Tag Archives: nicaragua
The Butterfly House – A One Bedroom Casita on a Budget
We became friends with Marilyn when she came down for a Surf with Amigas retreat a couple years ago and Kim agreed to design and build a small simple 1 bedroom casita on Marilyn’s sea view lot at Seascape Terrace. … Continue reading
Day In The Life – Living in Nicaragua With a 5 Month Old Baby Girl
Set a goal, attract what you want, work hard, and live your dream. After loving life as a competitive pro surfer, then a pro free surfer, building a business and relocating full time to Nicaragua, I wanted to have a … Continue reading
Jacek and Ivona’s House by Hipehabitat
After the seeing the successful outcome and great feel of our L-shaped hacienda home Kim has agreed to build a slightly customized version for a Canadian couple planning to retire in Nicaragua in the next few years. Here, Holly and … Continue reading
Settling Into the New House
It’s been about 3 months and we’re loving our new home at Brisas Del Alma. We’re still very busy settling in, putting finishing touches on the house (building shelves to store all our stuff mostly), and embracing our new lifestyle. It … Continue reading
The New Dipping Pool
The house is now mostly finished, and we have an 11 week old baby girl named Luna. Little Luna has occupied most of our time lately, so I’m way behind on blog posts. Eventually I’ll get a chance to take … Continue reading
Cool Roof Design by Kim Obermeyer
Kim Obermeyer of hipEhabitat.com talks about his design for a cool roof – a double layer roof that will prevent heat from the sun from radiating into the living space. The roofing system features pre-painted structural zinc roof panels with … Continue reading
Homemade Yogurt from Beach Walking Cows
I love yogurt with my granola and fruit in the morning, particularly homemade yogurt made with milk from cows that I pass on the beach every morning and evening. Living in Nicaragua has it’s downsides (a shortage of farmer’s markets … Continue reading
Nesting in Nicaragua
We’d been designing the house for months, but as soon as we found out that we had a baby on the way, we quickly finalized the plan and soon broke ground on what will be our home (scroll to the … Continue reading
30% off the next two sea view lots sold!
Starting Feb. 1, the owner of Seascape has decided to offer a promotion- 30% off the next two lots sold. These lots were already a great deal- 1/2 acres with sea view, power and water to the lots already in … Continue reading
Breaking in the Beach House
It was a long time coming (8 months to be exact), but the beach house is finally finished! Ok, so it’s not totally finished. There are still plenty of details to be addressed. We’ve got trim to put up, painting … Continue reading
Beach House Progress – Plycem Walls and Bamboo Siding
We started building the beach house way back in March – or was it February 2013? The point is, it’s been so long that it’s hard to remember. The main delay has been caused by an irresponsible carpenter with a … Continue reading
Surf Lifestyle in Northern Nicaragua
The waves aren’t perfect every day. Sometimes it’s small and kinda closed out, lumpy, and plagued by riptides. That’s just a part of surfing. But the sunrise is beautiful, the beach is empty, the water is warm. Even if the … Continue reading
Gluten-Free Coconut Cacao Almond Flour Cake with Spicy Blackberry Compote
My husband Kim is an amazing cook. I used to do all the cooking but now that he’s around, I do a lot less and focus on “ooohing” and “aaahing” over the amazing things he makes, plus doing the prep … Continue reading
Finding Fallen Wood
Our wood dramas continue…. If you’ve been reading about the progress of our beach house construction you’ll see a repeated theme – we’ve been delayed by the local carpenter again and again. Now, the house is pretty much finished – … Continue reading
Beach House Roof Construction
The next step in the saga to build a beach house in Northern Nicaragua is complete. We’ve got a roof! When building anything in this country, you’ve gotta have patience. Lots of patience!
Beach House Progress – Slow and Steady
The whole process has been really slow, but at least it’s been steady. We bought a beachfront concession lot back in April of 2012. It wasn’t easy and you can read the full story here. Since then we’ve been working … Continue reading
Drilling a Deep Well in Nicaragua
We’re in the process of installing infrastructure for a small 16 lot housing development in northern nicaragua called Tierra Del Sueno. In order to provide water for the development we decided to drill a community well at the top of … Continue reading
Holly and Kim Get Married in Nicaragua
Hipehabitat founders Holly and Kim Obermeyer hosted a raging group of friends and family members to a week of fun and adventure in Nicaragua that concluded in an intimate wedding ceremony at the La Bahia Beach Hotel.
Bodega Progress
We are nearly finished with building our teak and concrete block bodega up on the ridge at Tierra Del Suenos. We’ll use it as a garage, storage unit, and workshop. Right now we’re finishing up the details – painting and … Continue reading
Digging a Well in the Sand
If you happened to notice our post from a couple of months ago, we bought a beachfront concession lot in North Nicaragua. To catch up on that dramatic story, click here. After finalizing the purchase, the next step was to … Continue reading
Beautiful Girls on Longboards at the Bay
Afternoon light, a friendly paddle, one 9’2″ longboard with GoPro mounted on the nose, trading off, smiling, laughing, toes on the nose, crouching for speed, cross-stepping into the later afternoon. All part of the life, living the dream.
Building a Bodega on the Ridge at Suenos – Part 2
In part 2 of the bodega construction process the floor is poured and the roof is on. If you want to refresh your memory with the purpose of this building and our strategy for building it, click here to read the … Continue reading
Belgian IPA homebrew “Belguraguan”
OK, here’s the brew I’ve been waiting for, wanting to try for months, yearning for – a home-brewed Belgian IPA made right here in Nicaragua. I’m thinking of throwing a packet of dried Belgian yeast into our palm-thatch roof so … Continue reading
Almond Flour Banana Granola Pancakes
We’ve been going gluten-free these days. After a week’s experimentation I realized that I had more energy and just generally felt better. I’m not perfect though. It’s easy to switch out rice for pasta, but much harder to turn down … Continue reading
Teak Post and Concrete Block Bodega
We have begun building up on the ridge! First project – a place to store our tools, saddles, surfboards, wheelbarrow, and the building supplies that we’ll need to collect when we’re ready to start building the actual house. The name … Continue reading
The New Living Fence on our Lot in Tierra Del Sueno
We bought an awesome lot in the new eco-friendly community in Northern Nicaragua called Tierra Del Sueno and are starting to make some improvements. The first step was installing a fence around the perimeter so we can more clearly see … Continue reading
Phase 1 Roads at Tierra Del Sueno
It’s been a year or more in the planning stages but we have finally broken ground on the new roads that will service lots in Tierra Del Sueno. We had been waiting to finalize the lot lines before figuring out … Continue reading
Thoughts on Summer Vacation
An open jar of truffle-flavored honey scents the room in sweet musky earth tones amongst a baker’s dozen young hip lawyers, doctors, and a dancer. They’d come to this party in Cambridge, Massachusetts to admire and celebrate the first home … Continue reading
Living the Dream – Surfing, Dogs, and Ridgetop BBQs at Tierra Del Sueno
This is why we live in Nicaragua – warm water, fun waves, dogs off-leash on the beach, estuary swimming, hiking barefoot, and sausage BBQs on a sea-view ridge with cold home brewed Belgian Ales to wash it all down. Life … Continue reading
Steve and Danika Choose Their Lot
Steven and Danika Thomas lived in Nicaragua for several years and invested in a large piece of property over-looking the bay they liked to surf. They formed the dream of one day building a home on the hilltop and being … Continue reading
“Volcan” Cacao-Cafe homebrew Stout
The third, and possibly the best batch, in tropical home brewing adventures, almost met its end in the moldy rainy season condition of June. The rainy season brings clouds of mold that drift invisibly through the air landing on … Continue reading
Windmills In Nicaragua
One of Nicaragua’s most valuable resources turns out to be wind. Super strong (often hurricane force) and consistent winds blow across lake Nicaragua. These amazing winds are basically Trade Winds that are funneled and amplified as the high pressure on … Continue reading
Tiny House with Bamboo Construction on the Osa Peninsula
On a trip to the Osa Peninsula last year we looked up someone called “Super Steve” who we were told was building some beautiful things with bamboo. Despite the fact that we showed up out of nowhere, Super Steve aka … Continue reading
Earthship in China
Our friend Ben is really excited about earthships. He wants to build one here in Northern Nicaragua. I didn’t know much about them, but undertook a program of self-study reading through all three volumes of Michael Reynolds’ Earthship books. The … Continue reading
Growing Guadua bamboo
We had been searching for it for nearly a year, since we learned about it in Ecuador. Guadua bamboo (Guadua angustifolia and other species) is the giant bamboo species native to Central and South America. It is one of the strongest … Continue reading
Our garden grows
We started planting the garden in late October, 2011- lots of chillies (habanero, jalapeno, arbol, New Mex, serrano and others), various greens, tomatoes, Thai basil, lemongrass, dill, tea tree, sunflowers and a bunch of randoms like purslane and indigo. Some … Continue reading
Hippy Hop Attack IPA
I’ll admit that I was a doubter. After participating in numerous homebrewing efforts over the years I learned that it isn’t easy, there’s a lot that can go wrong, and especially considering our lack of refined equipment I thought our … Continue reading
High School Kids Help to Build a New Classroom in Nicaragua
A group of 17 high school kids from High Tech High in San Diego came down to Nicaragua with Surf With Amigas (formerly Suave Dulce) for the trip of a lifetime. They learned to surf, did yoga, went horseback riding … Continue reading
Homebrewing in Nicaragua
Living in Nicaragua is awesome. Warm weather, warm waves, affordable homesteading, and a simple life lived barefoot. There are however a few things we miss about the US – mexican food, fast internet, and good beer! Luckily, Kim is an … Continue reading
Holly Beck Surfing In Nicaragua
Check out a few clips of Holly Beck surfing in Nicaragua in Nov/Dec 2011. Good times, great waves, so much fun!
DIY Guanacaste Stairs
We moved into our new cabana about a month prior and had yet to take full advantage of the loft because we didn’t have any stairs. We had considered several funky stair designs with notched logs and spiral things, but … Continue reading
Building An Elementary School Classroom with Waves Of Hope
Imagine you’re a 12 year old kid growing up in a remote fishing village in Northern Nicaragua. You’ve spent most of your life barefoot, chasing chickens and skinny dogs through barbed-wire fences. You learned to ride a horse at age … Continue reading
The German Mound Garden
As a 31st birthday present to myself I decided to build a garden. I’ve been reading through The Permaculture Garden by Graham Bell and thought the design for a German Mound looked interesting.
Eco-Friendly Bee Hive Removal
While trying to install our signal booster antennae on our new house, we heard a buzzing and came across a buzzing mess lurking under the palm fronds. Kim grabbed a plastic bag and I got in place with the camera. … Continue reading
Framing the Octagon Window
Designing the window placement was a fun experience that involved measuring, re-measuring, and measuring again, then erasing, measuring, and changing the dimensions multiple times. Our friendly red-headed framer was smilingly patient as we changed our minds back and forth. Right … Continue reading
Building in Nicaragua – Concrete Floor, Tile, and Wood Dilemmas
Building in Nicaragua is both much easier and much more difficult than it would be in the States. This project in particular is easier than most since we’re building on Coco Loco property with full access to power (except when … Continue reading
Building in Nicaragua – Palm Fronds for the Thatch Roof
Accessing the palm fronds for the thatch roof turned out to be one of the easiest things we’ve had to do so far. There’s a property nearby owned by a friend full of the right kinds of palms, so we … Continue reading
