Category Archives: Travel

500 Day Countdown to Move to Puerto Rico

We have started to talk about a date for our move to Puerto Rico. They definitely relate to the amount of money we need to save up, but also some things we need to take care of and line up before we leave (as you can see on the vine).

If our projections are correct, we will meet our projected amount needed to move to Puerto Rico sometime around the spring/summer of 2013. Then we figured we could get through another nice summer in Colorado and move to Rincon sometime before the winter of 2013. I calculated that we are about 500 days away! Five hundred days. That seems both short and long. I am now into the 5 digits of days alive on Earth so 500 days represents about 4% of my lifetime! On the other hand, that’s only about 18 months. Another cold winter to get through and then it will be Endless Summer if we want it to be.

Of course life can throw any number of curveballs at you, especially when you try to plan, so we are flexible. No need to worry or rush. But if all the stars align, it could make for some nice symmetry. By October 2013, we will have lived in our house in Greeley a little over 10 years! We will have written our blog for 5 years! We will have owned our property in Puerto Rico for 2 years. October 5, 2013 is exactly 500 days from May 23, 2012. May 23rd, 2012 is the 1 year anniversary since we bought the property in Rincon, Puerto Rico! Pretty cool stuff!

We have also been thinking about all the things we want to do in Colorado before the big move. Soon we will be making a Colorado “bucket list” so to speak and checking things off that list. Looking forward and counting down to making our dreams come true!

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Vintage Rincón

In this month’s issue of El Coquí of Rincón, there were quite a few old vintage photos of Rincón and its residents back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It made me think how cool it was back in Vintage Rincón. And while we can’t go back to those days, we can recreate it somewhat in our photography.

I found this really cool site called Pixlr-O-Matic. It is like the Hipstamatic/Instagram app you can buy to make modern digital photos look vintage, but it is completely free and on the web. So I played around with a couple of pictures. I think they turned out cool, and I might use it again from time to time!

Here’s an example.

The before:


A picture we took in Rincon a couple of years ago of an airplane buzzing the water with Desecheo Island in the background


And after- a Vintage Rincón shot! I think it looks way cool!

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Avocado Seedlings in Colorado

After the avocado party back in November, we saved all the avocado seeds and brought most of them with us to Puerto Rico where we planted them in a trench to see if they would sprout. We also saved a couple here in Colorado to see if we could get them to sprout and grow. One of the avocado pits was already splitting apart and sending up a shoot, so we figured that one would be fairly easy to grow. We planted it and it shot straight up.


Mexicola on the left and Zutano on right

We also put two of our little Mexicola avocado seeds in water to see if it would throw down any roots. Only one has so far, but it is already catching up with the big Zutano one.


How to get an avocado pit to sprout

It’s fun to see these grow so quickly. We’re not sure what we will do with them when they get too big for the house, but we think that’s a ways away. Hopefully we will be able to pack up some of our tropical house plants and bring them with us on an airplane trip back to Puerto Rico where we can plant them in their native environment.

Anyone know the regulations on plant transport? From Colorado to Puerto Rico there is no USDA check, but from Puerto Rico back there is…so I think transporting plants in this direction should work out. They didn’t say anything about our little bag of avocado pits! But for now our little avocado seedling plants join our tropical Colorado house along with orchids, a banana tree, a coffee plant, pomegranates, citrus trees and more. If we can’t be in Puerto Rico full time quite yet, we’ve done our best to recreate it here in Colorado.

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Rincon Trip Goal Outcome


Don’t worry, we did spend some time at the beach too! 🙂

Well we had a list of things we wanted to do on this trip; some for fun, some for utility. Of course, we often put off the fun and do the work first, but I think we did pretty good overall.

Here were our goals: what we didn’t get to are in red, and what we accomplished are in green.

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK) (A reminder to be careful what you wish for!!)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)

So as you can see, we got quite a lot of the major items taken care of in the time we were there. In addition to these things we also:

*Found our trees that we had planted last time and cleared away the vines and growth from around them

*Weed-wacked the whole fenced area and a little beyond the fence line
*Met with a variety of friends in Rincon/Moca for dinners and poker
*Tried new restaurants
*Planted more sprouted coconut palms
*Planted our avocado pits from the Avocado Party (we’ll see what happens!)
*Found a nearby hardware store in Rincon with prices better than Home Depot and a discount day (10% off on Saturdays) for women!

We still haven’t quite made a decision one way or the other about the wood house. We go back and forth and forth and back, sometimes in the same conversation. There are so many pros and cons to either decision. Getting the bees out of the house really helped us feel more comfortable in it and around it. We could see more potential, and less of a desire to “just get rid of it”. Still not sure though. We would have a long way to go to make it feel like home. Next up for it will be bat removal!! Yikes.

I think we have a pretty decent plan to get the cabana very livable and then we can make our big decision on the wood house. It is definitely cool to have a wood house, as it makes it seem more like Hawaii-style housing: warm and inviting and less like concrete storm bunkers, but as we have seen with all the animals in the house it may be a little TOO inviting.  As you can tell we’re still in limbo on that one.


The wood house from the roof of the cabana

In addition to the bats and the bees, we also had some unexpected canine visitors on our last day there, but they were friendly:

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