House hunting and exploring

Yesterday we finally got a rental van (woohoo!). It's amazing what a difference it has made. Unfortunately exchanging cars took the better part of the day, but we were still able to hit another beach (Dadi Beach) before sundown. It did not disappoint.

Not ony was it beautiful, but the kids had a blast seeing all the hermit crabs, sand crabs, and other sea creatures. They even caught a few!

This morning we started searching off base for a pace to live, either permanent or short term (whichever works out best). Base housing is full through August, and they won't let us stay in the on base temp lodging until then. They want us to get a month to month lease while we wait, but I'm exploring all my options.

The housing office gave us a list of companies they recommend for rentals with for month to month leases that "work". Their idea of working and mine are different I guess, as many of the locations on the list are, to put it mildly, crap. One place reeked of urine and mold (mind you, this is for $2500 per month in rent for a less than 1200 sq foot unit). I know it's just because the companies that do month to months are lazy knowing there's an endless revenue stream from the military, and they aren't all bad, but those that were kind of soured me on the month to month waiting for Navy housing stuff (though Navy housing does look pretty amazing and has some nice advantages).

It looks like there are some really nice places in our price range out in town, making putting up with a month to month like that even harder to do. We're meeting with a realtor Saturday to explore more permanent rentals, but in the mean time started driving around to explore the island and where we'd like to live if we decide to go out in town.

Of course along the way we stopped and explored a bit! We stopped and walked up an overlook with steep stairs:

and views that made the stairs worth the climb :)!

We then found this little cove:

with little fish playing in the tide pools. (and a bunch of Japanese tourists).

We also hit Jacks Pirate Cove for lunch. It's a restaurant with quite a bit of history, and is a bit of an icon on the island. While there we tried some kelaguen, a local dish made from marlin in this case. It was quite delicious (and I think I need to learn to make it).

All the sandwiches had this singed in them! :)!

We ended up today hitting the local Payless supermarket, getting some locally grown fruits (mmmmm mangoes) and coming back so I could experiment more with these green papayas. This time: green papaya salad. It was delicious!