1. Water & Power Outages:
Okay, so headlamps are a must and we’ve learned to keep a bucket of water on hand for toilet flushing, but all in all—not as bad as we thought. The power usually goes out during dinner a few times a week (luckily we have a gas stove) but it has only lasted through the night once, so far. Sleeping without a fan is the hardest part.
2. Hand-washing Laundry: It's not fun, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not the worst thing ever. It takes a long time and stains seem impossible, but fortunately the dress code is pretty simple on Isla de Baru. “Iron” is no longer in our vocabulary.
3. Bugs: When you get bit, it sucks. It seems on any given night you can either be bite-free or completely covered and itching like crazy. There is no in between. However, we’ve experienced much worse mosquitoes elsewhere in the Caribbean. Sure, it’ll get worse when the mysterious, unpredictable rainy season arrives – but in the mean time we are happy to sleep mosquito net-free!
4. Cold Showers: This is simple – it’s a million degrees outside and we have no air conditioning at home or at work. Enough said.
5. Lack of Resources: There is one restaurant that serves one option per meal, but its always tasty and we actually have enjoyed cooking for ourselves. There is no post office, no bank or ATM, and no grocery store. We are getting used to shopping just for what we need each day at the nearby tiendas. You just walk up to the counter and ask for what you want. If they don’t have it you walk 30 seconds to the next one and try again until you find something relatively close to what you thought you wanted. It’s easy and kind of nice to get to know the different tienda owners and their regular patrons. If nothing else, this has been a great excuse for us to make the journey into Cartagena on the weekends, which is always a fun adventure.
More on that next post...
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| Spiders: scary but rare, so far. |
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| Cooking for ourselves proves delicious! |
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