Life is hard everywhere and requires real work to survive. There is no place left where issues don’t arise… we do know that. We are finding that the harder we push for something, the less likely it is to happen; likewise, the more we assume, the less likely any of those assumptions come true.
We are having tremendous issues with renting here. Not because the system is complicated, but because we are complicating the system. We can’t just roll with it and be simple. We have spent nearly 2 full weeks looking for a house to rent and when we found one that we loved we got into a war with one of the real estate agents, got our real estate agent to match the other agents price (which he was pissed about). Now we have been going back and forth with negotiation on the contract 3x, before receiving the cost of the internet service – It seems we have to rig an internet system across the lake which is going to cost us $1025 (USD) and $350 a month in support and service.
And that’s not all… We have to buy a boat because the local boat isn’t reliable in that location. We have to bring in our staff everyday by boat so that we can still function, and we have lost our road access in entirety. Yikes. Originally the rent was $600, but after you add in the internet, the boat and the complications, we are looking at $2400 a month, minimum. That’s maybe not a lot by NYC standards, but our goal is to save money… and suddenly we are heading upward in cost.
We could just rent a place in Pana (the largest city, here) and we could get a big house, in a nice, safe neighborhood for $850 a month, all in, with no hassle, no complication and relatively low stress. We would be 45 minutes closer to the airport, 5 minutes to the grocery store and have awesome internet.
And yet, we still want to live on the lake in the isolated single house village of Patziac. It is who we are and we are annoyingly complicated.