Another Great Week in Ecuador

     I just realized my blog post title could get rather redundant.  Another great week in Ecuador is just ending for us.  We both feel like someone is going to pinch us and we will wake up from this wonderful dream.
     On Monday, the new workers started chipping our old tile to get it ready for the new tile to be laid over it.  This is all done by hand with a metal tool that is continuously hit upon the tile.  It is very tedious, but it gets the job done.  We are so excited for the new tile, that the noise and dust doesn't bother us at all.  The granite for the kitchen was also delivered on Tuesday.  We are slowly making progress.  On Saturday, they actually laid the very first pieces of tile. 
     Tuesday night, our friends Gary and Kathryn invited us over for enchiladas.  Oh my, what a treat. There was also homemade salsa and guacamole.  Kathryn can rival any Mexican restaurant in Phoenix, and that is the truth.  Needless to say, we are very spoiled. 
     Thanksgiving Day is obviously not celebrated here by the general Ecuadorian population, but the gringos here in Punta Carnero from the U.S. got together to celebrate at Bob and Freida's home.  In traditional American style, there was way more food than we could possibly eat.  I think the local Punta Carnero policia could smell it, because they stopped by to eat as well.  We had a very enjoyable day as we also got to Skype with many family members in the U.S. 
     There was no Black Friday shopping here. Just another day in paradise, walking the beach and picking up shells.  I can honestly say I don't miss it at all.  We are very happily adjusting to the much slower pace of life.  We did take the bus (for $.25) into La Libertad on Friday.  We had Almuerzo (lunch) at this awesome little restaurant called Restaurante El meson del Coronel.  Almuerzo consisted of a choice of sopa (soup) which was either de habas con queso (cheese soup) or sanccho de carne (a meat and potato soup).  There was two different choices for entrees.  One had pescado (fish) and the other had pollo (chicken).  We had the chicken which came with rice and fideo with jamon (pasta with ham). On top of that we got a large glass of this most wonderful tasting juice. All which cost us $2.00 each.  Not too shabby.  We then walked to towards the La Libertad mercado.  On the way, we found a place for John to get his hair cut.  Total cost was $3.00 (including the tip).  From there we picked up some strawberries from a street vendor for $1.50 and five very large cucumbers for $1.00.  For $1.00 we took a taxi to El Paseo, the shopping mall and then another $.25 for the bus ride back home.  Total spent on our outing = $11.00.  Cost of experiencing the Ecuadorian culture = priceless.
     On Saturday, we went to see a movie at El Paseo. They have several movies showing, but there is usually only a couple that are in English.  We were fortunate enough to be able to see El Cuervo (The Raven) with John Cusack which was a story about Edgar Allen Poe.  It was very good (as was the popcorn!)  Our next door neighbors had invited us over later that evening for drinks and homemade empanadas.  Alvaro and Yvonne are from Chile originally, but now live in Guayaquil. Their home here in Punta Carnero is their weekend and holiday beach house.  Our friends Will and Janis were invted as well and Alvaro served us a Chilean drink called Pisco Sour.  It was awesome. And then the plates of empanadas were brought out.  There was shrimp and salmon, seafood, mushroom with corn and sausage and cheese.  Definitely the best empanadas we have ever had.  We were very thankful at the end of the night (after finishing a bottle of red wine on top of all the Pisco Sours), that we only had to walk next door.  We are so fortunate to have such wonderful neighbors as Alvaro, Yvonne, their 11 year old son Nico and their beagle puppy, Bruno.
     So, as I stated at the beginning of this post, another great week in Ecuador.

Yummy empanadas!

Our next door neighbors, Alvaro, Yvonne and their son Nico.

Janis, John and Will enjoying Pisco Sours and empanadas

I love their Beagle, Bruno : )

 

 

 

 

Learning and Adjusting

    This last week has been interesting, to say the least.  We have made some positive changes regarding our house remodel, which has become a huge relief.  It finally feels like we will be moving forward instead of running in place.  And as Forest Gump said, "that's all I got to say about that".
   After five weeks here, we can honestly say that it feels like home here.  I cannot say enough how friendly and wonderful the people here have been to us.  It will feel awesome when we are in the position to give back to all that have helped us along the way.  This week we met some more neighbors who had been out of the country, Will and Janis.  They walk their beautiful husky, Kai, several times a day so we have seen them quite a bit.  Will is a native Ecuadorian so he has helped us with translating as well. They are a great couple, and we are lucky to know them (along with everyone else). 
   The weather has been absolutely amazing.  The temperature year round here averages at 82 degrees for a high and 65 for a low.  It has been in the mid to high 70's every day.  As we are approaching summer here, it will be warming up into the 80's. A major reason why we chose this area to live. Also the fact that the average rainfall per year is about 4 inches.  We had a blast yesterday afternoon watching the surfers out on our beach (ok, not really OUR beach, but it is right in front of our house). One young surfer saw has watching him as he was riding a big wave in and he decided to ham it up just for us with a little hip wiggle and some other fancy moves. I think he enjoyed our ovation and thumbs up.
   The things that shocked us initially have now just become, well, I guess you could say, less shocking. To elaborate, it is very common, any place, anywhere, anytime, to see a mother breast feeding her child.  With no attempt to cover anything up.  To be honest, it doesn't bother us at all, but it is just something you don't see in the U.S. (usually).  Also, men take full advantage of their ability to pee anywhere, anytime and pretty much any place.  Probably the funniest one was seeing a guy who had pulled over on his motorcycle (on a very busy street) and relieved himself, right there on the edge of the road. I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go!  That one is definitely more disturbing than the former : ).   Another thing we got used to very quickly was the fact that you do not flush toilet paper down the toilet.  It is deposited in a trash can (hopefully covered).  This is true in all of Ecuador  It really is not a big deal as one might think it would be.  Another fact in Ecuador- pedestrians do not have the right of way.  I don't think this is a written law or anything, but it truly is your own responsibility for getting yourself across a street safely.  They will beep at you to let you know you are in the way, but that does not mean they will stop.  We did adjust to that very quickly as well.  
    John and I are both very happy and look forward to each day and what it might bring.  We are both very adaptable, so that has helped a lot.  We are truly grateful for all the people in our lives (in WI, AZ and Ecuador) that have been so supportive and understanding of our choices.  Just because there is distant in between us doesn't mean we love you all any less. 

Why Did We Move to Ecuador?

     Many people have asked why did you move to Ecuador, or how did you choose Ecuador?  Some days that feels like a really good question, and other days, we know exactly why.  I would definitely say we have to give most of the credit to John Curran, who graduated with me from Waupaca High School back in 1981.  When I got on Facebook and became friends with John, I was really enjoying following his posts about living in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, a small mountain village.  We soon started corresponding, and John very patiently answered my endless questions.  Soon, my John was interested and before we knew it, we scheduled a scouting trip to the coast of Ecuador.  Through many, many hours of internet searching on climate and everything else, we zeroed in on the Salinas area.  We rented a condo for a month on the malecon in Salinas in June.  Fortunately we hooked up with the best real estate agent in Ecuador (Kimberly Quintana), and if you have seen the Salinas, Ecuador International House Hunters episode, you will see Kimberly as the client looking for a condo. She not only was a great real estate agent, but has become a friend as well.  When she first showed us the house we bought, we saw all kinds of potential.  It was  a couple hours after we saw it that it came to John that it would make an awesome Bed and Breakfast.  Afterall, it had four good sized bedrooms all with private baths.  And enough other rooms to make everyone comfortable.  Not to mention that it is right on the ocean with a beautiful beach right in front.  We knew the house would take a lot of work, so before we left Ecuador, we met with a contractor to get an estimate on what it would cost to rennovate the house.  Before we even got back to Phoenix, we had the estimate and had decided to purchase the house.  Unfortunately, the day after we got back, John had a heart attack (not related to the cost of the rennovations or anything : ), but everything was caught in time and a stint repaired his 90% blocked LAD (widowmaker) artery.  After that, John was even more excited about making our Ecuador move a reality.  I guess having flirted with death, you realize how short life is and you need to make the most of it.   So here we are, living in the bedroom of our house while all the remodeling is going on.  I am pretty sure our contractor believes it is a blessing and a curse to have us here, because we see everything.  It has been an adventure, nonetheless.  Ecuador is a third world country, and I would never sell it as anything other than that.  But it is beautiful, has a wonderful charm and great people.  John Curran had been very honest with us and we had no expectations that we didn't fulfill. 
    Another question we have gotten a lot, is when will your Bed and Breakfast be up and running?  That is a great question and I wish I had a great answer. A few months?  We have added quite a few things to our list of rennovations since we have gotten here.  One of the biggest things we changed was replacing all the tile in the whole house. (one of the curses of staying here is we got really sick of it really fast). It is outdated and a touch busy :).  We will also be added a swimming pool in the back yard along with a Bocce ball court.  It previously had a basketball court back there (not in good condition) and we really had no use for that.  Our 40 foot container is already here in Ecuador and we are hoping it takes a few weeks to be processed through customs because we are not ready for it. 
While we were still in Arizona, we decided to name our Bed and Breakfast "Las Palmas del Mar" (The Palms by the Sea), since it had some large palm trees in the yard.  Unfortunately, when we arrived here in October, the palms had taken a turn for the worse (simply due to neglect).  Well, we already had our logo, t-shirts printed, cups printed, etc... so we weren't changing the name! So we ended up planting ten new palm trees in our front yard.  It looks great and we can legimately keep our name.  I do have to give a shout out to my dear friend Trina, who so patiently designed our logo for us. After many tweaks we finally got it just the way we wanted it.

    So here we are, after 4 1/2 weeks.  We have met so many wonderful people.  Ecuadorian and Expats from the U.S. and Canada.  We look forward to meeting many more and enjoying our adventure here in Ecuador.

The South American Way

   Every day we continue to learn new things, new ways and a new language.  We don't expect the Ecuadorians to know English, so we are working very hard on learning as much Spanish as we can. Fortunately they are really patient with us as we try to explain what we are trying to say. Google translator is great if you have internet and a computer nearby.  Once we get settled more, we hope to take some Spanish classes to help us along.  Watching tv with the Spanish subtitles has been a great way to pick up new words as well. Even the dirty ones : ). 
   Living on the coast we do not have the shopping available to us that the larger cities do. We travelled to Guayaquil this week to try to find some things that we couldn't find in Salinas or La Libertad or to find more choices (such as light fixtures). Hiper Market only has so many items available.  We hired a bilingual driver (Juan) along with his pick up truck to make the trip to Guayaquil. One of the big stores there is Boyaca, which has many household items.  Juan also took us to another area, where we were able to find a new couch (which is actually comfortable and fits us). Most of the Ecuadorian furniture is very hard with not much padding. It also doesn't fit us larger gringos very well.  Juan was an expert in maneuvering around the crazy city of Guayaquil.  I have never seen people drive so crazily. 
   Since last weekend was a holiday weekend here, there was more people around and some of the homes were filled with famlies visiting from out of town.  We met our other next door neighbors for the first time. They are very nice and also live in Guayaquil.  They don't speak English but we were able to introduce ourselves and them to us. Then they brought us over lunch the next day.  We are so fortunate have such kind neighbors.  Our caretakers, Jimmy and Mirian cooked us lunch on Sunday. We are definitely enjoying the Ecuadorian cuisine. I have no idea what is in most of what we eat, but I can tell you it tastes awesome!  Our friends, Gary and Kathryn have had us over every Sunday since we have been here for dinner.  It is always delicious since Kathryn is a great cook. This week we had Gumbo with sausage and shrimp. It was so yummy! And her desserts, over the top good.
   Kathryn had 3 very small kittens at her house this week that she was trying to find homes for.  I was very tempted, but the timing is just not right for us.  With all the construction and noise going on, together with the fact that the kittens weren't much more than 4 weeks old and needed a lot of attention, we just couldn't justify it.  John really wants a dog, so that may be what we get eventually.
   John and I continue to walk as much as we can.  Walking along the beach is my favorite of course, but I get very distracted with all the shells and things there are to pick up .  I am still running at least three times a week, just to try to keep in shape.   There is a very heavy police presence here in Punta Carnero. The police are always driving up and down the road.  We have gotten to know a couple of them and I know they watch out for me while I am out walking or running.  They always honk or toot their siren when they see us.  I guess we kind of stand out a little...  John and I really saw how much taller we were than the average Ecuadorian when we were riding the bus to Guayaquil and we were the only ones whose heads stuck over the seats.  It was pretty funny. 
    Construction on the house is slow right now as we have decided to re-tile the entire house.  The tile won't be in until next week.  Then we can finish up some of the other things.  Hopefully the kitchen construction will start soon as well, since that has been the most challenging to be without.  Thank goodness to our friends, Bob and Freda for loaning us a George Foreman grill so we can have some hot food now and then : ).  When we get going on the tile and the kitchen, I will start posting more pictures.