Sunday dinner

Sunday started out to be cleaning day, but ended up with sunbathing and hammock. Did do two loads of laundry, but the hammock called, and I listened.

Wolf came to get us in the early afternoon to tour a couple of houses for rent in his neighborhood. One is owned by an Ecuadorean police officer, I think he lives in Quito, it was one and half bedrooms, (I say this because you could literally only fit a twin bed), it was new construction, modern in design, had a swimming pool, but no HOT water...anywhere, mmmm probably not for us. The other one was also newer construction, 2bed, 2bath, modern in design, 5 A/C units ( so you only cool the room you're using) had a dishwasher, but only a hot plate...hmmm. Had several outdoor areas, but no shade structures, that seemed strange. I like the sun, but we certainly need shade! The owner was asking $800 per month, way out of our budget, ( we have the move to pay for) but Wolf said he was having a hard time renting it (duh) and suggested we "fight for a better price", which I tried to do via email,  but owner was sticking to his guns, so we walk away. Too bad, Wolf said he would really like to have us as neighbors, which is nice.

We also have our Visa helper, Fernando in Manta who sent us an apartment for rent listing, so I've got an email in to him, asking for a tour of some rentals in our price range when we meet up to get the Visa application started. Now that I'm walking,( no more crutch even!) and can get on and off the bus, we will make a trip to Manta to meet with Fernando, maybe this week. We'll ask Wolf if he knows of any others, and I'll email a fellow blogger who lives in San Clemente and see if she knows of anything.

After our tour with Wolf, we decided to head down to the Malecon for an early dinner. The place was jumping! Young people cruising, just like in the States, car music blasting, showing off their "souped up" cars, flirting, drinking cervezas, having a good time before the week starts again. We picked a new restaurant because the group of young adults across the way had some good music playing, we enjoyed watching the crowd. It's normal here for a group of men to buy one or two bottles of beer and pass it around, some had glasses, but I guess it never gets hot that way. As we watched we noticed the neighbor kid join them, guess we did pick the right table.

Dinner was shrimp ceviche and shrimp and rice. We added some of the rice to the ceviche again to soak up all the good broth. A couple cervezas and an ice cream on the way home, the day was another success!

This morning we had a coffee pot malfunction, guess we need to buy one after all. We had to do camp coffee on the stove, and strain it, it works in a pinch, but I don't want to do it everyday. Washing the sheets and towels, and will mop the floors, cleaning still has to get done, even if the hammock calls. Monday is trash day, and I can smell smoke, the locals burn a lot of their garbage, it's different but not so bad. We also had the water guy come, swapped out 4 empty bottles for full ones,  5 gallon bottles, $1 each. 

Started getting hot upstairs, so I suggested we make breakfast in the downstairs kitchen, this is what we came up with, some skillet potatoes and peppers, half a beef empanada,  ripe avocado and tomato, Sliced oranges and juice.

A confession...since eating all the above breakfast, I'm laying in the hammock, as I write this. But! Sheets are in the wash, and I will go mop the floors, but maybe...mañana? Haha!! The adventure continues, some days slower than others. Buenos tardes!