When we aren't at our house in Nicaragua, we have a local family living there to watch over things. We pay them $100 a month to live in our house, keep our trees watered, and the weeds cut. We built a little 400sq ft. house and told them they could live in it while we are in the states, but when we show up they have to split and go back to their house in the village nearby. The only problem with this is that if we are in town, there's no one around to watch our stuff if we walk over to the restaurant for dinner, or want to take a 2-day roadtrip down the coast. Eventually we will have a larger house built but we intend to rent it out to traveling surfers and if we ever want to live down in Nicaragua, if the house is rented, we won't have anywhere to stay.
So we decided to build another smaller caretaker's house.
It's pretty much done. Our current caretakers both work for the nearby hotel. The guy is a grounds keeper and his wife works in the kitchen. That's awesome for now because since they both have jobs already, we don't pay them as much. But eventually, when we build the bigger house we will need caretakers that work for us only. That way the guy can be our maintenance guy, available 24/7, and his wife can cook and clean for renters. We have put the word out in town that we will be needing new caretakers and since there are very few jobs available in the area and our caretaker's house is really nice, we have had many people showing up asking for the job.
A few of them have even arrived with bribes. We got 7 lobsters one day. Another lady showed up with an armload of fresh fruits and veggies. The same guy that brought the lobsters also brought us a big dorado. He's in the lead as far as gifts go! We chopped the head off, bbq'd it up, and made fish tacos. So good!
