Finding a House and Other Rites of Passage

I can hardly believe we've been here for over a week now! This is going by so quickly. Chris has been working diligently all week to in-process the base. I have been doing the handful of random things around base that I can actually do without him (like getting a library card!).

Typical one-way street

Our big adventure for last week was finding a place to live. We looked at base housing (nice, but everyone told us the really great places were off base). Then, we scheduled a tour to look at off-base houses. We drove around the island while Tony, our driver and translator, told us stories about growing up on the island. We looked at 5 houses, all very nice places, with nice yards for the dogs. But... with tiny little ovens, no dishwashers and no heat. We were willing to make to with these less-than-desirable items until we borrowed a friend’s car and drove 25 white-knuckle-crazy-driver-filled minutes from base to the town of Biscoitos, where the houses were located. The picture to the right shows a typical one-way street.  The only difference between this and the main, two-way roads is that there is more room to kind of pull off the street to park.  Not that any of the locals actualy pull off the street to park.  Let's jsut say driving here is insane.  After Chris made the drive to Biscoitos a few times, he decided the large houses and yard weren't worth it. We would need to find something closer.

He spent most weekend calling rental listings closer to base and setting up tours. Unfortunately, every place we looked at was missing some big item that we needed. In the end, we decided that base housing offered the best of everything we were looking for. We move in on Friday!! It's been almost a month since I've been able to cook an actual meal. I am sooo ready to have a working kitchen again!

While we were driving all over the island looking at houses, we made a few pit stops to check out the local scenery. Our stops included another swimming hole in Biscoitos. This one was much more extensive than the one we went to last weekend. We didn't get in this time, but the water looked freezing - still. We also stopped at a few scenic overlooks along our drives. The coast line of the island is very pretty!

Cochorrao Especial

Last night, we took our first dive into the local culture. Praia da Vitoria, located about 5 minutes from the island, is hosting a car show all week. We decided to head downtown and check it out. We drank a beer in a local Mexican restaurant (don't ask??) and watched the police drum corps march past on the street to open the festivities. Then, we walked through the car show tents. Mom - I think we found your old VW in green! We were amazed by the size of the classic cars on display. Even in the 60's European cars were much, much smaller than American cars. We checked out some new cars too. Again, much smaller than American cars, but just as expensive.

We also decided to check out some food from the local street vendors. We ordered a 'Cochorrao Especial'. It turned out to be a hot dog on a giant bun with sautéed mushrooms and onions, shredded carrots, corn, ketchup, mayonnaise (no one here believes in mustard), and tiny little french fries. It was interesting to say the least! The show runs all week and is supposed to have go-kart races, street car races, and other activities. I'm sure we'll be back into town to check it out!

New to the blog this week:  More pictures in the 'Island Pics' album, captions for all the pictures, a daily island forecast (it automatically updates most days), and a map of the island with some of the hot spots labeled.