Hurricanes and Haciendas in Puerto Rico

We have never felt so blessed in our entire lives. In the last few days, we have been inundated by people inquiring about the hurricane and how it may have impacted us. While Lorri has tried to keep everyone updated on FB, we wanted to open this post with how we experienced the hurricane. These first two photos are literally how the hurricane looked from our vantage point in Western Puerto Rico. 

Thankfully, the only thing our beloved part of the island had to show for the storm was some larger than normal waves for this time of year, and some unusually stunning sunsets in a place where stunning sunsets occur every single night of the year. 

Truth is, we rode out the vast majority of the storm at our favorite Aguada haunt, The Ocean BLVD Bar and Grill, where awesome food, great service, and friendly locals at a family owned business make every moment of surf watching even better than, well, surf watching. 

We have made some great friends at the Ocean, and one of them will eventually be a feature in a future blog, as we work to help one kick ass young woman achieve her dream of being her own boss at a tourism business. 

As the storm drew near, however, everything shut down in preparation, and unable to accomplish anything on the house hunting front, we drove around NW Puerto Rico taking in some of the awesome street art that just seems to happen everywhere...

We aren't sure who would allow their entire neighborhood to be painted like this, but we would like to have a drink or ten with every single one of them!

What the hurricane did cause was our return flight via Orlando to be delayed into infinity. Thanks to reports from others trying to get into Florida (Thank you, Tena!) we managed to avoid being part of the calamitous disasters caused by airlines of people being stranded in airports indefinitely. 

Frequent traveler secret: airlines will almost NEVER cancel a flight because it costs them money in refunds, and will instead happily allow people to just show up for flights that aren't ever going to happen and sit for hours and even days while they delay and delay and delay, knowing full good and well it isn't ever going to happen. 

The result of it all was we became stranded on a desert isle for another week, and a return flight via New Jersey. So, the house hunt continued...

Puerto Rican pride is on full display everywhere you go. It is a different sort of "nationalism" felt by a proud people who only love and adore their island. For every Puerto Rican flag, we see multiple aging Puerto Rican males wearing their US Military Veteran hats beneath them, as this too, is America, and these people too, are just as proud of Americans as you can find anywhere stateside.

Like any good Americans, they embrace their rights to freedom of assembly as witnessed recently when they retired a corrupt governor. Signs of their peaceful political uprising remain all over the island.

Some are more direct than others. We are actually sad to have missed the demonstrations and seeing the energy of so many standing up for justice and waving those bright beautiful flags into the air together. Truly, nothing could be more American than that, and it took a relatively tiny island to remind the rest of America what democracy actually looks like in action. It is not about being right or left, but about justice and injustice, right and wrong, and everyone can appreciate that, I think.

Lorri looking for a house (or not so much) in one of the awesome plazas in a town center. Like our town squares in Iowa, Puerto Rican towns all have open plazas where people gather for all sorts of festivities, special occasions, political debates, music concerts, and sometimes just for old men to sit beneath shade trees and play dominoes. I'm pretty sure that if we were being paid to house hunt and had a boss, we would have been fired on, like, the second day here.

Lorri gets up close and personal with the local fauna. Buzz, being fearless of all groups of weapon wielding men, but equally as fearful of small crawling things and the flying, man eating piranhas known as bats, warned her not to touch it, but she never listens to his wisdom regarding living creatures and their probable inherent dangers. More than likely, her hand will fall off later this week.

Wait, what were we supposed to be doing here? Oh yeah... house hunting! We remember now! That is pretty much how we did it, too. Waking up early and going for coffee (strangely, it is difficult to find coffee early in the morning, and even the local donut shop in Aguada we frequent doesn't open until 10am), then off to the beach for a walk to discover the treasures the surf delivered overnight, then back to the room to gawk at home listings and rentals until we lost interest and popped open a beer.

We must have looked at a hundred homes online, and several dozen on drives that are Se Vende (for sale). We even managed to get hold of a couple of realtors to see a few in person (not an easy trick in a place where even businesses operate on "island time" and have a tendency to get back to you... when they get back to you... and sometimes never at all). 

We continued to look for affordable real estate to purchase in our beloved Rincon-Aguada corridor, but Rincon is way out of our price league, and Aguada has a lot of properties within walking distance of the beach that have very murky pasts, and even murkier, less certain futures. The general feeling of the longtime locals is not to buy in seaside Aguada at any price because if the water does not get you, some other unseen forces, like eventual government flood zone intervention, probably will.

Puerto Rico house hunting lesson #485: TALK to the locals and the neighbors. DO NOT trust a realtor about a house, or an inspector, or an anyone. Ask the neighbors. The people of this part of the island especially, are incredibly welcoming and friendly and will do virtually anything to help even a stranger. 

In fact, they will even fight one another for the privilege of helping you and argue how their advice is the best. No. Really. It is totally true. If you get out of your car in Rincon or Aguada and look generally confused or lost or in need of help, someone will eventually come and talk to you, and that will in turn draw a small crowd as everyone wants to know what's going on. Then, when they find out you are wanting some sort of information or assistance, they will each seek to offer you the best advice or assistance and argue as to why their's is better than the other person's advice or assistance. 

So, if you ever find yourself in a strange neighborhood in Puerto Rico, and the dogs and chickens are milling about and everyone seems to be staring at you... know that they are most likely staring because they are wondering if you need anything they might be able to offer you. Reason #987 that we LOVE this island. 

What? Oh yeah... we were house hunting. That's right. We remember now. So, in the midst of all of the phone calls and texts and real estate agents, Lorri thought it might help to write a post on a Rincon FB group. Pffft, said Buzz, FB group?! Whoever heard of finding anything on a FB group...especially in a crazy market like Rincon, where the surfing and 1960s California vibe, has drawn artists, tourists, and snowbirds in like a hurricane surf, and the prices are out of this world, and, generally speaking, out of our budget as well. FB Group. Whatev's Lorri. You go girl. Do your cute, pointless thing while Buzz does all of the heavy lifting of actually texting unresponsive real estate agents for homes we don't really want to look at anyhow. 

Fast forward like, five minutes...

Lorri: Someone messaged me about a house in Rincon.

Buzz: What? I'm busy here, honey. I have a line on a hundred year old home made of rotting concrete perched precariously upon a cliff twenty miles up a narrow four foot wide mountain road where the locals drive eighty-five miles per hour.

Lorri: He says he wants us to go look at his home in Rincon as he is being detailed out of the country for his final tour of duty abroad in the military. 

Buzz: We have already looked. We can't afford to buy or rent a home in Rincon. Our budget would only allow us to rent a box large enough for one of us and our dog. The other person and the cat will have to sleep outside. Remember?

Lorri: I think we should still go look at it. He seems really nice.

Buzz: Ugggh. Fine. I will set aside my important work of negotiating on the awesome 'cash only' deal I may have just scored on this oceanfront bungalow made entirely of drift wood and paper mache to humor you.

We drove to the house just outside of Rincon when the owner was absent, picking up his son from the airport, as he is in college in Florida and was fleeing the hurricane. The owner, as it turns out, is also a recent fellow empty nester.

What we discovered turned out to be the most beautiful oasis we have seen in all of our drives, nestled in the hills on an estate just outside of Rincon. This picture does not do it justice. He had asked us only to drive out, look at it, and offer what we thought it was worth to rent while he was away.

Being extremely familiar with the market in the area, we knew immediately that "what it is worth" is far more than what we could pay. But in a week full of crushing disappointments, it would be a relatively easy one to have someone tell us we could not afford such a beautiful home. 

After messaging with the owner more, we drove out today to meet with him. His name is Ben. His place is stunning. We are in nearly the same place in life, with nearly the same humor and outlook, and almost the same dreams and desires for the future. He scoffed at our offer and said it was too much to pay. He wanted less money and more to know that his home would be lived in and cared for by people who would watch over it, and most of all, enjoy it while he was away. 

Ben avoiding the camera.

The garage where Lorri's art magic will soon be happening. Ben refuses to allow her to hang her creations inside the house until he can see some of her work. Buzz agreed this was probably a wise decision as she intends to work with wood mostly and has to date only produced popsicle stick art back in grade school for want of the proper tools and a workspace. Good news is... Rincon is at the literal cutting edge of wood art, and there are any number of artisans working in wood that any museum back in the states would be proud to display, and she is a very quick study.

Ben pointing at something in the kitchen.

Ben pointing at something else. He likes to point at stuff. We mostly look in the direction he points and nod our heads in agreement. We aren't even sure what he is saying most times. The house is just too stunning.

What occured at the house was something less of a potential business transaction, and more of a bonding ceremony of kindred spirits. We sat on Ben's front porch for over an hour after we toured the property and sampled fruits from the trees and made friends with the dogs and neighboring cows. We had a ton of great laughs too. 

But our tour did not stop with the house. We drove together to see the homes of the other people in the area Ben knew (practically everyone), and then on to his father's house to meet his family. And by day's end we do not only have a place to lay our heads for the foreseeable future, but an entire new circle of people we feel so at home with, we can call them our friends already. 

This is Puerto Rico. These are the people of this part of Puerto Rico. If you get out of your car in almost any neighborhood and look lost or in need, people will fight to help you. And, as it turns out, they also do the same for those lost souls who make posts on FB. 

In our part of rural Iowa, we never drive by someone who is broke down or walking without stopping to help, and we never ask anything in return. Remove the beaches, the bars, the mountains, and the palm trees, and it is truly amazing, at how much this place, and these people, so far removed by geography, can feel so much to us... like home. 

Editors Note: Ben is not so camera shy as all that, but we did not ask his full permission to make him a celebrity in rural Iowa amongst our readers, so we edited him to seem a lot more mysterious than he actually was. Honestly, if you met Ben with us drinking at a bbq back home, you would never know that we three had just met, and you would sort of get the feeling that we had been sitting under the same shade tree together flipping each other shit for years. 

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Lorri and Buzz's How NOT to Buy a House in Puerto Rico

If you missed our first blog post, you should probably stop reading here and go soak up some of our blind optimism before you read any further. 

If you're still here we will assume you read our first blog post and knew we were somewhere in the process of negotiating for a house in Puerto Rico. We promised at the end of the blog that we would show everyone how NOT to buy a house in Puerto Rico, and we are NEVER ones to disappoint our readers.

Now, please keep in kind that we have been planning this life changing event for years. That's right, years. We have read everything there is to possibly read about the Puerto Rico real estate market because we are very smart people. Sure, there are countless stories involving even professional real estate agents from the states coming here and getting hard knocks lessons from what they have called the wild west of real estate that is the market here, but unlike those poor saps, we are very smart people, so nothing to fret over here, folks.

Ah, The joyous faces of unbridled optimism!

After a mere two hours of sleep following a red-eye flight to Aguadilla, we were up, excited and ready to go see our new dream home! What a great day this was going to be!

We have spent weeks looking at photos of this house online. We have had disclosures, and even had an engineer give the thumbs up on everything. This sneak peak was essentially a mere formality prior to the close a few weeks down the road. 

From the start, however, things did not seem just as we had hoped. It was, as promised 250' from the beach for instance, but that is 250' as the crow flies, and doesn't account for the 30' wall of eroded rock that stands like an impassable barrier between the home and the water. But no worries, there was still the great view of the ocean. 

There were a lot of other things as well, but in the end the real deal breaker were the families in the surrounding homes. We are coming here to be good neighbors first and foremost after all, so we wanted to meet the neighbors. I am not entirely certain how many houses full of people we met around our dream house, but I can tell you that every house you could see from the elevated wrap around deck were relatives of the old man who had lost the home in the wake of Hurricane Maria. He must have had 20 children and each of those had 20 more, and in the end it was just the sort of foreclosure that we would fight back home to help save a family farm by refusing to bid on it. 

So, our dream is ruined and all is lost and we are walking away from the thing. There were far more reasons to run and not walk away from it, but the foreclosure of the home the man built with his own two hands was enough icing on this here shit cake for us to not want another bite. 

We were, after all of it, broken defeated and hopeless shells of the people we were in the early morning hours. All had been lost. There was only sorrow. 

Were it not for Lorri remembering our favorite Puerto Rican beer, we may well have tossed ourselves into the ocean and prayed for the sharks to come. But Lorri also reminded me that the best part of Puerto Rico is the ability for the people who live here to face death, calamity, injustice, and every sort of storm, with hope and celebration, because as long as you are breathing, there is always tomorrow, and even if tomorrow never comes at all, there is the right here and now, so bring on the Medalla, the rum, the music, and dance! Except for me, of course, because Lorri says I'm not allowed to dance in public. 

And here we are, finally back at the room, nightcap in hand, preparing for the opportunities of a new day in the morrow. Stay tuned, kids, because this will not be the last hiccup we encounter. If there is anyone at home hoping to see us fail miserably, they will be in luck more times than one. However, if they are waiting to see us quit...it won't happen. We already have a few homes to look at tomorrow. Until next time!

"You are never given a dream without also being given the ability to make it come true. You may however, have to work for it."

 - Richard Bach

New Beginnings and Being Lost and Found in Puerto Rico

Recently, events in our lives have conspired quite happily to convert our five year plan into a three year plan, which in turn became a two year plan, and then, finally, a plan where time is measured in weeks and days instead of years and decades. We did not have to wait for it to come to fruition either. The perfect moment in time simply presented itself to us, and we are choosing to seize upon it, and leave no adventure unexplored.

In recent weeks we have been bombarded by questions from friends, relatives, and even strangers. This first blog post will try to answer some of the most common questions and give a first glimpse into the inner workings of our journey...

Introduction. Hi. We are Lorri and Buzz Malone, current and mostly lifelong residents of Lucas County in the slow rolling rural hills of Southern Iowa.

This is us! Lorri and Buzz Malone (Lorri is the pretty one). 

Frequently asked questions (a.k.a FAQs) Interesting sidenote about FAQs is that for the first thirty odd years of his life, Buzz pronounced FAQs in his head as 'facts' and, while finding the associated FAQs page of websites quite useful, he never really fully understood why every 'Faqt" started with a question.

Q: So, you're selling everything you own, leaving your lifelong hometown, and running off to Puerto Rico. Are you stupid or something? What the hell are you thinking???

L&B: Here, we begin by quoting a great philosopher when we say that, "stupid is as stupid does." 

Lorri and her baby goats

More to the point about what we are thinking is that Lorri has been doing her job at the same non-profit for 23 years. She is seeing her youngest daughter off to college in a few days. She wants to explore her artistic side, avoid the worsening lengthy bouts of winter depression, and be by the ocean. For Lorri, Puerto Rico affords her the opportunity to do all of these things. Ah, but will there be goats? Time will tell.

Buzz+Rum+Ocean=Happy Buzz 

(editor's note: the large protrusion is NOT Buzz's actual belly. He is holding a recently rescued baby seal on his lap. That's all that is. Really)

Buzz has spent twenty-five years in organized labor, as a member, and a union organizer, local union president, national union representative, and labor historian. Buzz wants to write stories that capture the human spirit. He wants to drink gallons of rum and catch fish right out of the ocean, and cook for friends and neighbors while Lorri slaves away in her art sweatshop. Puerto Rico affords him the opportunity to do all of these things.

Aguada, Puerto Rico

We have settled and agreed upon the city of Aguada in Western Puerto Rico, because it is a small town beside the ocean, has a reasonable cost of living, and the people are so unbelievably friendly and inviting, and like us, it is more working class than tourist area. Because now that we are going to be locals, who wants a bunch of tourists hanging around, right? Right?

Q: Okay, fine, whatever, but why Puerto Rico? Aren't there beaches, like, everywhere land meets the ocean?

Lorri in the Florida Keys

The answer to that one is easy. We loved the Florida Keys for the crystal clear, perfect blue Caribbean waters. But the Keys keep getting more and more expensive so that the favorite spot we used to enjoy on winter getaways has increased to the tune of over 300% per night in the years since we started going there.  

Several years ago, while viewing the Kayak flight price explorer map, Buzz noticed a very affordable flight price hovering over a small island in the Caribbean. He zoomed in closer. It was Puerto Rico. He turned to an unsuspecting Lorri, who was busying herself eating antidepressants like m&m's to survive another frigid Iowa winter. 

"How would you like to go to Puerto Rico next week?" asked Buzz.

And the rest is history. We went for the ocean and we kept going back for the people. We simply cannot say enough about the people of Puerto Rico. Their inherent joy, resilience, and unending hospitality has kept us going back time and again. 

Being Puerto Rican is a daily celebration of life and blessings. It is a place where disasters spawn new beginnings and collectivism, and where no trip to the store or walk down the road will end without connecting with someone. We are not talking about an area where people are merely trained to show the whites of their teeth to tourists. In the West, the part of the island we adore so fully, it often takes over an hour to pick up a single item from the grocery because nearly every person stops and talks to almost every other person.

Recently when asked why Puerto Rico, we told someone that we loved the people there and wanted to help them, but that answer wasn't right at all. It didn't feel right because the people there don't need our help. They are fine without us. Hell, they may well be better off without us. We have chosen this place because we see and feel a strong sense of community there and we want to be a part of that. 

Or, as Buzz puts it, "wherever in the world people cook whole hogs over open flames... these are my people." 

Whether in Iowa in our youth (we are both 46 by the way) or in our 40's in Puerto Rico, whole hogs over open flames mean something to us. Not just about amazing, glistening, tender, juicy pork, but about what it says about the preparer. It says that the cook, in this most temporary of conditions that we understand as life, has momentarily fallen upon the good fortune to have more than one soul could consume, and instead of storing it away, she is sharing it with her friends, her neighbors, and any strangers who follow the scent and discover the feast.

Q: Aren't you worried about crime, or sea rise from melting ice caps, or tsunamis, or hurricanes, or being hit by a grand piano that falls from a passing satellite? 

This is one of our favorite questions. It gets right to the heart of the matter about fear, and holding on, and letting go, and living, and so much more.

When we first started travelling frequently together, it always amused us when friends who lived in the San Francisco Bay, that is doomed in its entirety to fall into the sea at any moment, would look us seriously in the eye and ask, "Iowa? Aren't you afraid of being killed by a tornado?"

Later on we would use a piece of typing paper to represent the state of Iowa, and invite them to make dots on it by pressing a pencil straight down onto the sheet thirty times.  "There," we would say, "if you weren't standing right under one of those dots at just the right moment, you had virtually no chance of being killed by a tornado last year."

In other words, life is short, no one lives forever no matter what, and in general, we have concluded for the most part that we human animals have come to make entirely too much of ourselves and the significance of our own existence. As if we have any say in when or how we perish, no matter where we go, or what we choose to do or not do! 

Fresh water... still a baby seal. No, really. Trust us. That's what it is. 

If the choice comes down to being swept away by a tsunami wave while sipping rum beside the ocean, or slipping in the bathtub of a home we were afraid to ever leave, then we say bring on the waves. 

As for crime... pretend like you are in any city anywhere in the world that is strange to you. Don't be stupid or make yourself look like a target, and you will pretty much be fine anywhere in the world, except for possibly in Muskogee. I mean, come on... it's Muskogee for god sake. 

Beyond that we choose largely not to live our lives in fear. If we are ultimately murdered by tongs we gave a stranger to share some pulled pork with, and we made it our entire lives without ever wasting a day in fear of our fellow man, then we are pretty okay with that. In fact, if we both perish, then we would even let our relatives know ahead of time not to bother wasting any time of their journey looking for the guy with bloody bbq tongs because in the grand scheme of things he already received a bunch of negative karma by fucking up a perfectly good bbq, and probably killed us before we told him where we keep the really good, top shelf rum.

Probst!

No. We choose to only live in fear of genuinely terrifying things, like Buzz is with spiders and bats, and Lorri is with Great White sharks and the awful, rare, deadly germs that can only be acquired at the Golden Corral all-you-can-eat steak buffet.

Q: Well, fine for you, but you must be like, loaded rich, right? Right? 

Uh. Nope. Not loaded rich. Not even pretend loaded rich. We have worked though, in mostly professional careers, our entire life. And we define "professional careers" as only being the difference between being in positions where we were always able to take an extra ten minutes for lunch without anybody yelling at us. That's the real difference. In our youths, we worked in construction and nursing, where people making an extra dollar an hour were always on your asses about taking five minutes longer for lunch. When you've made it, and you're a professional though, take your time, bask in the bread bowl, and order desert, because another ten minutes and nobody will care enough to even say anything. Maybe it's because they respect you more, or maybe it's because as a "professional" you don't get paid overtime.

The point is we have always worked, and we have, for the most part, worked pretty damned hard, and we are not rich. We were playing by the rules and counting down toward our retirements the right way, the respectable, slow way, where you get to cash in all of your chips, but only when you are too old or busted up to enjoy them, and then you die on your way to the mailbox collecting your first pension check.

As mentioned before, we had a ten year or five year plan and all of that. But then there was a market dip and Lorri's 401k took two years to recover from it. And then Buzz got the letter saying that the pension fund he had worked most of life for is suddenly rather sketchy and maybe he would get to retire, and maybe he wouldn't, and then this dumpster fire of a president got elected and we wondered how long before the whole damned thing went to pot. 

But more than any of that, Lorri quite suddenly, and unexpectedly, nearly died. That experience, along with the fact that our children are all officially out of the house and raised, pushed us to declare that since there is a really super good chance that we are going to work somehow, doing something, until the day we finally die, and in recognition that life is unpredictably short, we decided to start over. She has always wanted to be an artist. He has always wanted to write for a living. Her life savings may be in jeopardy, and his employer is going broke and exploring substantial layoffs. Together, we have the means, not to retire, but to build a life where we want it, and on our terms. The time for us to do that... is right now.

Q: What if you get there and find out you hate it?

Then we have wasted a year or two of our lives drinking rum beside the ocean and we move on to the next dream, or job. 

Q: Won't you miss your grandchildren, your friends, your family?

Yes. Absolutely. Our thoughts on this are we are building a life to share with others. Every home we look at has room enough for guests, and every car, room enough for extra passengers going to and from the airport. We will desperately miss our family of course, but we also are weary of becoming the grandparents who sit at home waiting for the children to visit, and burdening loved ones with guilt until they relent and temporarily shelve their lives and plans and come visit again. 

Also, we despise winter. Absolutely hate it. Lorri gets depressed, and Buzz, who is already depressed, finds it nearly impossible to breathe in the cold. 

Q: Can we come visit? 

Yes! 

Q: Aren't you afraid of the recent riots there?

Not riots. Peaceful demonstrations to remove a corrupt politician from office. And mostly, we are bummed that we missed it. Anyone who asks this question really doesn't know us at all.

Q: Is this blog just going to be about stupid questions and answers all the time?

Nope. This is going to be a place to introduce you to all of the incredible people we meet, experiences we have, and serve as a window into all that we love about Puerto Rico, so stay tuned!

This is the house we are currently negotiating to buy. From the bottom of the steps to the edge of the water on the beach is precisely 250' depending upon the tide of course. There will be a great story next time about home buying in Puerto Rico. It's sort of a HOW NOT TO BUY PROPERTY IN PUERTO RICO story. Just do as we say and not as we do and you'll be fine, maybe. Who knows.

Finally, an excerpt from one of Buzz's favorite, and Lorri's absolute least favorite, authors and books of all time:

"Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all -- young and old, rich and poor, good and evil -- the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current was what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, "I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."

The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed against the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the messiah, come to save us all!"

And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more messiah than you. 

The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure."

But they cried the more, "Savior!" all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a savior.

 -- from Illusions by Richard Bach