El Coco

We have been in a town called El Coco for the past month. It is a decent sized fishing town on the Northern Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The beach here kinda sucks, it's dirty. Although, apparently it was just awarded the blue ecological flag (which means it's a nice, clean beach). I have no idea who paid off what official for that to be awarded, because it's definately not worthy. The north end of the beach is decent for swimming, but towards the town center and south it's icky. I have more pictures of our tip posted here. Coco is convenient in that there are two supermarkets now (one when we first got here, but a new one just opened a week ago), a bank, plenty of bars and restaurants, and we can walk pretty much walk where ever we need to go. Hermosa beach is a $10 cab ride north and Ocotal beach is a $6 cab ride south of us, both of which are nice beaches.
We are staying in a large condo complex about 1 km from the main part of town. We were originally looking at a 2 story 2 bedroom condo, but the leasing company that condo was through was pretty frustrating. We met with a woman from I & M Realty at 9am the morning we got into Coco. The condo we looked at was owned by a man in NY , and this company was handling the rental of it. We liked the condo and when we went back to the office to attempt to rent it, the office power was out. The woman in charge said she had to get in contact with the owner of the condo before she could rent it to us, but since the power was out she could not call or email him. We asked how long she expected it to be out and she said that it would be after 3pm, so it'd be best to just come back tomorrow. This was frustrating because they were the only place in the area with the power out (we later found out it was disconect day for those that hadn't paid their electric bill, so that's why the leasing office's power was out). We were able to contact the owner of the condo by going directly next door to the internet cafe (where you could also make an international call), but she wouldn't even make the effort to attempt contacting the owner that way. Not wanting to pay another night in a hotel and move our stuff again, we went to several other rental companies in the area and found another 2 bedroom condo in the same complex for the same price. Finally, settled in one place of a month.
Honestly, the first week I was in CR I felt pretty stressed out. Things were more expensive than we had expected and I was trying to find affordable places with internet access everywhere we went. I was also kind of disturbed by the extreme lifestyle difference between the ticos and tourists. The tico houses were very shack like, and then next door you'd have a multimillion dollar condo complex or house (often with high walls with barbed wire). Below are your typical tico houses:
The first 2 weeks Don and I were thinking that we couldn't see ourselves moving here - it just didn't seem worth it worth it with costs similar to the US and having fewer conveniences. You have to drive to a fairly decent sized city for a hospital, to buy clothes or household items, and throughout the country there are rolling black outs. Where we are at there is a water sharing system, so the water will be shut off for hours at a time, and they are working on upgrading the electricity system, so that goes out too quite often.
Now, however, we are kind of just going with the flow and are reconsidering the idea of being down here. There seem to be more personal freedoms here, people are more laid back, and not driving 2 hours a day for work is pretty good. The weather is awesome. We are further south than Atlanta, yet its cooler and not as humid. Definately not sad to be missing out on the Atlanta summer heat. The rain isn't as bad as I expected for it being rainy season - although it is still the beginning of rainy season. The mornings are awesome and sunny, and you might get some rain midafternoon, though not every day. The rain is starting to pick up though, and seems to be heavier thunderstorms than when we first got here. One thing I do greatly miss about America though...EMISSIONS TESTING. Apparently they do have that here, but so many cars have been grandfathered in that I can't tell that they do. We drove to San Jose to pick Don's mom up from the airport and both Don and I had a raging headache from all the black smoke from the buses and clunker cars. Dust in Coco is just as bad as the smoke from cars also. The coastal areas are being so built up, and there is constant construction, which even though it's rainy season, there is constant dust (unless it just literally rained), oh and add in the exhaust from construction trucks. Black lung. Blech.