Feeling like Fall

The weather has changed! We had an overcast day all day, (maybe Wednesday, they all run together) and then the next day we knew, it was Fall. Summer has come to an end. Kids went back to school on April 20th, and it has been very quiet around here. We have turned off the fans, and Mike actually put pants on! I had to dig out my shawl to wear while we watched sunset the last couple of nights, Veronica requests to be covered up while sitting on a lap, and the breeze, was well...chilly. So Summer was from mid to late Feb thru mid/late April. Good to know, not so bad. We can handle that, now on to some projects.

Picked up some cool pieces of wood on our walks, and finally got out the paint. This was my first one.

A sign for the house. Mike found an old oar on the beach with a broken handle, and I'll make another Casa Pescadores sign for the inside of the house on it, there's a perfect chunk of wall it'll fit beautifully on.

I'd like to replace my tired front door wreath with the Bienvenido sign (that means Welcome) I'm just not sure how the starfish will weather, but I know where we can get more...

My first "non word" sign, now mind you, I am NOT an artist! I can be CRAFTY, but my painting skills are no Bueno. Still may work on this octopus, but I do like the beach found marble I gave him for an eye. I have quite a collection of boards, some I'll do words on, and others I may practice some more sea creatures, of course I'll show you as I go.

Still doing smoothies everyday, Mike has cereal in the morning, but I don't require anything but coffee til about 10:30 am, so I've been doing smoothies, breakfast for me, mid morning snack for Mike, anyway, with smoothies everyday, I have an abundance of yogurt bottles, and I can't just throw them away!

So I covered/wrapped them in colorful twine. Next I'll cut some down and use as tea light holders, maybe paint, who knows, like I said the supply is abundant, and the possibilities are endless.

I've been playing with embroidery thread, learning, or should I say RELEARNING how to make friendship bracelets and lanyards, takes me back to summer camp and junior high. Still trying to learn some more macrame knots.

So' there ya have it. This week in the life of Paige on the coast of Ecuador. Thank you for the positive messages from the last post, I Recieved a couple comments, and a couple private emails regarding the "is it blog worthy", so in response...I say, stay tuned! The adventure continues!! 

Is it blog worthy?

Every couple of days or so I think "I need to write for the blog", but then I look thru the camera roll and decide I don't really have anything new to share. This blog started out as an information highway, sharing our experiences about researching the move, moving and now...into our 10th month here, I find I'm writing more for our family and friends, because, well, the information highway seems to have come to an abrupt end. I have no info, I'm not informed...I think I never was! The early part of this blog can surely read as a "what NOT to do when moving to a foreign country" haha, no really! At this point, 10 months in, I can honestly say everything is still not hunky dory, our residency paperwork is still not finalized, and of course there is STILL the issue with the container. Progress is being made, but I can't say to what end, the roller coaster is still doing its ups and downs, loop de loops, and making me sick at times, but whatcha gonna do? I didn't sign up for nice and easy, I signed up for adventure.

And THIS is part of our adventure, Shadrach, our little salty dog, loving his new Ecuadorean life, his beach life. We've met new friends, who make our new life fun and fulfilling, both human and dog.

Our "otra perro" Dulce/Ariel in her favorite spot, and Veronica putting up with her. And our friends Marty and Jaime, who we feel like we've known for much longer than the 7 months. Here the "boys" (Mike included) doing a "see no evil". Good times!

So, our adventure lets us relax by the beach, play with dogs and friends a couple times a week, and of course my crafty projects. A new project is in progress, the first one is always a learning experience, because I'm usually "winging it". I've seen a picture, maybe a tutorial, but usually it's fumble thru it.

Circles cut from plastic bottles, the blue are gorgeous (rather expensive water bought by some of Marty and Jaime's guests, just called out to be repurposed and recycled) and the lime green are a 7up green bottle that just weren't quite bright enough to be paired with the blue, so I painted them. All these strings of plastic rounds are tied on the lid of a broken blender (thanks again to Marty) and will be a hanging light fixture. More rounds need to be cut, and then Mike will figure out how to wire it, the finished product will be shared at a later date, stay tuned.

These fish are made of plastic bottles, I think we have a lot more collecting before we can accomplish something like this...but with all the time we have...it just may happen, lol! 

Our Ecuadorean life is such a mix, we have "American" stuff, like the Baskin Robbins whipped cream we had on our Jello Poke cake made for Easter dinner by Jaime

And the pound or so of fresh caught shrimp gifted to us by our friends Fernando Father fishermen and his sons, who park their boat infront of the house.

Marty and I had just got back from the market in Charapoto Sunday morning, the fishermen asked for a couple bags to share the catch with the workers, then they asked for another one, but this one was for us. Little did Fernando know I was inside cutting pineapple to share with the group. And that's how we roll,  we take care of each other, we are all vecino bueno, good neighbors.

So, is it blog worthy? Maybe not for some of you, but I'll keep it up, because for the rest of you its a way that you can join us in our new Ecuadorean life. So...stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Good Friday

Yesterday was a great day. Most of them are, and we are so glad we moved here. It is "summer" and pretty hot, especially when you are used to being in AC, AC in the house, AC in the car, AC at work, or AC when shopping, it's pretty standard in much of the U.S.

Without having our techo (roof) built yet, we've been doing some hiding in the house, sitting infront of the fans, but we decided we had to do something with our umbrella, and make it a stand. We took one of our stand up fans off its stand and found the umbrella post fits it, it just proved too unstable in the wind. So I went out to the beach to see what I could find, and I found a chunk of cement that had once been poured into a large coffee can, it was heavy, but not too heavy that I couldn't carry it home, and voila, problem solved!

So the last couple days have been spent outside under the umbrella with the beautiful view of the ocean and the breezes that come with it. Thursday evening our fishermen were cleaning up the beach around sunset, they start a pile and then they light a fire, and everything goes in it. They do this every two weeks or so, so I didn't think anything of it...but the next morning they opened their pop up restaurant, yippee! 

We went for lunch there yesterday, had to have my favorite ceviche camaron (shrimp) and we split a breaded fish, super good! We met the brother in law of Fernando, he's a policemen, and felt every bit a part of their family. After lunch we went back to the shade of our umbrella enjoying the afternoon, listening to podcasts and about five o'clock, Fernando came bearing a gift, fresh cheese empanadas and fish conviche (think breaded hush puppy with flaky fish inside). Seemed the perfect time to open a cerveza and start happy hour.

What a perfect end to another perfect day. We shared a couple beers and watched the sunset...

Yes, it was a Good Friday, indeed. Stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Mud and Macrame

The last couple of days I've been playing with macrame, that's what this post was going to be about, but while on our walk this morning, we saw some amazing mud, so they'll share a post. I saw some macrame pot slings, plant holders on Pinterest, the pictures looked pretty descriptive, so I gathered twine over the next couple days and decided Tuesday to set to work. My first problem was remembering the length of twine wrong, I cut 8 pieces of 40 ft, what a mess, they were tangled all over the place! Mike remembered as a child, his mom doing macrame, and she had her ends of twine in bundles, that then could be woven, knotted whatever without tangling with the others strands. So, I did that, but I couldnt knot the strands, something was wrong. I checked Pinterest again, and found the error, A TOTAL OF 40 FEET, 8 strands of 5 ft each, that's much easier to maneuver.

My first attempt. Not bad, tried to play with the distance between knots, and found I can change the shape that way, tall and skinny, etc. For my next attempt I brought in another color twine, and added, what else? Shells...

Now I just got to get to Sosote and get some plants!  On Wednesday I decided to try a wall hanging, I collected my twine, a piece of wood, and some shells and sat outside under the umbrella. I hung the wood on the fence to work, the breeze was nice, the fishermen were fixing their nets, and I was happy playing with another project.

The finished product. Quite large, the top wood piece is almost 3 ft across and it probably hangs 4 ft long. Some close up pictures...

I've been wanting to do something with hanging Sandollars, it could use a little tweaking, but not bad for first attempt. 

Now for the mud! Low tide was this morning at 8:30, a wonderful time that still has some marine layer for coolness, and a nice time to take coffee. While heading to the ruins, we noticed a lot of mud, mud we hadn't seen before, LOTS OF MUD. Look back a post and see the pictures of the ruins, in comparison to these we took this morning.

In the recently posted pictures, all this mud is covered with sand, we never knew this mud was under there! It's slick and slippery and sometimes stinky, I wonder if it isn't decomposing plants from when this used to be neighborhood...I can't imagine.

Crazy! It'll be interesting to see when the sand comes back, just another "seasonal" thing we get to experience. Hope you enjoyed the post, Stay tuned, the adventure continues!

REALLY High Tides

We came home the other day from a bus trip to Bahia, and saw that the fishermen had moved their boats, and were helping move the unattended boats. Some men were working to get fence panels off the vacant lot next door, and that lot became boat parking. 

Other boats ended up being tied to the remaining fence, and then other boats were tied to each other, and then to a post or structure. Where we usually have many boats parked in front of our house, now we have none.

Another interesting thing we have noticed in the past few weeks is the sand, here in front of the house the sand has been washed away and you can see what used to be the old sea wall. Usually the sand covers most of these rocks and only two of the largest stick up thru the sand. We noticed the opposite further down the Boca, where the "ruins" are, in these pictures you can see the sand is covering up almost all the ruins, usually there are big pools, and you can see these walls much higher above the sand.

Mike took a long walk last week up forwards Punta Bikini and there he noticed a change in the sand as well. The sand had been washed away and left lots of rocks, so many that being barefoot he could not walk as far as planned. So interesting the ebb and flow of the ocean and the shore, so nice to be living such a simple life, that we get to notice stuff like this.

Back to the high tides, we had some empty sand bags, so we decided to fill them and put infront of the gate, the fishermen came over to help us, Fernando, Raphael and Mike secured our courtyard.

We heard rain in the night, and when we woke up, we found this...

We did get ocean (the spoon is evidence) but actually half of this water is from rain coming off our roof and the neighbors. After we got some of the water swept out, we saw there was much sand that had come in on the tide, it was a bit of a mess, but nothing a little drying time and sweeping wouldn't cure! We talked to Fernando, and he said they would do more sandbags, and maybe two more, and we would be good.

The morning high tide came close, but didn't bring in any water or debris.

We filled a couple more bigger sandbags and woke up this morning to dry courtyard! (Last nights high tide was 10:30ish) Yippee!

So, the moral of this story is...be prepared and know your local fishermen, and you'll be alright. I gave up being concerned with a little sand in the house, or in the yard, I mean we did choose to live on the beach. These tides happen once a year, and now we know. Our friends will look out for us, and tell us when to worry and when not to. People put up with a lot from the weather, some of it you can change, and some not. We decided we didn't want to live in the cold and snow anymore, so now we don't. No more shoveling snow, but maybe once a year we shovel some sand into sandbags...I still say it's a great trade.

So, stay tuned, our adventure continues!

Meat Market, Ramadas and High Tides

I'm finding it difficult to fill blog posts, and with the heat wave that has been upon us (summer) we have been finding it hard to get motivated. Where the weather isn't all that different from what we have lived in before (82-88F), we don't have AC in our little beach house, and we've noticed the difference. I also noticed that the sun has been situated in a different point in the sky, and our little bit of shade on the side has been even smaller.  We tied a bed sheet up one day for shade, and that worked, now we bought a tarp and have a bigger section of shade, so our shell area is ready for some crafts, but today I'll share some old pictures.

Charapoto Meat Market

I mentioned not long ago the Meat section of the market, well the other Sunday we went with a neighbor who shops there regularly and we got a tour. She knew right where the pork was, vs the beef, and we got quite an experience. We didn't buy anything here, I wouldn't know what to ask for, but I did find beautiful ground beef in town at the Mini Mart, so lean and pretty, probably 3-4% grasa (fat) found bacon at the same time and we had bacon cheeseburgers...slice of heaven from the States.

Ramadas

These are privately built shade structures, or Ramadas. The families who built them keep them up and use them during the day for shade while fixing fishing nets, or to wait for the fishermen. On the weekends the wood structures are used as kitchens, and the women sell empanadas or ceviche out of them. These caught my eye when they got fresh new paint for Carnavale, some of the people who live across the street from them don't like them, they'd rather have unobstructed views, but I kinda like them. Every couple of years, the city, or province will send crews in to tear them all down, especially if they've been neglected, but I'd say these are in good shape and staying awhile.

High Tide

Mike finds this tide chart, and posts it on the Resident Facebook page every week, it's a very nice way to quickly glance and know what time the daily walk will be. This week it's been with morning coffee, last week it was with Happy hour and sunset. There have been some rumblings about the high tide, and just how high they are supposed to be this weekend, from the chart I can see that the high tide will be higher than sea level by 2.6 meters (slightly over 8ft). Now that's not wave height, we aren't calling for big waves, that's just water lapping on the shore coming up the beach 8ft more than usual. The fishermen have moved their boats to higher ground, but no one has given us any warnings, and yesterday we fared just fine, so we are not worried.

This is our friend Keith and Beckys house, two years ago when there was an extremely high tide. Usually they park their car in here, and let fishermen use the shade for fixing nets, on this day it was a piscina (swimming pool).

And this is when they not only had high tides, but big waves, 12 foot tall this wave, glad I don't live this close to the ocean! Half the day, everyday this house is over the water, only at low tide is there any beach in front of this house. The fishermen jokingly tell Keith they will install two outboard motors if he doesn't feel safe...everyone here is living their own adventure!

High tides or not, it's another beautiful day on the coast of Ecuador, today will be shell sorting and crafting under our new shade, and probably Happy hour and sunset with friends. Life does NOT suck, so stay tuned...our adventure continues!

An unfortunate event

Our little community had an unfortunate event happen last week. I'm writing about it here, well...because it is a part of life no matter where one lives. One of our neighbors was broken into, and held captive. The word for it is Home Invasion, but in doing research, I found that not all States in the US use this term. 

Robbery seems to be the one used, but it certainly doesn't have the same ring does it? Burglary is when a theft occurs and no one is home, whatever you call it, by the statistics above, it's alarming.

What happened here, we all believe to be an "inside" job, the house was recently built with many many workers and delivery people in and out for months. The bandits had some knowledge of the homes interior layout and also knew that with the electric fence, they would have to sneak in while the occupants were home. The house was still having some tweaks worked out, and on this day had two electricians working. One electrician went out to his truck and when he was coming back in the bandit put a gun (or believed to be a gun) to his back, and voila! They were in! The two workers and the owner were tied up with duct tape while the bandits ransacked the house. Some kicks to the ribs to gain info, but other than that everybody was unharmed. This happened between 10-12noon.

We have a couple expat neighbors who are looking into gun ownership, and another looking into alarm sirens with panic buttons. But if one goes to take the trash out, and gets caught, how good is your panic button or gun if you can't get to it? The best thing for us (as outsiders) is to blend in as much as possible. We need to be careful how much we flash our wealth, because we DO have wealth. Even if we are on fixed incomes, we have more than the bandits do! Be smart when hiring workmen, maybe get local recommendations, and of course be part of the community. Not just the expat community, but the REAL COMMUNITY. 

Our neighbors, the fishermen and the store owners who live near us, are our community. If I walk to town without Mike, they all want to know where he is, and is he ok? Likewise when he goes on errands. Does this mean we are safe from theft, no way, but we have more eyes on us, and that is a good thing.

It was difficult to get stats on Home Invasion, one website said 8000 per day in North America, another report stated that was a ridiculous number, and it was more like 4000+ in US if you were to use the above number of 1 every 15 seconds. (I confess I have not done the math) I know that I've been stolen from in California, both home and vehicle, purse snatched in New York, broken into in North Carolina, and had a theft here in Ecuador. Wherever there are people, there are problems...guess we better just get used to it, be prepared and keep our chins up, otherwise life would be miserable.

So, stay tuned loved ones, the adventure continues, cautiously, but it definatly continues!!

Indoor and outdoor living space

This post is for the friends and family. Pictures of our little beach house, inside and inside the courtyard, usually we only take pictures of the sunset, or the dogs. When we moved in, we were given a paint allowance from the landlord, we bought 4 gallons, at $6 a piece, some of the locals said to dilute it, but we used it full strength, and it covered beautifully. I painted both the living room and bathroom the turquoise color, and I need to get one more gallon to finish the living room. It's one of the main colors they use on the boats, we love it.

Taken from right inside the front door, looking left.

We recently moved the fridge into the other room, and brought in the table Manuel made for us. Really opens this area, and love having more work space.

Slowly getting the TV room painted, and figuring out what kind of decorations for the master. The master is painted two shades of yellow, and has skylights, so it's very light and airy, one of our favorite rooms.

Outdoors is getting prettied up too. Have been bringing the plants around to the front, testing who likes the salt and wind, and who doesn't. A lot of the plants did not like the move from house to house back in December, so I've been nursing them, and everyone is doing great. I really want to get to the plant place, but there is a pesky budget to stick to, can't do it all this month...

Manuel is working this week and next at the Boca house, then he will come see what projects we have for him. On the list is dog house for outside the fence for Dulce/Ariel, finish the fence, build another couple tables, one for our bar stools and umbrella, and then a work table for our shells. I also found these pictures to show him, so we have some nice big planters for our plants, after we get to Sosote.

Went to pay our utilities at Joffreys the other day, and he told us the landlord was planning on building a roof over the side yard with this months rent. We learned the word for roof, techo and also the word for gutter, canalon. Some time ago we bought spray paint for the pieces of sectional sofa that were too big for the house, and they are weathering quite well outside ( they'll go under the roof, after its built).  The spray paint kinda "scotch guarded" them, we'd done it before with success, so why not try here? So many possibilities, little by little, poco y poco, our little beach house is coming along. We love it, and plan to be here a good long time. So stay tuned, the adventure continues...