The State of La Uñion

Illustration by: LAJ

The truck belonged to our builder, Michael.   By the time the crew saw what was happening it was screaming down the hill at 40mph. Though it could easily have used the Coconut as a ramp or careened into guys working around the build site, it found the path of least resistance.  The truck was finally stopped by two trees and a well-placed ditch.   It took nearly eight hours to extricate it from the uprooted tree, winch it up the hill, hoist it onto the flatbed truck, and deliver it to the shop.  Believe it or not, the truck escaped major damage, which defies explanation.  We may have lost one of our favorite trees, but we gained this exceptional artistic interpretation of the event.  Small price to pay.

After days and days of sandbagging the team covered the structure with loose dirt to prepare for the sod.  Another shout out to the guys on this project – with every available backhoe broken down, this crew buried the place almost completely by hand.  After several more days of shoveling, our humble abode was ready.

Figuring out how much sod to order was a lot like trying to compute what it would take to wallpaper your house.  On the outside.  And then factoring in that you also want to wallpaper your front, back and side yards.  We landed at 125 sq. meters and were pretty close to half right.

This is our friend Gorge watering the house at sunset.

With the seams of our home (hopefully!) no longer leaking were ready to progress to the next steps in burying the Coconut.

After a lifetime in the states watching various sandbagging efforts via the news – admittedly never having been part of one myself – I just kind-of took for granted that sandbags were pre-assembled things delivered by the sandbag fairy on the back of a flatbed truck.    I was misinformed.

Enter sandbagging Tico style. The sandbags covering the house are homemade 8-foot long sleeves filled with dirt.  How do you effectively pack an 8-foot long sleeve with dirt, you may wonder.  Take a 5-gallon plastic bucket, remove the top and cut out the bottom to create a cylinder, feed the sleeve through the hole and pack with dirt 5 gallons at a time, slide over, pack in 5 more gallons of dirt, repeat (repeat, repeat, repeat…).  When it’s time to seal the bag just fashion a shank from the discarded plastic, add a hole, thread it, and begin sewing.  Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.

“La culebra está en los pantalones de Scott…”

“…La culebra está en los pantalones de Scott”

“Again.  La culebra está en los pantalones de Scott…”

“…La culebra está en los pantalones de Scott”

“Very good!  The snake is in Scott’s pants.”

We have had four viper sightings on our land since we bought it a year ago, but, you know, evidently we’re in pretty good shape because if we get bit any time Monday-Friday between 8am-4pm we can get the anti-venom at the local clinic.

For obvious reasons, we’re pretty careful.  When we’re in the tall grass (which is often) we wear tall boots and frenetically swat all around with walking sticks to encourage silent retreat.  We keep our eyes open, pay attention, move slowly and have practiced our ‘calm voice’.  The one that sounds gentle and unperturbed when saying things like, “sweetie, perhaps you’d like to go in the other direction.”

The setting: walking along a perfectly manicured pathway between the bungalows at an upscale hotel.  It’s the middle of the day, the sun is out, it’s hot, groundskeepers have been active, and a lot of people have been walking past in both directions.  All the things snakes hate.

Always the gentleman, Scott goes ahead of me to open a gate so (still on crutches) I can hobble through safely. “Sweetie, perhaps you’d like to go in the other direction” was delivered not so much with the ‘calm voice’ as a bloodcurdling scream as I watched a young viper slither under Scott’s pants and begin to make its way up his leg.

As it happens, this kind of scream has benefits the ‘calm voice’ doesn’t.  With half of the 14″ viper already up his pants, Scott’s reverse long-high jump was was both nimble and effective.  The snake fell out, freaked out and began striking at him, which wasn’t a threat due to the superhero distance he’d achieved.  After a momentary standoff and the arrival of groundskeepers wielding pipes and machetes (there’s no mistaking that kind of scream) the snake made it’s e-ssscape.

Crazy thing is, still wearing his tall boots under his pants, he never knew what was happening, never felt the snake slithering up his leg.  For me the visual is scorched into my brain.  And Scott?  Thrilled that the snake in his pants is now a legend and patiently awaits a ballad a la Johnny Cash.

The view from our deck at Sunset…

 

At this point our water-wind-fire-tornado-hurricane-bullet-proof house is up and it really is amazing.  We can picture living in it and even play with the idea of “camping” in the house while under construction.  It can get windy where we are, but at this point it had been warm and the strong breeze felt good.

We’re learning that there are many different sayings for rain here.  Pelo de gato is what Ticos call a very light rain.  It’s definitely said tongue-in-cheek to Gringos that haven’t experienced true rain yet.  All I can say is, a week of cat’s hair is a great way to test the seams of your water-proof house.  And discourage camping.

A little concrete here, a little tar there, top it off with a pond liner and we’re ready for “Se vino la doña de los frescos” (The lady who sells drinks is here).

Biotekt homes – known as Ecospheres – can be built in 2-3 days by a few handy people.  We were fortunate to have a pretty large crew to help us and the help of this super high-tech user manual…

Turns out that shipping a container from Colombia isn’t so easy after all.  A massive effort by the Colombian authorities to crack down on drug trafficking results in five inspections between the manufacturer’s warehouse and the port.  Finally, the container is loaded onto the ship and we pray that it will get through customs quickly and we will see our house before we have to return to the states.

Turns out that receiving a container in Costa Rica isn’t so easy after all.  As this is the first house of its kind to be imported into this country, authorities had no idea how to assess the container’s contents and hold it for 3 more days.

Leaving on Friday and pretty much resigned to the fact that we will not see the house before we go, and then it happens… Thursday morning we get the call.  The container had arrived… with the unmarked pieces of 3 separate houses.  In a matter of hours the pieces were sorted out and we had our house.  Game on!

In deciding what kind of house to build, we landed on the Coconut. This is an example of one built this year in Colombia.  It’s a ‘hobbit home’ manufactured by a company called Biotekt http://www.biotekt.com/.  We loved the whole idea of it.  It’s eco-friendly, waterproof, wind-proof, fireproof, hurricane-proof, earthquake-proof… and we’re hoping volcano-proof. And the best part – a house our size is made from ~7,500 recycled plastic bottles.

Our Coconut will be partially buried and totally covered in earth and grass, providing natural insulation year around. From behind it will look like part of the terrain.  As for the structure itself, Scott made the observation that it is Kubrick meets Saarinen.