For the first time in our lives, the Gentleman Friend and I masqueraded as genuine property buyers. It felt like the sort of things adults do. Neither of us have ever owned a house or employed servants or navigated difficult inlaws, we don’t have children, neither of us have ever owned a car, and we certainly haven’t followed the usual career paths, so I have definitely felt that my younger siblings have far outstripped me in adulthood. Can’t say I like the idea of owning a house, but fortunately it’s all very hypothetical and exploratory at the moment so we will either get used to the idea or it will never come to fruition.
Anyway, after my lesson I walked down to a property dealer, a young Canadian woman, and got a quick talk about the local market and various considerations. I fear we did reveal our complete naivete in this matter, but oh well.
Then she drove us down to Playa Negra to show us the house we’d gone to find a couple of days ago, when we met the young woman with leishmaniasis. It was a bit further on, far enough that I think we would have to buy a car of some sort. A decent sized plot of land, about an acre, with a few very tall and beautiful trees but much of it level and reasonably clear of jungle. A well for water. A small house, with a lovely immense open kitchen and living room, but two quite dark and poky bedrooms leading off this space with a modern but ugly shared bathroom. Upstairs, an airy loft but with a ceiling that was probably too low for the GF to stand up.
So it wasn’t ideal, but one could certainly see a lot of potential, and the whole thing was cheap enough that we could buy it, live in it, and turn it into a beautiful place. But very far.
As we looked around, a small bright yellow plane swooped overhead, coming what felt dangerously low, almost grazing the treetops. The Canadiag was horrified — not only did this make the house
The house was occupied and a big mess, and just as we were leaving a cheerful and very drunk Pole drove in, barefoot and glass of beer in his hand. This was a neighbour who was looking after the property for the seller and he was in a very jolly mood indeed, having been partying since the previous day (he must have been in his sixties). After showing us proudly around the house, quizzing us about who we were, telling us as through conveying good news that there was only one American in the neighbourhood, with the rest Europeans or South Americans (no Costa Ricans either, so far as I could tell), he insisted we come to his house next door, of which he was very proud.
It turned out to be quite a house: similar in general layout, with the big open kitchen and living room, but upstairs he had added a large open terrace with a lovely view over the jungle. All of it was painted: he’d found someone in Bribri who’d done it up to look, well, like a kindergarten, with sloths and toucans on the walls, any knots in the wood turned into gaping jaws, and even the floor marked with brightly coloured caterpillars (which made me flinch as the place where I brushed against the demon caterpillar is still itchy and sore).
‘And best of all, this!’ the Pole shouted and pointed at a bannister painted to look like a jolly alligator, with a large and hairy tarantula on its snout. The tarantula was real and, judging by the smell, quite dead.
‘Of course there is also Santa Claus in the swimming pool!’ he bellowed and swept us away. Santa Claus turned out to be another Pole, one who didn’t seem to speak English but had a luxuriant white beard, and offered his lap for the Canadian to sit upon. She declined, whereupon he made a joke that even our drunk host declined to translate. The pool was in a white adobe style, and also painted all over, and our host took us to his newest and proudest bit, a wall painted with the Flinstones family and dinosaurs, each enjoying a spliff.
In the midst of this, another neighbour arrived, a Bulgarian woman of about the same age, with a stentorian voice and what looked like a dramatic blonde wig. The yellow plane zoomed overhead and she and the two Poles waved their fists at the sky. The Canadian took a video which she promised to send to the ministry where she had contacts. Every ten days, the Pole said. A definite put-off, so the estate dealer looked even more annoyed.
One can’t but admire someone who apparently decided, at the age of sixty plus, that he would do what he wanted, if he wanted a house that looked like a toker’s kindergarten, that is what he would have. It was certainly quite glorious.
Will we buy this place? Probably not, and it’s certainly not sure that we will settle here at all, yet it seemed to have brought home ownership, and adulthood, a little further into the domain of plausibility.