Island Paradis Day 50

I just found out that my insurance company will not cover the water problem in my house back home. It is a long story, and I am still so mad I don’t want to tell the story because I will just get all pissed off again and have trouble sleeping. Suffice it to say that I will now have to either curtail my travels and go home and renovate the basement suite, or continue my travels and only have the upper unit rented, therefore reducing my income by $1000/month, and hope to God nothing else happens while I am away. Also, the neighbour called the property manager to complain about the fact that the Cedar trees lining our property are not being watered, and they don't want them to die - because let's face it dead Cedars are butt ugly...I don't blame them. I don't want them to die either. I thought the property management company dealt with this stuff? That's why I hired them for Pete's sake! Well, apparently they did not know we had an automatic watering system, so have been letting our grass die and trees wither in the heat. Sigh.

I guess I have learned a good lesson: don’t rent out a house you have not lived in. Had we lived in the house for a while first, we would have discovered all of these problems and been able to fix them before leaving. But, the timing was such that we took possession of the house two weeks before leaving on our trip. Originally we had planned on returning home on April 21, so none of this would have been a problem, but we were having such fun we decided to extend out travels and take advantage of the two year healthcare coverage the BC government allows once every five years. So the plan changed, we hired a property manager, and we decided to be homeless until April 2020.

Anyway, since we have already paid for September and October in Puerto Vallarta, and we have the Bucerias place on hold for November forward, we have decided to go ahead and fix the upstairs bathroom and put new tenants in there for September, but we will leave the basement empty and renovate it when we get home in either May 2019 or April 2020 - depending on if we can find something to rent long term in Utila.

Personally I am getting anxious to just go home and get started on the major renovation. At least then if we pick up our travels afterwards we will have a house that is all fixed up and I can organize things better before we take off. Of course, with the luck we have had, we might spend $100,000 renovating only to have some tenant trash the place like they did last fall. Grrrrrrrrrr. Not sure what to do so our plans are now in flux. I may even have to go home this week and leave Steph to go house sit in Lake Chapala alone. I have to talk to the potential contractor tomorrow, and will decide then what makes the most sense.

Meanwhile back in Paradise, we got a good giggle today when Upco, the Utilan power company, sent out the following notice on Facebook: “Lights will be off Tradewind till 2 pm in a few minutes , so we can clean the lines form the salt built up!” Besides the really bad grammar, the missing words, and the misspelled words, what I thought funny was that a) they send their notices by Facebook, and b) they had to scrape salt off the lines!

This is the reality on Utila. Facebook is the mail and the phone here. Cell service really sucks and there is no mail service, so people and companies communicate by Facebook. The longer I am here the more I see the corrosive power of sea salt. It will literally destroy things almost as fast as you can replace them. Check out this tap in a washroom I recently used at a restaurant:

When we come out of the water from snorkeling or swimming, if we forget to shower, we are literally covered in tiny white salt crystals. My hair is so salted that it may never be the same…Steph says he likes the dreadlock look, but I think it is getting a little unruly...

Now I know what all you people back in Oliver are thinking...that my hair ALWAYS looks like that! But besides long and scraggly, it's texture is no longer, well, hair like. Speaking of hair, Stephane's hair is finally long enough to put the top half in a little ponytail. So now he looks like a hipster. He won't let me take his picture: I think he is still getting use to the idea of a ponytail. Maybe by the time we get home in August he will have a tatoo too!

I digress - back to the salt thing.Check out the top of our dryer:

Corrosion is the trade off if you want to live on the ocean front. New appliances every few years will certainly increase one's cost of living, that is for sure. On the other hand, think of all the money we have saved on haircuts!