More Hard Conversations

This week I've been having more howler monkeys visiting me. I had to move into the sewing room to work because of the ongoing repairs to the roof and bedroom ceiling. The monkeys are coming onto the wall to peer down into the sewing room.

I woke up grumbly and pissed off to the sound of Jim and one of his plague ratty buddies in the pool with the music cranked this morning around 7 am. I'm starting to feel like this place is Grand Central Station with the metal gate open standing open for the workmen, and people just strolling up unannounced.

But it didn't last long. I spent the day awaiting the news, and photos and video of the Nurie Rodrigues and Nathan Keller wedding. Betting that Jill is somewhere off grinding her teeth because David and Priscilla Waller posted wedding photos of the happy couple. The radio silence from Jill is telling.

Towards afternoon the same plague rat buddy showed up here, nearly in tears. His aged mother has passed on in the United States, likely from COVID,  and he is struggling trying to figure out if he should risk going home to the States. Even with our rising COVID rates they are still way lower than in the U.S. Going home is risky in more ways than getting COVID for us expats.

He's a legal resident here, not residency in progress like us, but Costa Rica is refusing to allow legal residents back in until the pandemic is over. If you're an American citizen and you leave here, tourist class or not, you cannot come back until tourists are allowed back in . Residencies in progress like us lose their place in the process and have to start again. People already with legal residency aren't allowed back either. American citizens not allowed back until the COVID rates drop in the U.S.

We keep having this endless conversation with everyone American here we know, to go or to stay. The Clonies are all gone, scurrying back to Texas or Tennessee or wherever. Most of the millionaires have decamped. The fair weather beach crowd has gone. Even some of the hard core surfers. The place has emptied out of many Americans. We're the hard core few now.

Which makes strolling into Tamarindo interesting. Lazy iguanas now wander the roads. There's parking everywhere now, and the few open restaurants are completely deserted.

COVID and a possible six month longer wait to return aren't even the most worrying bits. He's afraid of leaving his house for that long because he's afraid of deterioration, petty thievery, and abandoning his wife that long. She's not going back.

The other issue is his business here. He's involved in the construction trade, leaving with shut off the flow of cash for the family.

Add in dysfunctional family follies involving his siblings and all I see are more reasons to stay. It's tragic his elderly mother has passed, but faced with the prospect of a hostile family, a huge plane ticket on one of the few flights back and everything else I'm thinking staying is the only sensible thing.

I had to have that same conversation with family in Louisiana after my mother started rattling apart. I let them know right up front that if the borders were not reopened I could not guarantee I would return for a family emergency involving my mother.

All around me here I am seeing others having to make these same hard choices. Do you stay or do you go? There's no easy answer.