Prices, Plants and Police

In keeping with tradition, I’d like to rehash prices of stuff in the store here. I may never again complain about prices in Central America. I took some pictures of the local flyer for the grocery stores here since a picture is way more interesting. Some things that weren’t in there though (and for really good reason) I’ll just have to write about. Keep in mind a kilo = 2.2 pounds and that the NZ dollar hovers around .85 to $1 USD. I’ll quote in NZD below. It’s still hard to swallow, regardless:

1 kilo of tomatoes $24.00

1 red or green bell pepper $3.99 (ad below is a sale price)

1 cucumber $3.99

1 kilo of chili peppers $49.99

Cheapest bottle of wine $8.99

4 bagels $5.00

My newest favorite food in the world: Creamed Clover Honey.

Cost: Priceless

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention about the price of internet. Being out here, I have a USB stick with a sim card in it to connect. Are you sitting down? My surfing has been severely limited as never before. At least I can say it’s not dial up speed like it was in Puerto Viejo. I am paying $30 per GIGABYTE. Hardly doing anything per day is adding up to at least 40-50MB. I blew through my first gig in about 10 days. So I’m only doing what I have to…I have no idea what’s going on in the world which is fine by me. I check email, process orders, pay my credit card bill and sometimes check my investments. I upload photos to the blog on a free connection in Dunedin. I’ve completely taken internet for granted until now. I did find a new plan that will give me 500MB for free each time I top up but the cheapest I can buy is $20 (for 500MB) so we’ll see how that works for me.

I was put in charge of planting the first batch of veggies: lettuce, broccoli, squash, onions, cauliflower, pumpkin and cabbage. The little kids started popping up a few days later after sitting in a sunny window!

I sat outside and the black cat, who can find joy in playing with a clump of dirt, was out there with me. I decided to entertain him so I plucked out what appeared to be a weed and swatted it around for him to catch. Upon closer inspection, the leaves were tiny hearts! I felt kind of bad after that, but figured I should take a picture since they were so darn cute!

I was thumbing through the mail and there was a newsletter of sorts for Middlemarch. I saw this blurb in there which was too funny to not include here. What are the odds that this would happen in a major city in the U.S.? I’m sure the police would not find it amusing.

There’s an old house on the property here which was built by a man for his wife in the late 1800’s. Allegedly he came from England and to farm here. He lived in a cave nearby for over a year while this house was being built. I’ve tried to go in the house but it looks a bit rickety and I can’t actually get the door open all the way. I caught the sunset in the window one night and thought it looked cool.

It was Father’s Day here this past weekend and we all had a nice lunch. Kate made a Pavolva which I had never had before. It is a meringue type cake with a nice crunchy outside and soft lower layer. It looked really huge but it was so light, it practically flew off the table.