A few weeks ago, Chris asked if I had any house updates to share. Truth to be told, I’m not sure where I left off and my archives… well, that’s a whole other story (in short: I thought I had saved them, but I lost a lot of my pictures).
But when I was writing this post about the guests in our pool (see below), I remembered that I never really told you about that pool, even though it has appeared in some of the pictures lately.
So I thought I’d do a little update about that while I was going to talk about our pool anyway.
We’ve been thinking about if and how we’d want to add a pool to our home for… years, I guess. We do have a beach very close to our home (a 7 minute walk), but to get home, you have to walk up a steep hill. It is fun to swim in the sea, but it doesn’t help for a quick cool-down. So we decided we wanted a pool and started looking around. We had some experts tell us that what we wanted was hard to do (although we’ve seen it in many modern homes) and we’ve made calculations that would have taken all our savings.
But then T.’s brilliant out-of-the-box thinking mind got to work.
We had a few men that we know are great with building make us a level concrete base.
And then we ordered a simple Intex pool that was just the right size.
T. had made calculations that had made sure the pool was at just the right level to build a deck around it that is level with the porch, so we can walk into the pool straight from the house. He built the deck all by himself, making up the construction as he went.
And now it looks like this:
We’re so, so happy with it! Since we filled it up (last year October) we may have skipped two or three days, but (except for our months abroad, of course) we’re usually in it multiple times a day. Especially right now, since we’re in the hottest period of the year. It’s so great to be able to just jump into the pool when we start to feel overheated.
We’re not the only ones who think that way, it seems. We’re constantly saving bees and wasps. Wasps can actually swim and get out themselves if their wings stay dry, but bees just jump in and drown if we don’t get to them on time. It adds a whole new dimension to our swimming moments, but we try our best.
And last week we found another swimmer:
Yes, that’s a crab. A land crab to be precise. It must have walked in at night, so it drowned before we were able to get it out of there. I have to admit though, we weren’t too sad about that, because we both find them pretty scary. They’re rather big and those shears look impressive when they raise them. When they enter the house (they do!) we use a broom to push them out of the door. One of our builders said they are very tasty, but we haven’t brought up the courage to try yet.
The same goes for these guys, by the way. We both tried them (in a restaurant – they do taste like chicken), but we’re not eager to catch them. And come to think of it… I so hope that he sticks with eating the leaves of my moringa trees. I really don’t want to try and save a panicking iguana from our pool…