

I also scoped out the area and chose my lookout points.

Meow

And I managed to finally get enough to eat without all the ants eating my food and stinging my tongue. It’s hard to find good human help these days, but I finally got through to them.

Kitty Food
My delicious crunchies floating in an ant-proof moat. An ingenious solution (thanks Kat-rina and I love your name BTW) 

So, suffice it to say I was prepared for this grand adventure. Really this night and many more to come was the culmination of a lot of hard work and the reason I bought the tickets and brought along these two servants in the first place.

I left the sleeping structure after being served my crunchies around 10am and headed straight to the jungle. There is a lot of good game to hunt here. I saw many birds, lizards, bugs and frogs. But the rats! That is going to take some practice. All in good time, my friend, I thought.

I took a few cat naps in the tall grasses and sniffed around the palms a bit. I know there are some locals in these parts and I want to get to know these cats with strange accents. Like they say “Mew” instead of “meow”. They also prefer to be called “Gatos” instead of “cats”. So strange. But I found the gato toilet above the sleeping structure and knew these local gatos must hang out here a lot. I thought I might want my servants around just in case things got ugly (they are pretty good at wound care when I have been in scuffles in Greeley I must say), but alas they were off romping about in some blue rumbler machine, I think they call it a guagua. All I can hope is that they were at least getting me some more crunchies.

So by the time they returned in the evening I was deep in the forest. My night eyes were on and I had a great time partying with my new pals and pouncing on lizards. We even stalked a rat and almost had him. I could hear my humans calling to me. They were scaring off all the good hunts. I will need to remind them that I am the only one to call them. They are only to speak when spoken to. But they are in a new place and that has to be somewhat stressful for the poor creatures. So the next morning after they called me about a million times, I returned to the back door and meowed for them to let me in. I was so hungry! I caught a few lizards, but I rarely eat anything I catch. I am a crunchy-cat through and through. I just hunt for the sport of it.

So that was my first night out. I think I chose well in a place to move. A cat’s paradise, or should I say paraiso de gato.

IMG_3901
I have very good balance as you can clearly see

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We Bought a Gua-Gua!

Long story short, today we bought a gua-gua.

Kicking the Tire

Now, here is the long story…

Yesterday we went to Mayaguez, the largest city on this western side of Puerto Rico, to run a few errands and also to start the search for a vehicle. We stopped at a couple of places, but really didn’t see any small used trucks…what we quickly learned are called gua-guas (wa-was or wow-wows).  I had heard that buses and large SUVs were gua-guas, but didn’t realize that pick-up trucks were until I said in Spanish that we were looking for a “troca” or “camioneta” and they said “Oh, si, gua-guas!”.

Finally, we talked with one of the salesmen and he said that they didn’t have anything except brand new gua-guas there on the car lot, but that he had his own personal truck that he would be willing to sell to us! He asked for our phone number, but we don’t have one. Then, the motivated salesman offered to drive the truck over to our property in Rincon the next morning. Ok, sure, we said. We will be there working and hope to see you.

We sort of laughed it off and didn’t really think we would be seeing him again. But I stuck around the property this morning, just in case. Britton is still trying to sort out the mail situation (another long story for another post), so he went down to the post office and then came back. The time came and went when the salesman was supposed to arrive, so we just started doing yard work. Suddenly, I looked up and yelled to Britton, “Blue Truck! The blue truck is here!” Then Britton dropped the weedwacker and we both went running to catch him -me with a pruner and Britton with the machete still in hand.

Under the Hood

We managed to flag the salesman, Don Rafael, down. Then we inspected the truck and the three of us piled into it for a test drive. It was just about everything we needed except we were hoping for a slightly extended cab to seat people if we needed. It was also a little older than we had hoped (a ’94 Dodge Dakota) but it only had 40k miles. So, we asked the price and he threw one out that was a little higher than we thought it should be. So we went back and forth a couple of times until we agreed on a number. Now came the exciting next 6 hours of the day trying to accomplish the task of actually buying the gua-gua…

The first stop was the bank (Banco Popular) to see if they would take a check from Colorado. They would, but it would be held for 5 to 7 days before the money would be available. Don Rafael thought if we opened an account that that would make it work, but the clerk said it would take the same amount of time either way. And wouldn’t be available for 5-7 days. We thought this might happen, so we also had cash available and decided to just do a cash deal.

Stamps

Don Rafael agreed to go with us to the Colecturia in Aguadilla to change the title over since we had no idea what to do for that. The title is basically the same as a title in Colorado, but you leave the plates on and the “marbete” also goes with the vehicle and must be renewed once a year. The marbete is a sticker that goes in the front windshield and acts sort of like liability insurance and registration. Because Rafael had recently paid the marbete, we won’t have to do that until next July.

Anyway, we were off on the drive to Aguadilla to the Driver’s Center. Rafael rode with us in our rental car and was our friendly navigator to the center that is hidden near the Ramey Base and airport. First we had to get sellos (stamps). Rafael bought these, so we are not sure exactly what they are for or how much they cost (around $10 we think), but apparently you need them before you can go change the title over. Don Rafael is over 60 years old, so he was able to go to the express line and didn’t have to wait like everyone else in the “fila” (line). That was a nice benefit! I think we need to bring a senior with us anytime we have to do government business! Once we had the sellos, we had to walk over to the Driver’s Center.

Another Govt Office

When we got to the clerk there, he said we had everything we needed (Colorado driver’s license was fine for ID and social security card) EXCEPT we needed an electric or water bill. What? Why would we need an electricity bill to buy a car? They said it established the address that would go on the title and would be where they would send the notice for the new marbete. Can’t we just tell you our address? No, we need something official. Well, we didn’t have it with us, so what now?

We didn’t even have one at home, so we thought for a minute and then came up with the idea to print one off from the electricity or water websites. Rafael checks with the clerk who thinks that would be fine. Ok, good. Now…where do we print that at? We also do not have a printer at home and we are in Aguadilla at this point, 30 minutes from Rincon. Hmmm. Rafael says he has a friend that works at the Rincon Coop (credit union) and he thinks we could print out the bill there. We asked if there was a Kinkos or Internet cafe with a printer or something, but Rafael doesn’t seem to know much about the tech world, so we decide to go with his idea and drive the 30 minutes back to Rincon.

IMG_3892

We went to the Rincon Coopertiva singly through the double locking doors only to be told that, no, they cannot let us use their computers to print anything, but that there is a little school supply store down the road that we probably could print from. So we walk about a block in the steamy rain, following the fast and agile Rafael as he leads us to the store.

At the school supply store, they were very friendly and we easily found and printed off a copy of our bills as well as made a copy of the driver’s license and social security card. We also made a mental note of this store (Rincon School Supply).

Now we had to make our way back to Aguadilla to the Driver’s Center through flooded roads and slow school zone traffic. I made use of our time and had fun asking Rafael all sorts of questions about Puerto Rico, his life, new Spanish vocabulary (for instance, they call cars “cajos” here whereas in Colorado in Spanish they are “carros”, “chevere” is the best way to say “good”, “guia” means drive not “guide”, you need to watch out for “comejen” though I am still unsure what it is exactly and “limbers” are some sort of ice cream drink named after Limbergh).

Finally, we arrived and went through the express lane where the clerk said that what we had now was complete. In about 5 minutes the title was transfered. But, wait, the clerk said. Your mailing address is to Colorado. We need a mailing address in Puerto Rico. Ok, just use the physical address that is listed on the bill, isn’t that why we went all that way to get the bill? We also told him that we are still working on the mail situation, and hope to have that figured out in the next week or so but we have only been on the island about a week. Finally the clerk relented and said that we just will need to come back some time before the marbete expires and update our address with a proper mailing address, not just the physical address.

We stopped by another Banco Popular branch to deposit the cash into Rafael’s bank and then he asked to be dropped off at the Aguadilla mall. We grabbed a celebratory ice cream cone (after all that “limber” talk) and picked up the pick-up. The gua-gua is now ours…wow-wow is right.

….And tomorrow we make yet another trip to Aguadilla to drop off the rental car…lol.

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One Week’s Progress

It is hard to believe it has been one week since we arrived. I think we are still sort of in the vacation mentality since most of our trips here have been work trips too. Plus we still have the rental car and we really need to start the search for a vehicle.

We have been doing things a little bit differently this time, however. We have gone into this knowing that we will be LIVING here and not just visiting. That means trying to eat in as much as possible, making ourselves more comfortable and “at home” and incorporating with the community, going to events and things whenever we can.

On the home front, we don’t really have any way to eat hot food, so a lot of our food has been straight out of the can or cold foods like salad and fruit.
What we eat

After a few days of that, we finally broke down and just bought a rice cooker for our first warm meal. We also bought a coffee maker so we could drink the delicious Puerto Rican coffee each morning.

Appliances

When we have been here before in our vacation mindset we ate out a lot more, so it was good to start feeling comfortable eating at home.

But the big project of the week, besides the ongoing yard work, was making the cabana more comfortable to live in generally. In order to do that, it was very apparent that we needed to paint the ceiling that was constantly flaking down on our heads and making our feet white with paint specks. Also one of the green walls was really flaking off too, so we decided to do that wall as well.

Ceiling 2

Comparison Paint Prep 2 Paint Prep Cassie Paint Prep1 Painting 2 Painting-1

It took us over three days to do this job because it is tough to live in a construction site, so we did half the room and then we moved everything to the other side of the room and did that side. I think the final results turned out great!

Ceiling After

After everything dried, we put up a ceiling fan so that Britton wouldn’t need to use the box fan. He gets a lot hotter than I do, and needs something to help cool him down especially if he is working in the yard in the sun.

BK cooling down
Britton with the box fan and a bag of ice cubes

Next up will be to finally take our clothes out of the suitcases. Then we will be feeling even more like we are living here and not just visiting.

On the Kitty front…he is making progress too! I think he is starting to feel a little more at home as well. He has even started to peek out the doors!
Kitty and flipflops

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