Finally

Well, we have officially sold our home. This is a little bit sad and a little exciting and mainly just relief! Guama has been a great place to live for the past 4 years and we would live here longer except for Jeff's commute. With the job outlook there is no chance of things improving any time soon and all the engineering jobs have moved north so we are going north too.Luckily we don't have to move to the metro area, we are moving to Moca which will be much much closer to Jeff's work and everywhere we play. We are EXTREMELY lucky to have sold our home in 5 months, even though the 5 months, 4 banks, 4 surveys, 4 appraisals, new septic installation, hand rail installation etc has made  it seem like an eternity. More on that later. We will miss Amparo (our closest neighbor), Hamilton and Guillermino (previous owners/builder of our house/friends) and many other things. We have put a lot of work and love into this house and it is sad to leave, but I have a million ideas of what to do at the next place and I love the planning and doing part the most. We are leaving the new owner a great house and property. Here is the view we will miss. From our front enclosed porch we looked out at the jungle every day and night. This is how the property looks now after years of work. A hillside full of fruiting and flowering trees: grenada, ylang ylang, canister, abiu, caimito, nipper, limn, mamey de pais, and sapote, bunchosa, pomerosa, fig, santol, longan, rambutan, higuiero, jaca, cacao, mandarin oranges meyer limes, mango, avocado, guayabana, acerola, tamarind, carambola, quenepa, chinas, chinojas, flamboyance (all colors including blue), ceiba, cafe. Under the trees mani is spreading and I started planting understory gingers and flowers. Jeff is thrilled to be leaving chickens behind!We did not bring any here but they are like the cats - they just show up. Sometimes I throw corn out and other times I don't. I want to take Big Red and the white one (it isn't Puerto Rico without chickens) but we don't know if we can catch Red

For now we are lucky the new owner is letting us stay here while we buy the Moca House. That purchase is underway as we speak. In another week we should have a house up there and be blogging from our new location! Moving is exciting but full of danger. We don't know if we'll have no water Wednesdays like Rincon, or salty water like Cabo Rojo...we don't know how often the power will go out and we won't have solar. I am sure it will have a new set of disturbances (everywhere has them). What we do know is that Jeff will go to and from work in 2/3rds of the time it currently takes him to go ONE WAY! 28 minutes! I can check out water conditions with gear in the car for after work diving but if conditions suck can go to the grocery store instead or just go swimming. We will dive more I am sure. Caving will be a LOT closer. We can stay longer in the caves since it won't be 2 1/2 hours to drive home tired. We can do more of what we came here to do. AND we can sit on the deck looking out at the valley, Moca, San Sebastian and off toward Desecheo while the BBQ cooks up whatever and it will be light enough for us to eat outside when Jeff gets home. All of these are good things!