Happier Than A Billionaire: An Acre in Paradise

Burrito Man

I’m starting a burrito business, Bobby says while standing under a palm tree. I’m calling it… are you ready… Bobby-Ritos. He splays his hands in the air as if revering a neon-lit Vegas marquee. To seem polite, I look up as well. I do not splay or revere.

Tonight, people are approaching me with the very first thought on their minds. They pick me straight out of a crowd or corner me in the bathroom. Apparently, I wear an expression of someone who is keenly interested in what others have to say. Most times I am. But not tonight.

So far I’ve been approached by an expat who—because of my big, stupid face—felt the pressing need to confess that he’s in charge of covert operations at the Pentagon. That tête-à-tête was a walk in the park when compared to the gringo who, moments ago, sounded the alarm that the United States government was currently herding its very own citizens into internment camps. Right now… as we speak.

They are coming to get us, they are coming to get us, the man yelled.

Of course, this concerned me. I may not be versed in all current affairs, but surely this was something I needed to investigate further. I asked Paul Revere, who was one Corona away from falling face first in the dirt, When are they coming? When are they coming? Are they headed to West Palm Beach? Browsing Lake Tahoe? Will the internment camp have a pool and a meal plan? Because frankly, that doesn’t sound all that bad. The man nodded and glanced up at the sky, most likely summoning the mother ship.

However, Bobby doesn’t appear inebriated or crazy. He isn’t wearing an aluminum foil beret and did not mention one internment camp. This is a deliberate career strategy.

I’ll be selling burritos full-time. That’s the biz I’m in, Bobby says, putting his hands on his hips while rocking back and forth on his heels.

So you moved from the United States to Costa Rica, and your plan is to sell burritos? In a Latin country that is already proficient in the art of encasing food in tortillas?

That’s right, he confirms, using a tone normally reserved for inviting applause. According to Bobby, this Fortune 500 idea has early retirement written all over it.

I’ve never seen someone so happy to open a burrito business. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen someone so happy, period.

Bobby reaches into his pocket and hands me a business card. The logo is a smiling, blue-eyed burrito, overflowing with sour cream, guacamole, and a cheesy sauce dripping over the side. The cartoon looks delicious.

Contact me for any and all of your burrito needs. Bobby-Rito then tips his imaginary hat and exits under his equally imaginary marquee. I’m left asking myself, how many burrito needs can one person have?

Rob steps down from the stage and lifts his guitar strap from around his neck.

Who was that? Tonight was supposed to be a relaxing one, watching my husband play guitar on the beach.

A burrito salesman. Odd business choice, don’t you think?

I don’t know. It’s not the worst idea, Rob says.

Come on. It's strange. Of all things, burritos?

Why do you find it so odd?

He’s calling his business Bobby-Ritos. And he already printed out business cards. I grab the one from my pocket to show him.

Aw, the logo is adorable. Come on, give the guy a break. I freakin’ love it!

Rob is always urging me to grant people breaks, but usually, it’s him who is requesting one. This commonly occurs when I change the television station to any reality program, specifically one with women screaming at each other.

So, because the blonde didn’t invite the brunette on an Atlantic City spa vacation, she tossed wine in her face? he said as I explained the complexities of reality show female dynamics. That’s just Thanksgiving Day in Brooklyn. Give me a break, Nadine.

Rob has been asking for these breaks for as long as we’ve been married. He’s requested so many over the years that I began asking him how long each should last. Should he be left alone in the living room for a few hours, or would he prefer I pack him a weekend bag? Apparently, they are herding people into internment camps, so I’m sure I’ll be able to flag down the next shuttle bus.

When you think about it, Bobby-Rito is no weirder than us, Rob states. We did the same thing he’s doing, short the guacamole. He probably had a crazy job in an office somewhere and dreamed of doing something completely different.

You could be right. Or he could be nuts. I’ve met a lot of nutty people tonight.

Either way, when you break it down, all of us expatriates are Bobby-Ritos.

Can this be true? Are we all Bobby-Ritos? Rob and I did sell everything we owned and moved to Costa Rica. No one said it was a good idea. My parents wholeheartedly did not think it was a wise decision, but Rob and I knew we had to go. The thought of spending the rest of my life in an office was sinking me into an abyss of depression, which for me meant being irritable ninety-nine percent of the day. That, in turn, resulted in Rob steering clear of me one hundred percent of the time.

Rob grabs his amp and hands me his guitar. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.

He’s right. It’s going to be a long day because we’re moving once again. The time has come for us to say goodbye to our rental house. Our landlord decided to put it up for sale, and we are moving into a different place about fifteen minutes away. Every time we move, I go through a delusional process of denial.

I’m not doing it. They’ll have to drag my cold, dead body out of here.

Rob ignored me and wisely began calling property managers. It’s not going to happen! I scream over his shoulder.

The main reason I don’t want to leave our house is that it’s where I photograph hundreds of howler monkeys right from our balcony. Mature trees surround the home, and monkeys climb straight up to its windows. This allows me to take the most remarkable pictures of their faces and hands, as well as video of them cramming lavender flowers into their mouths. I’ve watched babies jump on and off their mothers’ backs, and males fighting for dominance before falling asleep seconds later.

For the longest time, the monkeys congregated across the street in a neighbor’s yard. I waited patiently, howled at the right times, and tossed a few bananas outside, only to learn howler monkeys don’t eat them, iguanas do. And once the iguanas finished the bananas, they turned their sights toward my husband’s baby hibiscus plants. I call this the circle of life, or things a wife never admits to her husband.

Where the hell are all these iguanas coming from? Rob yelled after finding yet another plant eaten down to the stem. I just shrugged my shoulders and acted bewildered.

But I never gave up, and soon it happened: the monkeys came to my side of the street. And once they did, I never wanted to live anywhere else.

It’s not only the monkeys that I love so much about the house but also the birds: trogons and mot-mots, white-throated magpie-jays and squirrel cuckoos. I even spotted a painted bunting: a bird that often hides in dense brush. My backyard is a perennial aviary.

One morning, I glanced out my bedroom window and saw a huge anteater jumping from branch to branch searching for a termite’s nest. He stuck his snout into the air, concluded that none were around, and disappeared back into the canopy. That never happens in New Jersey, and if it does, I can assure you that’s not an anteater loitering outside your bedroom window.

I feel like we move a lot. Maybe too much, I say.

You have to look at it as an adventure. Almond trees surround our new rental. Can you imagine all the parrots we’ll see? It’s going to be great. Plus, there will still be monkeys. Maybe not up to our window, but we’ll still hear them every morning.

I exhale. You’re right.

And we’ll be right next door to Sandy and Ian. Having our friends so close will be a blast.

I like the idea of living in the same community as my friends. Our cars regularly break down, and one of us always needs a ride to German mechanic. We all spend a lot of time there.

Ian is a cool guy. While out in the ocean, Rob once accidentally yanked the plug on Ian’s inflatable kayak. Ian took a drag from his cigarette, blew smoke signals in the air, and casually said, I guess we’re going down. That’s the most excited I’ve ever seen the man.

I am also eager to live closer to Ian’s girlfriend, Julieta. She’s Costa Rican and doesn’t understand much English, and Ian is American and doesn’t speak much Spanish. But they’ve been together for years and enjoy each other’s company more than most couples I meet.

It’s endearing how Julieta always addresses him as my love. When we’re at the grocery store, I can hear her call over the aisles, "Need café or leche my love? Or while waiting for him in the parking lot, I missed you, my love." I once told Rob that I thought it was sweet how they spoke, so he started calling me hotpants, which doesn’t have quite the same romantic ring when called across the produce aisle.

"Hey, hotpants, where are the bananas?"

I like spending time with Julieta. She’s tall and voluptuous, and ine every picture we take together I resemble her Raggedy Andy doll. I even started practicing cooking authentic Costa Rican dishes for her, like my fried plantains, which turned out to be fried bananas. She smiled and ate them regardless.

Julieta tries so hard to understand my crappy Spanish, and I try so hard following her lousy English, we both spend a sizeable amount of time squinting at each other. Our friendship is unquestionably ruining our eyesight.

However, the number one thing I like about Julieta is she is a wizard when dealing with bureaucratic red tape. Can’t get your driver’s license? Julieta will speak with the clerk. Want an extra ten percent off your deep fry cooker? Julieta has got it covered. I’ve never met a woman so persistent.

I know the new rental will work out. It always does, I say. But the house is down such a long, bumpy dirt road it rattles my brain.

But what do we always say? Everything that’s great in Costa Rica is usually down a dirt road. Look on the bright side; we’ll be right next to the beach. We can kayak and snorkel all the time now. Trust me. How bad can it be?

It’s Going to be Bad

I’m staring down at a heavy cement lid in the backyard of my new rental home. Brown water—speckled with toilet paper—sprays from every corner. This water feature is not the type one expects six feet from their pool. Every thirty seconds it burps like a drunken bagpiper. I use my powers of deductive reasoning and conclude that this requires the deductive attention of my husband.

Rob, you have to see this!

He runs outside, and I point to the putrefying, carbonated cauldron in the yard. We have a problem.

Hmm. Doesn’t look too bad to me, he says.

Honey, there’s toilet paper floating next to the chaise.

Rob scratches his chin, Can we be one hundred percent certain it’s toilet paper?

Just as I have denial issues about moving, Rob has equal if not worse issues when faced with plumbing dilemmas. He’ll find any reason to avoid having to deal with one. Just the other day while the toilets were overflowing, we simultaneously ran out of water.

See that? Rob said after tossing a plunger over his shoulder. One problem sort of solves the other, doesn’t it? Did you buy any Cheetos?

And he was right: I did buy Cheetos, and the toilets did stop overflowing when there wasn’t enough water to overflow with. His toilet-half-full concept (or half-empty, not sure how this metaphor goes) occasionally works: devine intervention steps in and fixes the problem.

He was even upbeat after he improperly rigged the pump on our 265-gallon saltwater fish tank in the United States. I came home from work and found our bedroom flooded, leaving Nemo and Dory swimming sideways in the remaining two inches of water still left in the tank. I called him at work, and all he could say was, How bad can it be? We slept on a mattress in the living room for three months while contractors replaced our floors, subfloors, and the basement ceiling below them. In this scenario, the tank was not half-full.

However, there is no possible way Rob can ignore the problem we are facing today. It’s getting progressively worse, which makes me regret ever moving into this house. I was initially against renting it because the landlord was unsure of the exact date he would be returning from Canada. But he assured us that he would not be coming back for at least six to eight months. Since we were looking for a rental right before Christmas—and with no other place to go—it had to do.

Christmas and Easter holidays are the busiest times for both Ticos (vernacular for Costa Ricans) and tourists alike. It’s a Latino version of MTV’s Spring Break as thousands flock to the beach. Supermarkets prepare for the crowds by placing bikini-clad women waving sunscreen in front of their store. They jiggle, men approach, and a boatload of Coppertone is sold.

On occasion, women inside the store hand out samples of alcohol. Can you believe that? This is a country that demands you have fun. I’ve noticed these women are always clothed and never jiggle. A man can handle only so much in one afternoon.

Unfortunately, no jiggling is going to make our problem go away. It only took a few days after moving into our new rental to realize there was something seriously wrong with the plumbing. The foreshadowing? A framed sign nailed to the wall in the bathroom: Do Not Flush Toilet Paper Down Drain. It’s like a scene in a Hitchcock movie:

INT: Bathroom

Nadine showers as the bathroom door slowly opens. A shadowy figure suddenly reaches up and rips open the curtain. It’s her husband, carrying Cheetos and resting a plunger on his shoulder. The camera pans up to an ominous sign on the wall: Not one wafer-thin tissue shall be flushed from this commode. But Nadine did, and it was two-ply.

Not flushing your toilet paper is surprisingly common in Costa Rica. You’ll often see signs in restaurant bathrooms requesting you toss the toilet paper in the trash. It indicates that the septic system is not capable of handling… well… toilet paper. At first, it feels weird, but the longer you live here, the more you realize it is not the biggest deal.

You rarely see this type of plumbing in newer homes. In newer homes, you’ll hear sweet sounds of swirling toilets, and flushes so grand you’d write a review on TripAdvisor.

Fellas… now that’s the sound of two-ply success. Five stars for this masterpiece.

This sweet sound is not happening in my house. I can’t flush a square, and if you can’t flush a square, you’ll likely entertain all sorts of misty malodorants that are not conducive to a pura vida life.

One of these unmentionables is having your house stink of sewer gas. Yesterday it smelled so bad that Rob unpacked the gas masks he brought down from the States. Before we moved to Costa Rica, he read about criminals tossing gas bombs into homes that would render owners unconscious. This gave the bad guys time to make paninis and watch television before robbing both the panini maker and television. Like all of Rob’s research, he got this tidbit from the most reputable source: an Internet forum. Which of course means it must be true.

Rob positioned the mask on his face and buckled the straps around his head as if anticipating nuclear fallout. This is much better. I can’t smell a thing, he said.

If you ever wondered what the early markers for dementia are, this would be one. I didn’t bother answering him. Hey, I’m all for quality time together, but not when I’m playing the wife in Survival Town.

In the early 1950s, the United States government commissioned a creepy film about Operation Teapot: a series of fourteen atomic explosions in Nevada. To record the awesome power of nuclear energy, Survival Town was built and apparently named with the same jolly optimism as Operation Teapot.

The military built picture-perfect houses, filled them with J. C. Penney mannequins, and positioned them eating dinner or staring out a window waiting for the massive teapot careening in their direction. Spoiler alert: not much surviving happened in Survival Town.

I would assume the reason you called me outside is that you want me to do something about this? Rob asks, glancing down at the cement lid.

"You need to remove it and find out what’s wrong."

"I’m pretty sure I don’t need to remove anything. Sometimes seeing is believing."

How are you going to fix it if you don’t open it? I ask.

Rob scratches his head and looks up; from what I can tell, he’s searching for Bobby-Rito’s Vegas marquee.

This house always smells like sewer gas, he confesses, with the authority of someone who has a nose. This is obviously a bigger problem than I initially thought. Did you notice how bad it was when you used the dishwasher last night? If we lit a match, I feared the house would blow.

Please don’t tell me to stop using the dishwasher. It’s the first one I’ve had in seven years. A dishwasher is the glue to our marriage. Rob is unapologetic in his copious use of utensils, plates, and glasses. I once watched him butter bread with two spoons and a fork. It’s an all-you-can-dirty cutlery buffet at every meal. It has been a constant argument ever since we met.

Rob reaches down and lifts off the cement lid. Stand back; I’m going in. I glance down over Rob’s shoulder and peek inside the abyss. I see ten thousand Orcs.

He starts bailing out sludge with the determination of a man in a sinking inflatable kayak. After filling each bucket, he tosses the liquid over the fence. This is a great introduction to the neighborhood. Between Rob and me sitting around in gas masks and now chucking raw sewage into the next yard, I’m sure the Pisanis won’t be invited to Taco Tuesday.

I can’t… I just can’t seem to get to the bottom, Rob says. It’s an endless pit.

We look up and Luis, the caretaker of the development, shows up and points to a variety of identical cement boxes all throughout the property. They all lead to one large underground leach field in the front yard: Middle-Earth.

It’s here Luis designs a plan of attack, one that he quick-fires at us in Spanglish.

First, he’ll take off the lid on the front lawn. Second, he’ll shove something into it.

Lastly, we’ll prepare to all run away in horror, but Luis assures us he can get the job done. He then disappears.

I’m practically in tears watching him walk away. Where’s he going?

If he’s smart, probably far away from here, Rob replies.

But Luis does return, wielding a ten-foot-long PVC pipe, one that might have been borrowed from my neighbor. And when I mean borrowed, I mean stolen from their backyard.

Luis opens the hatch to the leach field with the enthusiasm of a paleo-scatologist. He begins sticking the PVC in various places and threads it into numerous holes. He pauses to listen, as a master safe-cracker might, for any signs of progress. His wizardry lasts for twenty-five minutes before he finally finds the right spot. The muddy water slide unclogs and waste rushes downhill, pouring into the leach field. Luis smiles and begins walking away.

Wait. Rob hands him thirty dollars. This is above and beyond the call of doody.

Luis seems surprised we are paying him, but he gladly takes the money. He leaves with the PVC and leans it up against my neighbor's garage. That’s going to be one hell of a surprise for whoever decides to use it next.

After careful inspection, we notice that the bottom of the cement box is filled with congealed grease and sand. This problem is not going away anytime soon. Rob turns on the hose and cleans himself off.

I’m sick of this, he confides. If we owned a house, I definitely wouldn’t have some half-baked septic system. It’s like an underground erector set.

It’s okay. We’ve been through worse.

No, it’s not okay. I’ve had it, he says.

What? Rob’s never had it. He always perseveres and rarely gets angry. He’s a man who gleefully duct-tapes an open wound instead of seeing a doctor. A guy who shoves twelve thousand dollars in his underpants in order to buy a car. I’m the one who always says, I’ve had it. I’ve been saying it since being picked last for dodgeball in elementary school.

The kid with chicken pox gets chosen before me? I’ve had it.

Rob turns off the hose and jumps into the pool. He swims a couple of laps before sitting on one of the tiled steps. I want to build a home. I’m done living in other peoples’ houses. We’ve been here over seven years, and I don’t want to clean up anyone else’s mistakes anymore.

That’s one of the craziest things about renting in Costa Rica. If you are planning on paying a low rent, most likely the landlord is not even in the country. You are expected to find the repairman, fix the leaky pipes, or in today’s case, bail out the compacted crap box.

I take my shoes off and wade my feet into the water. I think I’m at that point too. But it will be at least another year before we can even try again to get that water letter.

The dreaded water letter: one that we initially thought we had on the property we bought, only to find out the water association is changing hands and now we have to wait even longer. It’s more than disappointing; it’s discouraging.

Rob steps out of the pool. Something has got to give. I’m sick of everyone else’s problems. And I’m tired of leaving every time homeowners decide to come down for their yearly vacation.

That’s another thing about living at the beach. Often you’ll need to leave when your landlord returns for his holiday. You usually have to find a place to stay for a few weeks, which is never cheap and always inconvenient.

Rob stands up. "I’m hungry. Let’s go out to dinner. I need a hamburger."

When Rob needs a hamburger, he’s usually got something very pressing on his mind.

Nothing Stays the Same

A teenage boy with slicked-back hair stands at the corner with his girlfriend. After the last car passes, they run hand in hand across the street. At the other side, they stop under a Guanacaste tree. It’s there he gently cups her face and leans down to kiss her. She stands on her tippy-toes and rests her hands on his shoulders. It’s everything a kiss should be: unrushed, deliberate, and below a setting sun.

We drive past