Entries from September 2007 ↓

For the expat, or any traveler really, culture shock is a reality and is a term generally associated with the anxiety that is felt when dealing with a completely foreign culture. Yesterday I received an email from a friend of mine who has just returned from Central America to California and he was recounting a story of going to get gas in his car and the reverse culture shock he experienced doing this seemingly simple task. Also, I know from my own experience both living overseas and returning to America that the whole thing can be somewhat overwhelming, e.g. walking in to a mall for the first time in two years and hyperventilating.

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Even though the threat of a hurricane during the season is ever present here in Culebra, today’s hurricane post is the second guest article from Henkel Smith of Water’s Edge International Realty in Nicaragua. They recently experienced hurricane Felix and the following is his update.

As hurricane Felix approached Nicaragua and Honduras in early September, we received a flood of phone calls and emails from concerned friends, family, and of course Nicaragua real estate owners. Major international media covered the story of hurricane Felix’s devastation to Nicaragua, which caused a lot of confusion and unrest for Nicaragua real estate owners. In response to this confusion, we decided to explain how Felix affected the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and about hurricanes and their potential affect on Nicaragua real estate.

In Spanish, the word for hurricane is “huracan”, which comes from the Carib god of evil “Huracan”, because the majority of hurricanes occur in the Caribbean Sea. More importantly, hurricanes form in the region between 5º and 20º north and south of the equator, with the highest percentage forming between 10º and 20º.

The majority of Nicaragua’s Pacific coast real estate developments sit at approximately 11º north of the equator, meaning the likeliness of being hit by a hurricane is much lower than anywhere in the Caribbean or the Pacific coast of Mexico. We saw this proven again with hurricane Felix, as it headed towards Belize and ultimately made landfall close to the Nicaragua / Honduras border. Meanwhile, in San Juan del Sur, we were going about our day as usual under sunny skies. Tourists headed to the beaches and were partaking in other activities around town, and the only effect we had from hurricane Felix was some scattered rain showers.

Although Felix had virtually no effect on San Juan del Sur and the Tola beaches, the east coast did take a beating. Clean up and relief efforts are still underway, and a great amount of assistance is still desperately needed. If you have the means, we encourage you to please make tax-deductible contributions to:

Rotary Club of Pittsburgh Foundation
555 Grant Street Suite 328
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

The Foundation will acknowledge contributions in excess of US $50.00, and please include a note stating Nicaragua Hurricane Relief / Water’s Edge International Realty.

Editor’s note: you can reach Henkel directly at henkel[at]realtornicaragua.com or visit his website Water’s Edge International Realty

In order to provide more information on Culebra I have just launched Culebra Blog. This site (mytropicalescape.com) was originally developed as a way to help others’ who are interested in living overseas whether in a working, volunteering, or long-term traveling capacity. Because I would also like to get out more posts on our new island home, and not wanting to turn this into a “strictly” Culebra site I decided it would be best to separate the two.

So, if you are looking for expat information you have come the the correct place. However, should you like more specific details on Culebra, (e.g. tourist activities, how to get there, where it’s located, etc) then I suggest you head on over to the culebra blog.

Post made possible by the Palmetto Guesthouse

A while back I read a story that stated, “the BVI is the number two investor in China for new infrastructure.” For an island nation of approximately 25,000 people I find that completely overwhelming. Well, today I did a little further research because I find the topic fascinating and discovered that for the first eight months of 2007 $9.91 billion dollars from the British Virgin Islands was invested in China. If you would like to read the whole article you can have a look at the British Virgin Islands Business News.

Apologies - I realize since we’ve come to Culebra things have been slow around here lately. No internet, new business, home renovations…you understand. Well, this morning I did a quick search on google for information about living overseas and after viewing the results I clicked on a link that looked interesting for a site called “expatexchange.com.” Once on the home page I browsed the content and noticed a post entitled, “Adjusting to Life Overseas” and written by someone named Mark Hayward. Honestly, I do not remember submitting the article but was pleasantly surprised I must say.

Our Culebra internet access should be improving very soon! Through a small miracle, and help from a friend on Puerto Rico, we finally managed to get a DSL router. That is half the battle… and our next step is to get the DSL service enabled at the Palmetto Guesthouse (once online I can write more in depth about this). Hopefully, the connection will be done by the end of this week and then Terrie and I, plus our guests, will have high-speed internet access.

Another quick update, we just picked up our first shipment of organic, fair trade coffee from Sweetwater Organic Coffee roasters in Florida. So, if you are a coffee fanatic coming to Culebra we can take care of your morning caffeine needs.

Living on Culebra appears as though it will be quite different than living in the British Virgin Islands. Aside from the most obvious difference, they speak spanish in Culebra and English in Tortola, our new island home is quite a bit smaller with an estimated population of 3,000 (BVI population ~ 25,000). Also, for the four and a half years we were in Tortola I worked for the BVI government but here, as owners of the Palmetto Guesthouse, we are our own bosses and have been working everyday for the past 30 days.

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