When we bought the house for winters, vacations and retirement, I hoped I would be able to extend my trips by being able to work from Puerto Rico. The power grid is not 100% reliable and the internet is dependent on having power. However, experience has shown us that remote work is, well, workable.
There definitely are intermittent connectivity issues but we both can use our phones as backup. One of the more challenging aspects is the background noise as we keep the windows open all the time. There is always the buss of activity – power washing driveways and roofs, testing generators and weed whacking during prime working hours.
We have all the office necessities at home, from monitors to headsets to keyboards to ensure we are productive. I would like a standing desk, as I find it is cooler to stand than to sit in warm temperatures. I typically work in the dining area while Santosh claims the bedroom. I enjoy the outside view of the backyard and the atrium garden while I work.
Post pandemic, employers are more willing to allow remote work. I am glad I am part of the digital workforce who can deliver amazing products from anywhere.
March 2021 update – We were shopping at Costco and found a standing desk at a great price. I am now in the process of setting up my office in the “foyer.” We do not use the front door so this space is unused. It is bright, next to the window and the perfect size. Best of all it is out of the way! I need to find a solution for all the chords and decorate the space. I will have that worked out for the next trip.
Despite all the pretty pictures, we spent a good portion of our last trip working and completed some significant projects. Buying and installing a dishwasher. Installing additional shelves in the master closet. Improving the ventilation of said closet. Replacing all the slats in our bed. Buying and building a standing desk. Increasing the strength of the Wi-Fi. Getting rid of stumps, pruning and weeding. Planting and moving plants and trees. Protecting a new tree from wind.
All of the above was good and productive work. Unlike the morning I spent with the water company. And got nowhere.
It goes back to when we bought the house. I opened an account and put down a deposit to get the water turned on. We had water and were happy. I did not get a bill for water usage. I kept checking online as I was not sure when I would get a bill, then I forgot about it. About nine months later, we went to the house and there was no water. There was a note at the door saying they turned it off.
Our neighbor Isaac was working in Florida at that time, was kind enough to loan us his water. Santosh was able to connect a hose from Isaacs’ house to our house, and water was available everywhere. Very nifty.
We had to go to Caguas, which is about 45 minutes away and wait in line. We learned that we were being fined $1500 for inappropriately turning on the water. They agreed to turn on the water if we paid all the unpaid water bills (which they never sent me), and an additional deposit. I contested the fine. I was given no indication that anything was amiss with my water account. They asked me to send a letter with all the particulars. I sent a certified letter with all the details. It came back because no one picked up the letter from the Post Office. I resent my letter via email.
The next step was to receive an in-person appointment to appeal the fine. COVID happened and I heard nothing.
Then in Jan 2021, I checked my bill online and found that $1500 had been added to the bill. I tried calling but was unable to get through.
So on this trip, I again went to Caguas to speak to someone. After several hours spent in wrong, socially distanced lines, I was able to speak to the receptionist. She took my phone number and registered me for a online meeting in “several days” I left, frustrated with the experience but willing to add it to the cost of living on the enchanted island.
Since I was in Caguas, I decided to check out a local plant nursery. It was a huge one. As I was walking around, I started receiving texts, Amadisse was ready to talk to me. Daniel was ready to talk to me. However no one was calling me. I was very confused as there was no info to call either.
So I finished shopping and went back to the water company. Another receptionist (who was miffed that I did not speak Spanish) said someone would call me. I did end up speaking to someone who unfortunately did not speak English. Since it was late in the day, they said someone who spoke English would call me the next day. No one did. I gave up.
I did learn how to use the online request system, so I will try again from PA. As I said, it is not all fun in the sun.
Reena joined us for 10 days in during our Nov 2020 trip. It was over a year since her last visit and it was fun showing her the improvements to the house, new places we discovered and introducing her to our friends. Like us, she worked during the day and made the most of the evenings and weekends. Both daughters are talented artists and before long she had the itch to paint. She started with one plant, then added a new colorful and graceful plant each day.
She even let me help.
I now have a beautiful indoor garden. She says it is unfinished, like any other garden, there is more to come. But unlike the garden outside, I am glad I will not return to find jungle weeds and vines in this vibrant garden.
I love being organized and ready for fun. About 10 years ago, we would frequently picnic at Peace Valley Park in Doylestown, PA. I had a picnic basket filled with everything we needed – utensils, napkins, bug repellent, band-aids, etc. We just had to pack food or pick it up on the way.
Well, in this house I decided to create a nook, which I call Beach Central to keep all the paraphernalia associated with going to the pool, beach or the rain forest. Santosh and I built the shelves, Reena and Dom stained them on a subsequent trip. The beach chairs hang on hooks.
We are slowly accumulating fun gear – hammocks, floaties, hiking sticks, fishing rods, umbrellas, etc.
Most times, we keep towels and swimsuits in the car, so we can stop at the beach for a dip anytime. This is the spontaneous life I would like to lead one day, everyday. Beach hair? Don’t care!
Clearing out the yard yielded some interesting finds including a sad looking statue of David. He is missing his head and limbs. Well, he is just torso and groin. The workers decided that David was trash and painted on a t-shirt. But I decided to keep him. Eventually, I painted him gray.
In Puerto Rico, our windows are open all the time. If it is extremely warm, we close the bedroom windows and turn on the AC. But most nights, the windows are open, and we can hear the sounds of the night. These sounds include cats fighting, dogs barking, rooster’s crowing and last but not least coqui’s chirping.
The coqui (pronounced ko-kee) is a tiny frog that is native to Puerto Rico and is the national symbol of the island. These small frogs produce a loud chirp at night, up to 90 decibels. These calls are made by male frogs to attract females and fend off the competition. After the rain, male coquis are highly active and loud.
It does take a few days before you can sleep though this cacophony. My son claims he has PTSD from the experience.
My husband is not a fan either. A few coqui decided to seek refuge (or play hanky panky) in one of the new AC units. And they managed to fry some of the circuitry. The unit was still under warranty, but we had to pay for the service call.
To me, they are an intrinsic part of the island. Sometimes, from PA, when I check on the house via the webcams, I turn up the volume and listen to the unmistakable sound of the coquis calling me back home.
Decorating the bedrooms was fun! Once I decided on paint colors, I looked for bedspreads to match in each room. Bedspreads, because comforters are of no use in Puerto Rico. It is never cold. And we never plan to air condition like they do in Florida.
I went all tropical, which is interesting because only touristy homes in Puerto Rico are decorated like that. I wanted to create a tropical escape both inside the house and outside. While there are some beachy decorations like shells, I steered away from the beach theme.
Decorating is an ongoing task, until you decide you are done. And my plan is that the rooms are minimalist, given they are not that big. In January, the primary colors were determined by wall color and the bedspreads. In March, Supriya and I bought artwork for each room. Since we put fans with lights in most of the rooms, it turned out I did not need lamps in every bedroom. But I did get a set for the master bedroom. They have bottoms that I will one day fill with shells.
The master bedroom is green. The bedspread is mostly green leaves with blue-gray, pink and white. The windows were covered with a lace curtain to allow the light and air to flow in. We keep the windows open all year.
Once the air conditioner was installed above the bed, I added some home made acrylic pour paintings.
(These pictures need to be updated.)
The second biggest bedroom is in the front of the house and is pink. It has a wall of closets that is mirrored making the room feel even bigger.
The third bedroom is blue. This is the IKEA bed that triggered our first fight in the house.
The fourth bedroom is mustard and holds a full and twin bunk bed. We decided not to install a ceiling fan as it would have been safe for a child in the upper bunk.
Our house, with its fruit trees, is not typical of the homes in our neighborhood. I’ve been asking questions about the previous owners of the house to understand what motivated them in their gardening choices. The Lugo family lived in the house for over 10 years, approx. 2006-16. They were good neighbors but were not the architects of the garden. In fact, those were the years the garden slowly turned into a jungle. And that jungle would have consumed the whole house and yard had not someone performed minimal maintenance while the house was unoccupied for two plus years.
It was owners prior to the Lugos, an Argentinian family with the name Marcello, who were the gardeners. And, it must have been a spectacular garden. There was a magnificent flamboyant tree in the back yard that unfortunately came down in one of the storms. The hill was terraced and boasted a small citrus grove along with other flowering and fruiting trees. I wish I could find pictures from that era.
When the 2018 HOA president met us, he pointed to the jungle and gleefully said “Now, that is all your responsibility!” And it was a daunting one. I could see there were gems in the jungle but it was hard to decide what to keep. Luckily one of the workers was tree savvy and made most of the decisions on what to remove.
Because of the dense growth, some of the trees we saved were growing sideways towards the house in search of the sun. Some we cut in half, so the new growth would grow straight up. Others we might have to try and straighten. We found beautiful sea grape, the draped the hill beautifully seeking the sun. I loved it as is. Unfortunately, a worker, who I asked to cut specific trees, decided this one need a trim as well. I am now trying to force the sea grape to grow low to the ground.
Towering above the jungle and identifiable from the road approaching the development are two tall trees. The first is the ceiba (also known as kapok or silk-cotton) tree tcan grow up to 100 feet tall. My tree may be 50 feet tall. Young ceibas have large thorns on them, so our tree must still be young. One day when I was working on the slope, I slipped and placed my hand on the trunk to stabilize myself. Ouch, those thorns went right through my gloves.
The ceiba tree develops a large system of buttress roots. These are roots that grow tall to stabilize the tree. I’m not sure if I want this tree to take over the front yard, but the ceiba is revered as a sacred tree. The Mayans believed that this tree connected the underworld, the world we live in and heavens.
The second tall tree is a tropical almond tree, and is very different from the commercial almonds we are familiar with. This tree can grow up to 80 feet. It has large leaves that go from green to orange and red and eventually drop. The fruit is a beautiful deep purple. It is difficult to get to the pit and small nut within. The local shops sell a brittle made of these nuts that are as sweet as Indian mithai. They are delicious, store them carefully as the ants love them too.
I am not sure about the future of both these trees. While they are unique, they do not have showy flowers and delicious fruits. And we have to clean up after the almond tree.
We found a tree with the most beautiful flowers that Neftali identified as a tree orchid. Due to an unfortunate series of events, this tree was cut down. I hope to find one to replace it. There is another orchid tree in with white flowers. It’s leaves close at night, a fact discovered by Ritchie when he was searching for coquis at night.
One tree I saved but later removed is the noni. It is believed to be a superfood. It looks funky and has soft yellow wood. I later learned that iguanas love their leaves and they end up looking like a scraggly mess. That was the end of the noni tree. Or so I hoped. I now realize under my hill is a sprawling spaghetti-like mess of roots. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole. I dig up the tree in one place and it shows up in another place!
It was expensive to deforest and haul the debris away. I later learned that we have yard waste (in addition to trash and recycling) pick-up included in our HOA fees. Every week, they pick up bags of yard waste. And if they see that you have a large pile, like I do at the end of each trip, they send the big truck with robot arms that easily hauls away huge tree trunks.
Deforestation is an ongoing process. Everything grows so rapidly, they continually need to be tamed. The native bushes, brush and vines continue to come back with a vengeance. Bryan, the owner of Montoso Gardens said “You have to keep putting in the plants that you want and slowly they will crowd out the ones you don’t want.” This is good advice for life too, isn’t it?
It was time for house renovations! We provided the contractor with a list of all the things that needed to be fixed. He came back with a detailed quote which we pulled apart, and finally deciding to do a subset that fit in our budget. We came to an agreement and the work was to be completed in about a month.
I selected colors for the exterior. In Puerto Rico, houses come in all sorts of colors. I decided on blue and white, which my Puerto Rican friend said was a perfect Democratic choice. Each room had its own warm color. It was going to be a colorful Caribbean home. I tried to be as specific as possible, as I did not want any mistakes due to miscommunication.
I was anxious to go Puerto Rico, but as was custom, we spent Christmas with the family. Christmas was a perfect time to start shopping for the new home. So many sales. But how does one take all this stuff across so many miles. I discovered that we could use boxes maxed to Frontier’s check-in luggage requirements. So I packed and re-packed these boxes till they were perfect – under 62 linear inches (that’s length + width + depth) and no heavier than 50 pounds. Don’t you love those handles fashioned by my creative husband?
Mid-January, we left for the enchanted island. The work should have been completed, but of course it was not. So, we again stayed in our friends home, and traveled to our casa and worked on it.
I was eager to spend my first night in our new home but without basic utilities like water, electricity and gas, it was simply not possible. So we worked until it was dark and before the mosquitos could eat us alive (the screens still had holes) we departed.
When we were not working, we were shopping. We were either in Costco, Sam’s or Home Depot. I was super driven. I wanted all the bedrooms livable as soon as possible. So we bought beds, mattresses, pillows, side tables…. While I don’t regret any particular purchase, I could have taken my time. It was not till Sept that year when the whole family came and all the bedrooms were used.
We bought one bed and two side tables from IKEA. The IKEA showroom in San Juan is probably one of the smallest in the world. They take your order then schedule a time for you to come back and pick it up. I know there is a warehouse somewhere but who knows, maybe you order gets shipped from Miami… Anyway, what happens when two tired people work on assembling IKEA furniture? You guessed it – a full blown, loud fight. It was our first fight in the house, well on the island. The windows were open and I’m sure the neighbors heard it. Guess we got that out of the way. Anyway, Santosh was unhappy that we did not have any fun on this trip and it was work, work, work. Project creep as he likes to say. So we did take our last afternoon off and enjoy the beach at Rio Mar.
