Category Archives: Travel

Flashback: Puerto Rico August 8, 2005

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While we were cleaning things up (a constant struggle) I found the journal we kept while in Puerto Rico on our honeymoon over 6 years ago. We had decided then that our honeymoon would help us decide if Puerto Rico was right for us to move to. After the adventures and enchantment of the island, we were hooked. I thought it might be fun if I posted these journal entries from time to time on here, so you can see through our eyes the first time we were ever in Puerto Rico and the excitement and fear of the unknown we felt.


At Casa Grande Resort in Utuado, Puerto Rico

Day 2- August 8, 2005

The Honeymoon Begins: San Juan Arrival

We have arrived at Hotel Casa Grande Mountain Resort. It is in the middle of a forest filled with banana trees, coconut trees, stray dogs and cats and we have a gecko in the room as I write this..he’s climbing the wall. We have a pool out the door and the coqui frogs are chirping louder than crickets. The owner of this place was a New York lawyer who left it all and opened this “green” yoga and nature resort.


Britton and the gecko

We spent most of last night searching for a place to stay and once we got our rental car at about 11pm we drove around and around tons of cars and people. They drive so horribly here- going through red lights, cutting you off, tail-gating- I’m just glad Britton’s driving and not me.

We saw hookers and what looked like crackwhores and dealers when we took a wrong turn into the ghetto -I can see why Pam thought San Juan is dirty! Some places are really dirty!


Our little red rental car, me, and the hotel of our first night in San Juan

Finally we found the beach and a small hotel and decided to call it good eventhough it was $115 for a small room. It was good to sleep though after traveling since 7am MDT that morning.

Today we got up around 9:30am local time (7:30 in Colo) and began our adventure. Britton brought up some continental breakfast and we headed out off to Old San Juan.


The Cobblestone Streets of Old San Juan

We took a bus into OSJ and saw Fort of San Cristobal and San Felipe del Morro- the huge walled-in city and cemetery which was really cool.


The cemetery in Old San Juan is right next to the ocean!


Very ornate marblework!

The bus system works pretty well and only cost 25 cents, sometimes free if you get on the trolleys. We stopped at a restaurant and had lunch -American cheese costs extra! $1!!! Most things so far cost about the same as at home, but it is very different here- especially the humidity and the warm, sweaty air.


At El Morro in San Juan

A bum came up to me as Britton and I were waiting for the bus and made a leaf flower and wanted all our change. He didn’t think .65 cents was enough apparently…


Grassy area between the cemetery and the morro -the kite flying area

In Old San Juan


Garita de Viejo San Juan

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Pensando en Puerto Rico

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Now that most of our chores and worries related to the rentals are taken care of  (both rented out again), and the summer is starting to wind down, our minds have slowly been drifting back to Puerto Rico. When we are busy with work, rentals, summer activities and just keeping all the balls in the air it’s a little easier to forget that we have a property waiting for us down there.

We hope everything is ok with it after Hurricane Irene slid past. We have no idea what three months in the rainy season of the tropics could produce by way of plant growth or if there is a (new) leak in the roof or any other number of things. The good thing is that it is so far away that there is really not much that we can do about it anyway…

Thanks to the Kruses for stopping by from time to time to check on the place and make sure it is still standing. 🙂

Now we are thinking when we should go down again. Probably sometime during the wintry months…Over the holidays when we have lots of days off work, perhaps? Over Britton’s birthday which is in the middle of January? In the midst of the worst month: February? Quizas.


The house/property

Having the curse/blessing of efficiency and productivity even when at rest or on vacation we’re also starting to plan what we want to accomplish with the property while we are there next. I think we’ll at least finish the studio cabana but probably also start cleaning out the wooden house. Maybe even get rid of the rest of the bees since they only had enough time to take one of the four colonies when we were there last. 

The other reason I’ve been thinking of Puerto Rico is I’ve started reading Esmeralda Santiago’s newest book Conquistadora which is all about Puerto Rico in the mid 1800’s. I read When I was Puerto Rican and loved it and this newest one, while a fictional novel and not a memoir is also pulling me in. It is so rich with detail and a great story of a Spanish woman named Ana’s desire to make a life in Puerto Rico as her ancestor conquistadors did. So of course it makes me miss la Isla del Encanto. When I finish the book, I’ll write a short review here, but so far it’s really enthralling!

We’ve also been thinking of when we want to make our permanent jump across the pond to move to and live in Rincon. I think we’ve decided that we want to pay off one more rental property and save up a nice round number of dollars- the amount dependent on what we want to do with the property. We figure this will take less than 2 years.  Or if Britton manages to take his job because of an expansion in his company to Puerto Rico it might be even sooner! All in all we are still thinking of Puerto Rico as much as ever, just the type of thoughts have changed from if  and can we to when and how!

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Or a Two Year Plan?

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We’ve been having some discussion about our Puerto Rico plans and we would definitely like to move there more quickly than not. We’d rather be planning our escape to Rincon in the next 2 years than in the next five years. But in order to do that we would have to change some of our goals. The most obvious that jumps out would be for us to keep the main wooden house and “just” fix it up.


There is a certain quality (dare I say potential) about it that  makes it hard to take down

This would probably save us $120,000 and 2-3 years of time if we didn’t have to tear down/construct anew. We could have a maximum budget of approximately $30,000 and do the following in order of importance:

-New roof -est. $5,000
-New decking -est. $4,000
-Build another bathroom/laundry room that connects to the side deck so that we would have a main floor bathroom -est. $4,000
-Build a master bath in the upstairs bedroom -est $4,000
-Put in mold resistant drywall -est. $2,000 installed
-Remodel the kitchen with new fixtures etc –$4,000
-Install hurricane resistant picture window to provide ocean view from upper/master bedroom – $1500
-Paint exterior/interior –$1500
-Refinish existing wood floors –$1500
-Completely remove the outside bathroom that is located on the oceanside deck –$500

Total: Appx $28,000 =Pretty good! -These numbers have some cushion built in, but that’s always good to have when planning a remodel/constructing anywhere let alone somewhere that we are unfamiliar with.

Then at some point after we were living there we could also enclose or make a living area out of the lower part that is currently being used as parking under the house as well.


View of the house from the road

I think with this budget we could get it to look pretty sharp and feel much more open/inviting. It’s not a huge house so it would be fairly “easy” to do. I suppose all of our rental remodels make it seem somewhat less daunting than it would be for most anyone else.

We would still like to fix up the existing cabana and build 2-3 other cabanas that we could rent out to tourists or locals. And then possibly build a pool or do other projects. I think the pool we would do after we were living there though.

I am really happy that we have bought the property. So many new opportunities start opening up in front of us. It’s a really cool feeling.

Here are a couple of videos of both the houses on the property. It kind of gives you a better feeling for the layout of the land and structures as they currently stand. Enjoy!

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What Now? The Plan for the Puerto Rico Property

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After all the build up to buying our place in Rincon, Puerto Rico, it felt a little like the day after Christmas or your birthday…all this anticipation left us thinking “Now what?!” We decided pretty early on in the trip that we would consciously NOT do any major changes to the property…this trip was for celebrating our accomplishment of our major goal!

However, now that we are back, all I can do is start thinking about what we can do to make it a dream house. We’ve pretty much determined that the main wood house will be coming down at some point in the future, although we’re not going to do that too soon.Whenever I start dreaming of how the property will look, I like to draw rudimentary floor plans and exterior drawings.

So since I think our first focus will be on the studio concrete cabana, I figured we’d start there to make it nice and livable. Currently, it looks like this:


A good starting place!

And when I get done with it, hopefully it will look like this, or it might have a front porch as well:


Future of cabana?

As for the main house, here are a few BEFORE pictures…which won’t matter too much if we plan on taking it down, but for posterity here you go:


Wooden house from top of cabana


This is the house from another neighborhood


Upper bedroom


The small structure to the left is the outdoor shower and only bathroom on the main floor


Britton looking out to the deck next to the scary hammock

While I kind of like the Hawaii-esque culture style of the house, wood just isn’t very practical. We saw this first hand with the bees. The bee guys also said there are bats living in the bee room. The deck is rotting out and the roof is rusting away. But all of that could be rectified if we felt it was floor plan or house worth saving…which I’m leaning towards no because it only has 2 bedrooms, and only one shower that happens to be on the deck!!

So instead, I am thinking of a Spanish mission style theme to the house with an open breeze way through the whole house:


Spanish mission-style villa with lower-level mother-in-law apt and large deck

We’d also like to build a couple more cabanas like the concrete one that we could rent out to tourists or locals who live in Rincon. We might even want a pool…

So, I think this answers the What Now? question…Now, we go on to step 2…and that is to save up for our dream house. Of course all of this is going to take money which means more work and saving. Which we are ok with…but it would be nice to be able to get there a little sooner. So even though I really don’t like gambling except as an occasional form of entertainment, Britton bought a powerball ticket just in case…lol.

And if not…there’s always Las Vegas Letsgo2.com. But more realistically Step 2 probably just means hard work and saving. That seems to be the winning plan for us so far 🙂 At least, as Britton says, this should occupy my mind for a while…until the next “What now?”

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