mytropicalescape.com

Recently I was asked by ExpatInterviews.com to provide information and details on living overseas in the British Virgin Islands and in Culebra. The team at ExpatInterviews.com created their site because they feel, “it’s always exciting to know about what motivated people to live in another part of the world, how they generate their income, how they manage to live there, and what they’ve learned from their experiences in a land that’s become their new home.”

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Today, I was supposed to put up a post on Reverse Culture Shock but that is going to be preempted by some really GREAT news! I have just had an article published at ZenHabits:

Escaping The Cubicle And Getting Off the Corporate Treadmill

Zen Habits is a fantastic website that was started by Leo Babauta and he covers topics such as, achieving goals, productivity, being organized, motivation, eliminating debt, saving, getting a flat stomach, eating healthy, simplifying, living frugal, parenting, happiness, and successfully implementing good habits. Leo has done a tremendous job with his website in a very short time and he now has close to 20,000 subscribers. In fact, Leo’s site is so popular that it got me to thinking, maybe we need to hold a ZenHabits week down here in Culebra …

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

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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Unfortunately, trying to run the blog from Culebra has been more difficult than originally thought…There is so much to write about; moving to Culebra from Tortola by boat, renovating the Palmetto Guesthouse, trying to exchange our new non-working refrigerator that we purchased from Sears, purchasing a car, and the list goes on. Currently, we are waiting on a DSL box from PR Telco and in typical overseas fashion there is a story behind trying to get internet access that I will write about at a future date.

One of the joys of living overseas is the chance that you might not have reliable internet access…well that is currently our situation here. We are going to San Juan tomorrow to try and buy a car, refrigerator, washing machine and most importantly to try and get a DSL modem.

We made it to Culebra on Saturday from Tortola, British Virgin Islands by boat in four hours. Our internet access is spotty and slow at best. I will update more in the near future including pictures and a full trip report.