CHECK OUT THE LOCALS

 Buying a home in an unknown town is a type of madness.  The year,two months until the millienium crash was supposed to occur, my husband and I found ourselves walking down the Paseo de los Turistas to meet up with Eric, the owner of a local hotel and the "voice" of the Canadian owner who had left his "dream" home seven years ago.  Eric would represent this man and arrange everything for our purchase of the home.  But first we had to look at it , make a decision, and then pay for our "option to buy".  Afterall,  no one at that time knew if all computers would crash and we certainly didn't want to make a real committment until the beginning of January, 2000.

The house itself was a neglected, nasty, rusty fenced  building (or as the clerk at our hotel said, "Oh, you are going to look at the UGLY house down the street?").  Stepping over the trash in the garage area, Eric, Jimmy and I entered the house.  My first thoughts were, "Wow, this place is bigger than it looks from the outside!"  From the outside, it was sandwiched between a fried chicken restaurant and a small home.  We would share walls with both neighbors....Hmmmm  For those retirees who don't like listening to the neighbors conversations , well, I suggest you stay in your gringo condominiums.  But, for us, this was our only option.

Jimmy's first impression was, "Yuck, the front bedroom has been a bedroom for the local cats and it reeks of cat urine."(He hates cats.)  Mattresses piled on the floor, papers, leaves, old furniture, peeling paint.....But, we did see a refrigerator.  And as we continued to look downstairs, we found two bathrooms, a dining area and a living area (along with the front "cat" bedroom).    Wow, even Jimmy was impressed with the possiblity of maybe a bed and breakfast?

We walked up the fifteen steps(I know the number because in future stories I will tell about the number of times I fell down those stairs) and behold!!  Four more bedrooms!  Two more bathrooms!  AND the front bedroom opened to a balcony that had a direct view of the sunrise and the ocean.  Jimmy stood facing me and I took his picture on the balcony with the ocean in the background.  I knew this was going to be ours. We worked out a deal with Eric to pay $100. to hold an option on the house.   The price?  $30,000.  The price of a car.  I couldn't believe it.  The amount of money I was prepared to spend.

 We were a little surprised that the house had been empty for seven years.  But, I was madly in love with the location and my mind was racing with future images of coming out on the balcony in the morning, drinking my coffee, watching the parrots eat the mangos in the trees above the Clinic that was directly across the road from the house.  We never asked to cut the lights on, or turn on the water.  We were sold.  After all, the was like magic.  We had inexplainably found exactly what we were looking for on the first day of our trip.

That evening we walked back down to the house to continue our dreaming.  Sitting in front of the little home on the right, we met our neighbors, who were sitting on the sidewalk with their two children.  In my best Spanish, I asked them a question that had been nagging me since I became aware of the number of restaurants nearby:  "How do you sleep with the noise of the music when there are disco nights ?"  (Latin America = MUSIC)  My neighbor said, "Ah, uno se acostumbra"  One gets used to it.

See, the problem is that I can't stand to listen to music when I am trying to sleep.  I have to have a fan running.  I can't even stand to hear Jimmy snoring.  I knew that noise might be a problem for me, but in my mad dash to buy this house, I put aside my instincts and decided that I, too, could get accustomed to the noise.  After all, how loud could it be?? (to be answered later)

The deal seemed to be made.  We were going to do what most rational people would not do:  buy a house at the turn of the century, in a foreign country, blindly having faith that everything would work out to the good.  Even though we had always lived in rural Virginia where we have NO neighbors in sight of our house, we believed we could survive living in this wedged house, with blaring noise on Friday and Saturday nights, with all the problems involved in fixing up the house......... heck, what an adventure.

We went back to Virginia.  Jimmy was going to come back down on Jan. 3, 2000 and seal the deal.  My dream was going to be realized if the world didn't end on Dec. 31, 1999.