Monticristi Part 2

The second museum we went into was dedicated to Eloy Alfaro Delgado, he was Ecuador's president for some years and did a lot for the country until his assassination in 1912. He was born, raised and graduated school in Monticristi before traveling the country and back and forth to Panama, where he married and had 9 children. His birthday is June 25 and is a major holiday in some parts, here's his memorial...from upstairs, looking down

And from downstairs, seems like there was a memorial very similar in Washington DC once when we were there.

The seats you can see in these pictures are very old, and popular as far as "antiquities" go, replicas everywhere.

The reason I think Joffrey wanted us to wear long pants, closed shoes and bring a sweater, is the height of this hill, it could get windy and the walk down is long, but beautifully decked, so it wasn't like we were hiking, but he may not have known that. It looks like a lot of the landscaping is new.

One of the things President Alfaro did was get the railroad finished from Quito to Guayaquil. (In the past 10 years or so, the current President Correa has revamped and reopened the railroad, and is pushing rail tourism)

On the walk down the hill, there are picnic areas and playgrounds, there were probably 5 terraced areas, that were very nicely done. (That's the cesped-Astro turf)

A very prominent church at the bottom of the hill, has a huge mosaic of Pres. Alfaro. We stepped inside for a picture, and then from the balcony.

We continued down the hill thru the streets, this is when I realized everybody was closed for Family day. Many people open in the morning on Sunday, but after lunch they close down, so another day will be a shopping day. As we were waiting for the bus something unusual happened. A Funeral stopped traffic, now that doesn't sound unusual, but...Ecuador style

Trucks came and stopped traffic, and the mob just swarmed us for a minute, and boy were they drunk! I can't believe they were able to carry that coffin, some of the men were so drunk, but alas no problems, and as quick as they came, they were gone.

We had one more stop, Joffrey wanted to take us to La Pila where they do statuary.

Didn't find anything here we couldn't live without, some of it may have needed to be repainted, maybe a tad...mmm...Latin American for my color pallet...and I like color! We got a little rain on the bus ride home, and after a shower and some dinner we were ready for bed. We didn't get to talk with Joffrey as much this time because he had RosaLinda, but he loves to show off his country and we are enjoying having him as a tour guide. He said he wants to do another outing next month, so stay tuned...the Adventure continues!

 

Monticristi Part 1

Our day with Joffrey and his Amiga, RosaLinda was quite a day! We thought Joffrey had told us to wear bathing suits and bring a towel and warm clothes, made a gesture like whoosh, down a slide, so we thought waterpark, but no...when we got to Charapoto where RosaLinda lives, he told her to wear long pants and to change out of her sandals into closed shoes, hmmm this is where we knew we weren't doing a water slide. At this point we really didn't know what we were in for, can you say Adventure? Two buses later we were in Monticristi, and we started walking up the hill to where we could see some large structure, it was quite the walk and RosaLinda was recovering from allergies, so Joffrey found a driver to drive us up the rest of the way. What we saw at the top of the hill was a huge complex with three different museums and shopping and tons of photo ops.

We went into this museum first, and it highlighted the artisans of Manabi Province. The interior of the round building was very cool, the exhibits were very nicely laid out and info cards both in Spanish and English.

The very first artisan on the picture wall was a local from San Jacinto. She does shell art.

The other exhibits spoke of the local clay pots for cooking, misc utensils and woven mats. Shutters and saddles, loom work using fiber and yarn made from the Ceibo tree, and of course the coastal artisans making fishing nets and langostinos traps.

Monticristi is the birth place of the Panama hat, unfortunately mis-named for the "international" city they traveled thru to get to the far corners of the earth. They had some beautiful ones on display, and in one of the shops we could have bought one for $20, but decided to wait.

Pottery statues were on display, "antiquities" Joffrey kept calling them, and wanted us to get pictures with everything (which is why this is part 1, over 70 pictures were taken).

The metal shelving units were as interesting as the artifacts, very pretty. After this museum we went to another highlighting Eloy Alfaro Delgado a local hero, and I'll do research on him for the next post. Because we were here on Sunday, many of the shops in town weren't open, so if you do go visit and want to shop come during the week.  Hope you've enjoyed the first installment, stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Finished Fence

We certainly can see why Manuel is considered a Maestro, he took our idea, and made it better than we had hoped. He spent two and a half days with us, and next week will be back over to finish some projects at Marty and Jaimes house, then in February we will have him back for phase two.

We already had Manuel tweak the fence, had to add a couple slats at the bottom so the dogs couldn't see everything and every stray dog that walked by. (Even tho they can smell them) We also asked him if he couldn't build a table frame, which he did with leftover wood, and turned out amazing!

The glass top was on the coffee table that came with our sectional sofa we bought second hand from our old neighbors. The coffee table was always too big for our rooms, but we saw the potential with the glass top, Mike figured it must come off somehow, so he got it loose, and then it was easy to tell Manuel what was needed. He did a wonderful job, and all this, fence, table, supplies and 2 days of workers under $300!

We had Joffrey over to see it, he thought we could get the landlord to help pay, but we said it was ok, let them have some rent money. The fence was something we needed, not something they needed to provide.

And speaking of Joffrey, we have another outing with him today. He has a lady friend in Charapoto who will go with us (double date) we think we are taking the bus to Montichristi, where they make Panama hats and wicker furniture, but he also said to bring a swimsuit and towel and we'll go to a water slide! The cameras charged and we've got the pocket translator, we're all set, so as always, stay tuned, the adventure continues!!

Coast Guards and Carpenters

Today marks being in the new house (which we've named Casa Pescadores) a month, and during that time I have really noticed a lot about the boats and fishermen. Day before yesterday I noticed many of the boats that normally "park" out front were not in their usual spots, I wondered if they weren't finding other parking spots, so to not be in our way. But then I noticed the boats were out in the water, just a little offshore, not out as far as when they are fishing, or casting their nets, I found it odd, but continued to observe til later in the day when I found the reason. 

The Captain (for lack of knowing exactly the correct title to use) of the boats was walking towards his boats with a couple men in black and his "right hand man", the men in black (or rather Navy Blue) had clipboards and looked very official. I finally saw the back of their shirts said GUARDASCOSTA, they were doing inspections, going over every inch of the boats hull, motor, taking the cover off, checking for life jackets and fire extinguishers.

So, I've now come to assume the boats that were in the water, didn't want to get inspected that day, and the inspections did continue the next day. I observed life jackets getting transferred from one inspected boat to a non inspected boat, and chuckled. I decided to look up Ecuadorean Coast Guard, and this is what Wikipedia had to say.

The Coast Guard (Cuerpo de Guardacostas de la Armada) became fully operational in 1980. Their mission is to control maritime activities on national territory, including all river zones. The objective is the internal security, protection of human life at sea and environmental protection. 

It said they had 250 men, and quite a few vessels to patrol with, including helicopters, which we do see flying over head. They are part of the Navy, and there were some interesting info about them as well.

The Ecuadorian Navy is responsible for the surveillance and protection of national maritime territory and has a personnel of 7,258^[1] men to protect a coastline of 2,237 km which reaches far into the Pacific Ocean. The vessels are identified by the ship prefixB.A.E.: Buque de la Armada del Ecuador (Ship of the Ecuadorian Navy).  A website called GlobalSecurity tells us this tidbit...Ecuador claims a 320-kilometer-wide (200-mi.) territorial sea. In 1952, Chile, Ecuador and Peru issued the Santiago Declaration, the first international instrument to declare a 200-mile limit. The Declaration made a significant conceptual leap, however, asserting not merely jurisdiction for the purpose of managing natural resources and fisheries, but that each State "possesses sole sovereignty and jurisdiction over the area of sea adjacent to its own country and extending not less than 200 nautical miles from the said coast." Freedom of navigation was restricted to "the innocent and inoffensive passage of vessels of all nations through the zone aforesaid." The United States, in contrast, claims a 12-mile boundary and jurisdiction for the management of coastal fisheries up to 320 kilometers (200 mi.) from its coast, but excludes highly migratory species. Although successive Ecuadorian governments have declared a willingness to explore possible solutions to this issue, the U.S. and Ecuador have yet to resolve fundamental differences concerning the recognition of territorial waters.

So, there ya go, now on to the Carpenters...

As mentioned previously we have a street dog that has adopted us, she jumps over the short concrete wall at the new house and it makes our pups crazy. They can get along, we've taken walks on the beach before, but that is neutral territory I guess, but coming into their courtyard had to stop, so we enlisted a local carpenter to build us a fence. I drew up a plan, translated some key phrases and with a little help from our friend Marty tried to convey what we needed. After some confusion, we got the gist figured out and we waited for the quote. Manuel the Maestro came the next day with written quote and said it would take no more than 4 days, we paid for materials up front and he brought the supplies back later that same day.

He came bright and early yesterday with his son and they got busy. Had all the fence up by the end of the day, mostly sanded and today ready for gate installation and laquer. They'll be finished today for sure, with how fast it went up yesterday. 

I chose this design so we were not blocking our view, we really didn't need the fence for security, just for some wind break and to keep the street dogs out. We'll see how much wind break this gives us, and may add some more slats if needed for our plants to thrive.

Can't wait to see the finished project, stay tuned the adventure continues!

Hodge Podge

This post will  be a compilation of things from the past few weeks, cleaning out the camera roll and some last tidbits of info.

We saw another Christmas tree in Charapoto while at the weekend market, looks like in the past they've done the string of plastic bottles, but this year did something different on the tree form. It's Astro Turf, they call is cesped (cess-pay, the d is silent) we've just ordered some for our courtyard space, our friends at the Boca have it and it's lovely.

Charapoto is a very nice little town, I've said before it's about 4 blocks by approx 6blocks and a good outlet for items one can't get here in the "village". It's approx 5 miles from here, and a quick trip on the bus, usually .40 cents.

I don't even remember the circumstances of this picture, (it was taken way back on the 11th of December) and so much has happened since then, but I do love the juxtaposition of the old world and the new. If I'm seeing this correctly, the burro is tied to the four wheeler, yes?! Love it, certainly know I'm not in The States anymore...

Another shell project completed, this one is more of a wind chime than wall hanging, the shells clink against the bottles and make a nice sound, I'm thinking of adding a couple more bottles so it makes a bit more noise. The fishermen like our crafty side and brought us a present yesterday, Mike has an idea of something to do with our new treasures from the sea...

They shrank a little in the drying process, but very cool none the less. Looking forward to what else the pescadaro's bring us. We've got a standing order for a pound of fresh fish fillets on Tuesdays for $5, we used to pay $6, and I swear this pound is double the size what we used to get. 

Here's a funny one taken at dinner one night. Notice how the three cars are all parked different, the black one is parked diagonally, the next one is parallel parked and then Gino the bread man's truck... That's Ecuador for ya! No Rules!

Our new water pump leaked, and we've been rationing water the past couple days hoping the city would refill, but they are off schedule because of the holiday and it didn't fill last night, so we're calling on a water truck, it'll cost us $15 but worth it. Also waiting on a carpenter, need to have a fence built to keep the street dogs out of the courtyard, wanting an outdoor table to do our crafts on, and maybe some sort of shade structure. The hiccups here are getting smaller, and the new house is still great, we've survived the first 6 months, and they say they are the hardest...no kidding, but it does look like it's smooth sailing ahead. So Stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Shell projects

Some time ago I posted about all the shells and stuff we were finding on our beach walks, we'd started sorting them and cleaning them before we did our house sitting at La Boca. While at the Boca house, I got art supplies and got busy, made several different kind of Christmas tree ornaments and some things for possible gifts. Not really knowing who likes "crafty" gifts, I gave the ornaments to our friends Jim and Marty and kept the rest, the ornaments were a big hit, and I'll make more thru out the year for a tree of our own.

Even the twine used as hangers was found on the beach. I really liked the way these turned out and will make many for us. Also made some cutesy ones...

The legs and fins on the turtle ornaments were made from a found (or lost) flip flop we picked up on the beach. At first I was torn whether to paint the shells, because I really liked the "natural-ness" but after I painted one, I really liked it too, so I'll paint them whenever I want, this next one turned out good.

Shell Poinsettia, that I put on my "wreath" then was able to take it off after Christmas was over.

The form of this "wreath" is a broken 5 gallon bucket lid, the blue and turquoise twine  was found on the beach, as well as the lightbulb (which doesn't show well on this picture) and bottle caps. Very happy with my early projects, and after getting settled in the new house was able to work on phase two.

Really happy with how this wall hanging turned out, and LOVE IT against the turquoise wall paint, the close up shows that I added Tagua beads to it, just a little bit of color, and local flavor.

The one on the turquoise wall is approx 1 1/2 feet wide and 2 ft long, and the one above is bigger by a foot in both directions. Very pleased with how they turned out, and working on wind chimes now, who knew this pile could turn into such fun art...

Hope you've enjoyed seeing the fruits of our beach combing, as much as I've enjoyed playing with them. Stay tuned, the Adventure continues,one shell art project at a time!!