Life by the ocean

The Ocean is jefe! We say that to our fishermen friends and they laugh, because THEY know. With the Super moon, came Super high tides, the fishermen moved their boats, and we braced for water. It's a good thing we fortified our gate, as the water would have pushed it open for sure, but so far just a little sand and water in the patio, nothing too bad. Can't say it isn't somewhat exciting living here...

But, with that being said, we have decided to move. More to come on that later... For now enjoy these photos having to do with life on the ocean, Volunteer firemen training session, what a lovely place for it!

Maybe a little warm in all that gear, but living the life right?!

A game during Low tide on the holiday weekend, this happens often.

A good days catch, a board the Robinson boat.

Jorge often goes out on bigger boats, and this is what you find out in deeper water, yikes!

Our pretty mermaids, Domenica and mom, Viviana Romero Loor

A fun view from the other side of our cove, looking north towards our house. The cement with blue painted columns is the Navy station.

Last nights sunset, with high tide roaring past our fence. We will have been in this beach house for two years next month, wow time flies when you're having fun! We will close this chapter and move on to our "living in town" chapter. We have decided to rent an apartment next door to the Panaderia, the rent including utilities is $130 a month. The landlord Rodolfo is putting a fresh coat of paint, and re-tiling the kitchen, we will move slowly between the 1-15th. Mike wants to paint a mural in the outdoor area, and we can organize as we move in. It will be bitter sweet leaving this house, luckily we know the friendships we have made will move with us but I will miss hearing the fishermen laugh and talk as they work the nets....

Life is good by the ocean, so Stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Lakefront property...again

Sometimes as often as once a month, the ocean has an extremely high tide, and water gets trapped in front of our house. The high tides last a couple of days, and then it's back to normal.

We used to have to just grin and bear it, and get wet. Wade thru the lake, but when my mom and aunt visited and THEY had to wade thru the lake...well we needed an alternate route. Mom and aunt didnt mind, they chocked it up to living on the beach in Ecuador, but other visitors may not want to wade thru knee high water to get to my house.

Recently we needed work on our water pump, and decided that if the pump was moved, we could use the little walkway between houses as an alternate route if needed. So, we had Johnny move the pump and hose, and added an outlet for our fishermen friends to use. (all for $50 I might add)

So, now we have an emergency walkway, need a gate build, and maybe a step stool to get over the wall, but we can get to the street without getting wet.

So many things in the works, can't wait to share everything with you. So, 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!

Roll Tide!

Living in the South, southern United States, that is, I've heard this phrase many times. Being observant of my surroundings, but not being a "sports person" I knew this to be about a college athletics team, though now I'm not even sure what school. But this post is not about sports, but about tides. Here's what Wikipedia says...

Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth.

Some shorelines experience two almost equal high tides and two low tides each day, called a semi-diurnal tide. Some locations experience only one high and one low tide each day, called a diurnal tide. Some locations experience two uneven tides a day, or sometimes one high and one low each day; this is called a mixed tide. The times and amplitude of the tides at a locale are influenced by the alignment of the Sun and Moon, by the pattern of tides in the deep ocean, by the amphidromicsystems of the oceans, and by the shape of the coastline and near-shore.

I got lots of information in my research, lots of it "over my head" so I decided not to regurgitate it here, not that I didn't think yall would understand, but I simply didn't want to wade thru it. What I really wanted to know was how much water is moved during the tides, I found out that the least amount of water displaced is 1.5 feet, but the highest on record is 17 meters, or 56 FEET! That's ALOT OF WATER, here are some pictures, because aren't they worth a thousand words?

OUR BEACH loses about 30 feet of shore during high tide, it comes right up to the rocks of the sea wall, and is about 5 ft deep. You've seen this next picture in another post, but it does show how low tide gets, and this isn't even the lowest.

And sunset the other night, shows the ocean right at the rocks. As a matter of fact, you can't walk on that side of the road without getting splashed. We've seen tourists having their picture taken and get splashed, hilarious, as long as it doesn't happen to me...

So, there you have it, a little snippet on the ebb and flow of tides. Speaking of, it's about low tide now, so I better get some sunscreen and get to walking. Stay tuned, the adventure continues, one low tide at a time.