Learned a new word: TerreMOTO

As you all know, two weeks ago on April 16th we had a huge earthquake, 7.8 to be exact. I'm going to start at the beginning, and this will be a multiple part series. Here we go, I had just returned from the baby shower (a story for another day perhaps) and was putting water on to boil, the floor started moving and Mike called to me from the tv room, to come in. I thought I'd get to the doorway and the moving would stop...not so, I found out later it was 43 seconds, felt like forever! Mike tried to get up, and fell back onto the couch, I then lost my footing and fell onto the couch as well, there was nothing we could do. We bounced around, watched things fly off the shelves, then the power went out, black. We heard something fall/crash outside, I thought it was my shelving with all my driftwood...it was not, when the earth stopped moving, and our adrenaline let our legs move, we made our way outside. What we heard was this...

Half of Vecinos house collapsed.

We actually couldn't see all this as it was after dusk, these pictures were taken in the morning. Ok, back to the night of, glass and liquid everywhere, the fridge flew open and bottles of beer fell out, breaking and spilling all over the floor. The five gallon water bottle dispenser bounced off the counter and was spilling onto the floor. Wine bottles, glasses, coffee pot, blender all added  broken glass to the floor, I swept up what I could, and we went to town to see what the rest of the story was.

When we got to town we saw Joffre who was unofficially the guy directing everybody. He said we needed to get in the car with his mom and brother and go, there could be a tsunami, an alert had been issued. We told him we needed to get the dogs, and we went home to do that. We had mixed feeling about evacuating, but better safe than sorry. We ended up sitting in town for several hours hugging our neighbors and trying to figure out if we should leave, and where to...Charapoto is one place, higher ground, and people were going to hang out at the park. The other place is the San Clemente cemetery, we just wanted to go home, and go to bed.

We finally got in the back of an expats truck, who was driving down the Boca road looking for people needing evacuation, we helped an injured lady with her mother, husband and small child move to the main highway to get a ride out. They had their mattress, their bomba (water pump), and large speaker along with their suitcase, all their worldly possessions, so looters wouldn't steal them. We got them situated, and headed to higher ground. We sat under shelter with candles, and some snacks, finally tried to sleep in a hammock, but decided it had been long enough, we should head for home. It had been 5 hours, we were exhausted, and tomorrow only would bring more heartache. 

A house plant had fallen on the bed, so I had to change sheets, and a gallon of paint had lost its lid, what a mess, not to mention there was still water on the floor. Just as we were falling asleep (2am) we had a large aftershock, we realized we had been feeling them on higher ground, but being in hammocks, hadn't been sure. We would have aftershocks for a week, at least. We didn't really sleep well, but I was glad for sunrise, I needed to see the damage. Our house fared rather well, other than the decorations falling off shelves and the broken glass, our shade structure fell over, not bad.

So surprised more didn't fall off these shelves. Clean up went fairly easy since I had swept up most of the glass the night before. House plants had fallen over, but the dirt was wet, just needed to let it dry out. 

Interesting find, the paint from the pot rubbed off on the wall, look how far it shook!

It was time to walk into town, and see it in the daylight, I'll end here for today, so we will do our walk thru town tomorrow. In the mean time we have set up a new GoFundMe account to help in the rebuilding of our beloved little town. Please consider a donation, share with friends and family, co-workers, anybody who may be able to spare $5 or $10 to help our neighbors rebuild. I'm so impressed with our townspeople, such troopers! So, stay tuned...the adventure continues!