Getting used to the spiders sucks. I don’t mean to dwell on unpleasant topics, but these spiders really had me freaked out. Anything bigger than my thumbnail and I feel paralyzed. All I can do is yell, “Sal! Spider!” like some sort of pathetic baby. (I'm trying to catch a picture of them, but now that I want to find one, I can't... it'll happen.)
It is getting better, and they’re becoming scarcer. I can accept now that the big black hairy ones on the walls aren’t harmful. In fact, locals consider it bad karma to kill them (oops). The brown ones are menacing (I credit those assholes for the bite on my thigh, ew) and I brought myself to smashing one the other day with a big candle on the terrace. But still. Every time we (still Sal for the most part, I’m a chicken, I know) shoo the spiders out of the house I have to follow it up with the ritual “creepy crawly dance”. You know the one.
But while the first few days here I asked Sal to precede me into every room and kill them or at least thump the walls to scare them all off, now I feel comfortable venturing around our house alone. The bedrooms seem pretty spider-free most of the time. Ants love the bathroom though. Getting over the creepy crawlies is largely a matter of accepting how powerful I am as a human being. It helps that nothing at this altitude is deadly; nothing can kill me. So I know that no matter what, out here, I really am the predator. They’re the weak little creatures that should run in fear. (Beer also helps. Quite a lot.)
The best thing, I’ve decided, is to keep the house clean. I sweep all the time and our lush vacation rental actually includes the cost of a maid service, a local woman named Lucia will come clean our house for two whole hours every week. I don’t think we’re messy enough to warrant that much cleaning, but why say no to it? This could be the last time in our lives we can have someone scrub our toilets for us. Plus, the garbage situation out here is kind of confusing and Lucia would help us with that.
Nothing can go in the toilet except what comes out of your body; so all toilet paper and sanitary napkins go in a little wastebasket. Gross? Not as much as you’d think, actually. But there’s not a dump, no sanit
ation service to set out your big green trashcan for on Monday mornings. There’s a recycling center here in town where we can take our plastics, glass bottles, cans and such (we sort it all out ourselves). But what about organic waste? Egg shells, mango peels, and so on? And the paper trash is generally burned, we’ve been told – but does that include our toilet paper? Wouldn’t that smell awful? I just don’t know.
I made the mistake of bagging up our organic waste and setting it outside, then forgetting about it. Inside were two fish skeletons (with heads attached) from lunch the other day. So this morning I got up and the trash was strewn about the courtyard and a cute kitty was prancing about (remnants of fish – nowhere to be found). I think we inadvertently made a new friend. I cleaned up the mess, but what now? Leave the stinkiest of our trash in the kitchen? Doesn’t someone around here have a compost heap?
I am thinking of setting out a bowl of food so the kitty sticks around. Maybe he’ll scare off the bugs. If nothing else, I like kitties. Even Sal says this is a pretty good plan, and he’s allergic!
One of the things that excite me the most about living in a farm community is fresh fruits and vegetables. For a really good price we can walk down the main path and buy onions, tomatoes, mangoes, avocados and other such goodies from women with kind smiles or their bored sarcastic offspring.
But on our very own property are real fruiting banana trees! The first one we noticed would be easy to reach but needs a few more weeks.
The way you can tell is the big flower on the end of the banana bunch, once all the petals fall off you can cut down the bunch and hang it upside down by a piece of string. Then all the bananas ripen at once. There are three trees with three big bunches (at least 40 bananas per bunch) on our property – we’ll be up to our elbows in bananas before long! I can’t wait to make banana bread and banana cookies and just plain eat bananas. We 
have a blender, too, so we can make smoothies.
The two other banana trees are really tall so, fittingly, we’ll have to act like monkeys to get them down. I’m up for it as long as nothing crawls on me while I’m precariously reaching for yummy yummy nanas. Now if only we had a mango tree, I’d be in absolute heaven.
But while the first few days here I asked Sal to precede me into every room and kill them or at least thump the walls to scare them all off, now I feel comfortable venturing around our house alone. The bedrooms seem pretty spider-free most of the time. Ants love the bathroom though. Getting over the creepy crawlies is largely a matter of accepting how powerful I am as a human being. It helps that nothing at this altitude is deadly; nothing can kill me. So I know that no matter what, out here, I really am the predator. They’re the weak little creatures that should run in fear. (Beer also helps. Quite a lot.)
The best thing, I’ve decided, is to keep the house clean. I sweep all the time and our lush vacation rental actually includes the cost of a maid service, a local woman named Lucia will come clean our house for two whole hours every week. I don’t think we’re messy enough to warrant that much cleaning, but why say no to it? This could be the last time in our lives we can have someone scrub our toilets for us. Plus, the garbage situation out here is kind of confusing and Lucia would help us with that.
Nothing can go in the toilet except what comes out of your body; so all toilet paper and sanitary napkins go in a little wastebasket. Gross? Not as much as you’d think, actually. But there’s not a dump, no sanit
ation service to set out your big green trashcan for on Monday mornings. There’s a recycling center here in town where we can take our plastics, glass bottles, cans and such (we sort it all out ourselves). But what about organic waste? Egg shells, mango peels, and so on? And the paper trash is generally burned, we’ve been told – but does that include our toilet paper? Wouldn’t that smell awful? I just don’t know.I made the mistake of bagging up our organic waste and setting it outside, then forgetting about it. Inside were two fish skeletons (with heads attached) from lunch the other day. So this morning I got up and the trash was strewn about the courtyard and a cute kitty was prancing about (remnants of fish – nowhere to be found). I think we inadvertently made a new friend. I cleaned up the mess, but what now? Leave the stinkiest of our trash in the kitchen? Doesn’t someone around here have a compost heap?
I am thinking of setting out a bowl of food so the kitty sticks around. Maybe he’ll scare off the bugs. If nothing else, I like kitties. Even Sal says this is a pretty good plan, and he’s allergic!
One of the things that excite me the most about living in a farm community is fresh fruits and vegetables. For a really good price we can walk down the main path and buy onions, tomatoes, mangoes, avocados and other such goodies from women with kind smiles or their bored sarcastic offspring.
But on our very own property are real fruiting banana trees! The first one we noticed would be easy to reach but needs a few more weeks.
The way you can tell is the big flower on the end of the banana bunch, once all the petals fall off you can cut down the bunch and hang it upside down by a piece of string. Then all the bananas ripen at once. There are three trees with three big bunches (at least 40 bananas per bunch) on our property – we’ll be up to our elbows in bananas before long! I can’t wait to make banana bread and banana cookies and just plain eat bananas. We 
have a blender, too, so we can make smoothies.The two other banana trees are really tall so, fittingly, we’ll have to act like monkeys to get them down. I’m up for it as long as nothing crawls on me while I’m precariously reaching for yummy yummy nanas. Now if only we had a mango tree, I’d be in absolute heaven.
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