Castles in the Sand

Sometime earlier this week a notice showed up on Facebook advertising a sand sculpture event in Crucita Boca, it said it was to take place Friday at 9am, so we waited. Friday morning low tide was at 8 and we walked down to see what we could see from across the river, not much. A couple piles of sand and the tents being put up was all we could see. A little before 11am, I contacted our friends at Casa WF who got out the binoculars, but said they couldn't see any sculptures as there were too many bystanders, so at least there was good turnout. I found out from Facebook that one of the expats in San Clemente was on his way back on his bike, so I knew there were pictures to be seen.

John McDonald did do a blog post about it, but his pictures were too large for me to share with you here, but this morning, again on Facebook, PortoViejo tourism posted these.

They had a stage with music, and dancers of Manabi, and quite the shindig from what I hear.  They only had til about 4 when high tide would probably take all this away, but til then fun was had!

The flyer had said there would be two sculptures, but I guess they had enough sand for more, not sure who was working on them, but they did a good job.

Casa WF in the background, across the river.

And the favorite of the day was this one, with bonus water and greenery. This week has been a holiday, with kids out of school, so the tourism department picked a good day for it. It was a great crowd.

Growing up at the beach in Southern California, I've seen some sand sculptures, this brought back some fond, although faint memories. It's true, you can take the girl from the beach, but not the beach from the girl...and here I am, back at the beach. Stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Today's the day

Today is Carnavale, we were warned that it was to be crazy insane. We did loose power Monday midnight and it came on about noon, losing power meant loosing the floor fan, but other than that we weren't too bothered, coffee made on the gas stove, no worries. Flexible. Sunday We walked thru town and down the Malecon towards the old stomping ground, San Alejo, that WAS crazy insane. So glad we don't live there anymore, life would REALLY have been disrupted. The tide turns out to be high in the afternoon, so after the beach is gone, the partiers party on the Malecon. Bus traffic had to be diverted and getting a car thru is very slow going.

So many vendors, both food and jewelry/clothing. Beer tents, shaved ice carts and grill carts roaming the Malecon, activity everywhere. Car stereos competing with each other, honking horns and so much whistling. 

We were able to take our coffee at low tide this morning and see the beach as it was just waking up. It wasn't until noon yesterday that the beach infront of our house got full. Today will be another big beach day, and then tomorrow it should be back to normal. (Being our first, we will have to wait and see)

Tents at Crucita, across the Boca (mouth of the river)

Tents on the stretch of beach between the Boca and San Jacinto, never seen this many tents in this area before.

CottonCandy vendor on the beach out in front of our house, not something you see everyday...

The fishermen built a restaurant, that turned out to be great! Shrimp ceviche to days in a row, the yummiest I've ever had, really! Had drinks the other night with them, after the kitchen closed, Ramon, Fernando and Raphael are the fishermen we see everyday, and now we know the wives too. Very good neighbors! Vecino Bueno! 

Before and after its paint job, and our view from inside looking out, at our house.

Went into town last night, none of my pictures turned out tho, so we will try it again tonight. There was a bandstand set up, and I heard the band start around 10pm, but it wasn't loud enough to keep us awake, and once Mike woke up at 2am, he said it was quiet. San Jacinto just turns out to be a quieter, more tranquil kind of party. If you want wall to wall bodies, so loud your ears (almost) bleed, and paint/foam fights, go to San Clemente, they have the crazy.

So, like I said, since this is our first Carnavale, we have to wait and see, can't take anyone's word for how it will be, since we are all wired so differently. So far, if we want crazy we know where to find it. But stay tuned, because the adventure continues!

Walking the beach with "our dog". 

[2014-06-25] Crucita Parade

Here is the Parade video Paige talked about in an earlier post.

At the Beach

We're on the Beach at Crucita! : D

Some random stuff

Looking through my camera roll I found some misc pictures, and thought I'd share.

One of our first Ecuador coast sunsets, taken from the upstairs porch. There are bats that start flying around at dusk, can hardly tell they aren't birds, but the make a strange little sound. 

This is a cheese vendor in Porto Viejo, you can barely see the scale hanging on the blue wall. Someone will walk up, ask for a taste, he cuts a slice, they say yay or nay, if yay then he measures out a hunk, puts it in a plastic bag and off they go. ( he uses the plastic bag as a glove, so never touches your cheese). Asked Wolf about the seasoning, he said it was a spice and peanut mixture that you dip the cheese in.

The beautiful "main road" in Crucita, that goes to Manta to the south, and Porto Viejo to the Northeast. We've been very impressed with the roads, I was expecting much less.

This is TodoHogar, looks to be like Target in the States. It's in the mall where Supermaxi is in Porto Viejo, most likely where we will buy ourselves a coffeemaker, since the percolater at the rental house decided not to perk. This picture is from google, but I'll take some when we are there and share another day.

Puppies on the porch, and yes Veronica is wearing a sundress. Looks like the bed we brought in the suitcase is a tad small for them both, maybe we'll find another at the home goods store. As you may have noticed, Shadrach loves having his picture taken, Veronica not so much. Awww, nap time.

These next ones are our mottos for life. 

Today is a new adventure, stay tuned to see what happens next. Hasta mañana!

On the Beach

Saturday outing

Mike had walked a couple times down to the beach, and around "town" to get the lay of the land, while I was still wheelchair bound. Yesterday being in the clear to walk, we headed down early to see the sights, and will share them with you. If you head left out our gate, in about 4 minutes ( longer if you're learning to walk again after a month ) you reach our beach, and Malecon (boardwalk).

These (above) were taken on a week day evening, but yesterday being Saturday...

These little tents were set up, and I saw a man with a big stack of plastic chairs go around putting one or two chairs in or in front of each tent. In a blog I read once that these were for rent, and usually came with lunch delivered from one of the restaurants, but I'm not sure if that is the case here. We got down there about 10am, and watched as people would get off the bus to set up little shops on the sidewalk.

This vendor had a big block of ice, that he shaved or chipped to make slushies, with his flavored syrup. We continued to walk and stop to watch for about an hour before we decided to eat.

We had been looking forward to trying ceviche, and local Ecuadorean seafood dishes for months! And were NOT disappointed! Being a Saturday it was a little higher than the weekly lunch special, al muerzo, but worth every penny! ($4.50 instead of $2.50)

We ordered ceviche, and a chicken bistec dish, (which I understood bistec to be "steak" so was interested to see what it would be) it ended up being chicken and potato in a slightly curry flavored broth. It came with a generous helping of rice and plantain fries (think seasoned potato wedges). The ceviche came with plantain chips, which I'd read you crumble on top, the ceviche was GLORIOUS! The plantain chips I can take or leave. The whole meal started with two cheese empanadas, probably from plantain and corn batter, and are not pictured because they were scarfed down too fast! Mikes beer was $1.50 and I had a fresh watermelon juice for $1. We added rice to the ceviche towards the end so we wouldn't  waste any of the wonderfully tasty broth, it was an explosion of flavor! Cilantro, fresh tomato, lime, onion....yummmm! Even at 7 am it makes my mouth water!

The plantain wedges, and rounds. 

Another of the ceviche, because it was that good! On the walk back we took pictures of the sandwich boards outside the other restaurants, so we could translate the specials and plan our next outing. We are finding they sometimes make up words, or our Google translator has never been to Ecuador, one special translated to "cardboard tray"...hmmm no thanks. About halfway down the Malecon we grabbed a " tuk tuk " back to the house, it was $1.

What an excellent day! So glad I'm able to get out and about, makes such a difference. This was more what I had envisioned, but don't get me wrong, lazy days in the hammock were good too! Stay tuned, the Ecuador adventure continues!

Questions from readers

This morning I will answer some questions I've received from readers. Many questions refer to other Americans or Expats; An expatriate (sometimes shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person's upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex ("out of") and patria ("country, fatherland"). Here in South America they call us Gringos, and because the locals know we have more money than they do, sometimes will charge us more, they call this "gringo tax". When one becomes aware of this, they know to haggle price BEFORE services are rendered, such as for a taxi or labor. It doesn't happen so much for food, not at restaurants, but maybe at the street vendors. You just need to remember from one to the next how much you paid, and if the price seems high, tell them " it's too much" and apparently they'll come down. When I'm walking we will get to do more of this, so far all our eating out has been with our guides.

Speaking of guides, our Quito driver, Jose called last night to check on us, that was nice. And Wolf is making me a doctor appointment, someone he went to when he had broken bones, said the price would be $30-50, including X-rays. Wolf also said the house across the street from him on the hill is for rent, we'll go see it, and find out how much. Just from the little we've seen of Crucita, we've decided we'd like to stay after our rental contract here is up. Which reminds me, I'll post a map, it's been awhile.

Ecuador has Provinces, instead of States. We are in Manabi province, Esmeraldes is the Northern coastal province, and Guayas is the coastal province just to the south of us. But we think with the proximity of Manta (192,000 pop) and Porto Viejo (300,000 pop) this is a pretty good place to be, now it just depends on the weather, but so far it's been glorious! Crucita has approx 15,000 population, of course that doesn't count chickens or dogs.

When in Quito, fellow travelers at breakfast said they had just come from Cuenca (600,000 pop) the third largest city, and said it was full of expats. (Guayaquil 2.2 million pop and Quito 1.6 million pop) I think the reason they gravitate to the larger cities is for the similarities to the States. They probably are not waking up to roosters like we are, or having the milk man walk down the road selling out of his 5 gallon bucket. The roads are all paved, or at least cobble stone, and the choices for eating and shopping are huge in comparison. But that is one of the reasons we chose this place, was how different from the States it is. We were looking for a different life, and boy have we found it! 

The peritos, or doggies (as Wolf calls them) are enjoying themselves. Shadrach loves a nap in the hammock, and Veronica is enjoying the warm weather. 

One last item, (this post has gotten long) we are on the west coast, but in the Eastern time zone. Of course they are not on Daylight saving time, so it's one hour different this time of year. So, there you have it. I'm posting some links to some blogs you might enjoy, because of our young age, We won't encounter all the things that are important to some of you, but I will post my medical experiences as they happen with the broken ankle. 

http://johnandmarylivingitupinecuador.wordpress.com/author/johnandmarylivingitupinecuador/

http://clarkeandbrenda.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&max-results=50

http://nanlevin.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/cafe-de-pacoche/

Hope these work, I'm such a novice at cut/pasting. Buenos Dias!

Crucita Day ONE - Beachfront

Paige is still broken and the roads are too rough to get her near the beach except by car so I decided to go for a walk and see what I can see. There are a few small grocery stores, a bunch of restaurants, a Pharmacy, a Veterinarian, Bakery and an amazing beachfront! I'm sure there is much more that we will discover. Wolf knows of a good Doctor that will look at Paige's leg for $20 to $40. Hopefully there is some walking in her near future. Until then we'll get to know our cute place. Stay tuned, we'll do a video tour of the house today.

Beach life

So we made it to the coast! Had our Quito guide, Jose pick us up at the hotel at noon on Sunday, we toured another area then headed to the airport. Where Delta charged us $200 per dog, and $75 for over weight baggage, our new favorite airline Avianca charged $20 per dog, and $20 for over weight. The plane was late, but we didn't even notice, we were enjoying people watching. We got preferential treatment, even upgraded to first class, we've decided to take the wheelchair and "boot" every time we fly :)

The Manta airport is tiny, but beautiful. Our Crucita host, Wolf told us it used to be an United States Air Force facility. Since we were late, we all decided to skip his offer of the grocery store, and opted to get "home " and unpack. The house did not disappoint, true to the online pictures ( something people worried about) the only thing was the stairs. I knew it had stairs, but they do prove difficult with crutches, I've since decided to "crab walk", and that works.

This morning we awoke to roosters, had coffee on the deck and enjoyed watching the world wake up. Wolf came at 9am to take us to breakfast, then the grocery store in Porto Viejo (30 min away)

The juice is passion fruit, the tin is a corn frittata, the "blob" in front is plantain "bread" filled with cheese ( it was our favorite) the brown bread was made from yucca and filled with fish, mild and very tasty. And the beige bread was also made from yucca, it was so moist inside I thought it too was filled with cheese, but Wolf said no. All this for 3 with enough for leftovers was $11. 

The grocery store was big like American stores, actually played American music. We bought the staples, and some meat and fruit to get us by ( in case we don't want to go anywhere tomorrow) spent $111 for way more bags than we'd get in the States. Stopped at the beer guy on the way home, turned in a case of empties ( from previous renter) and got a new case of 22oz bottles for $13.

When we got home we met the neighbor, Carlos. He's the one with the roosters, and it turns out he fights them. Offered to take us to a cock fight, they are held on Saturdays...hmmm that does sound adventurous! Also drove thru the town of Crucita, found the bakery ( Mike will go in the morning ) the farmicia (drug store) and the recommended market and restaurants. Only half of our street is paved, so it may be a week before we get to the beach. (Wheelchair and crutches) it's been 3 weeks since the break.

Weather is beautiful, probably 80 and sunny, with a nice breeze. I'm writing this from the hammock and Mike is starting the grill for the chorizo and chicken. Awww, life is good in Ecuador! Stay tuned, the adventure continues! Buenos tardes!

 

Beach house

Wanted to show you pictures of the beach house in Crucita where we will start our coastal living adventure.

Fully fenced, double lot, there is a doggie door that leads to this tree area. Houses on stilts give living quarters view of the ocean, and provide shaded outdoor space, brilliant!

Two bedroom, living, dining, kitchen, bath, laundry ( note the bikes we can use) rent is $500 with all utilities combined $145 per month. (I can't even pay one utility for that in NC!)

 

The beach is a 4 minute walk down the road, Crucita is known for fishing,shrimping and paragliding. Fisherman dot the ocean, and boats line the shore.