Welcome back everyone to another slice of life, here on the Pacific Costa 🙂 As you’ve probably now realised, my container has finally arrived in Ecuador & I’ll tell you how that all went a little later on.

The last edition was all about my recent trip to Panama, so let’s pick up the story with me flying back into Guayaquil last month. Before I left, I submitted a document request form with the Ministerio to get back important papers that I may well need in the future. Im sure it would be harder the longer its left – who knows what complications archiving could bring to the system! To this day, no one knows who invented the fire hydrant because the records were lost in a fire & that wasn’t going to happen to me. I was promised they would be ready for my collection in 3 days & I confirmed the date I would return from Panama. Thus, a full seven days later I make my way back to the counter, unsure of whether I should be optimistic or not with my expectations. It’s always the same guy on desk twelve & Gustavo clearly takes pride in his specialist area. We’ve chatted before, so he recognises me & accepts my receipt as explanation for today’s visit. He turns & heads into a back office behind the counter, absentmindedly leaving the door open, his every action now on view. Hands on hips he scans a stack of roughly 20 archive boxes (2 per month), settling on 1^st column, 2^nd row, he heaves & humps to extract the box labelled May #2 & then flipping the lid, sifted through until he came to my file, leafing through the contents as he brings it out to the counter……..

“what documents do you want?”,

“In all honesty, I don’t know what documents are in there, so lets just say, everything that you don’t need to keep for your records”.

“we need everything!”,

“urhm……”. Several painfully slow seconds of unwavering eye contact later he smiles & starts again to leaf through the file. He pulls out all the original documents & hands them to me in exchange for my passport. I am to go & find one of the little cabin huts outside & get these documents photocopied, return the copies to him such that the file is complete in document count & I can keep the originals. These turn out to be the deeds to my property & several other vaguely important papers, so it needed to be done, I just don’t see why they feel it is a 3 day service, or how they consider it a service at all. I understand I am never going to change this though, so I am the one who is changing & simply going with the flow.

The Grand Bug’n’Pest Hotel

Its been nearly two months since I’ve given you an update on the house – things have definitely moved on & it has begun to emerge out of the ground! The thing is, people notice when things start to emerge, especially when its big stuff. So it came about that the developer contacted me again, more formally, expressing grave concerns about my activities. Apparently it is forbidden to enter the site with any vehicle exceeding 6 ton. My concrete trucks are twice that fully laden, but I stressed I was unaware of the ‘rule’. I wasn’t just feigning ignorance of this, so I asked where this rule was written. “you should have signed a document when you bought the land”.

“Surely as you were there to sign at the exchange, you no doubt noticed I was absent & that my attorney signed on my behalf – did you present this document to him? No? Well then you sir, are shit out of luck on that one!”

As previously, I am of course repairing the road & will continue to do so…so that issue went away, but next up was the apparent size of the building….

“businesses are strictly prohibited on this development, you are not allowed to build a hotel!”

It took a while, but after he accepted this is solely a private residence, that I intend to live there & will not (technically) be running a business, the height became an issue. Once again all his supporting documentation was absent, however, if he had thought to have written a document for me to sign he would have wanted it to say; that only one floor above ground floor is permitted. I understand his point & even agree with it, as the concern would be that if everyone just built as high as they wanted, they would block the views of others, so any obscured property would then be built even higher….& so on. I have planning permission from the local authority, so these are only “his rules” we are talking about here. So it was almost a throwaway cheap shot to claim a technicality, that specifically, I will only have the single floor above my ground floor, with the basement being quite literally, below ground (or at least the highest point of my land). Amicably enough he conceded the point & is comfortable he can now defend the point to any future constructor. He is though, now rewriting his terms & conditions 🙂

Hi Hoooo

With all the gang in their new yellow wellies, we made short work of the external section of concrete floor remaining at basement level. We already had the columns in place, so it was pretty straight forward to build up the walls with double skin block work, but first we built the water tank. At 2m x 3m x 2m, it will hold just over 3000 gallons or 12000 litres, so I should be fine in a drought for a few days at least according to most American websites I’ve researched. I did note though that the state of Philadelphia allows for a usage of 101.5 gallons per person per day. This includes 2.5 gallons for brushing teeth & rinsing face, which feels both excessive & wasteful to me, so I was relieved to see they suggested the option to reduce this consumption by turning off the tap during the actual brushing phase – That’s some revolutionary forward thinking right there!

With the water tank rendered & tiled to prevent leaks, we got on with building the walls that won’t have doors or windows. Once the walls were built, we needed to create a mold above, into which we could pour the concrete for the next floor. You’d be surprised if I told you pre-formed products were available for this task here & I would’ve been lying if I said they were, so it’s the old fashioned way with wooden shutters. These then have to be supported, which when you consider this slab would require 50 tonnes of concrete to fill the whole floor, the boards have to be really well supported. Im sure you will have seen youbeenframedtube clips of above-ground, plastic swimming pools bursting when an integral piece of the frame is disturbed, so you can imagine the carnage that would result from the shuttering collapsing & that volume of liquid concrete cascading down the mountain like a gray avalanche, turning everything in its path into a “Medusa woz ‘ere” epitaph. The solution in Ecuador then is to use bamboo & at $2.50 for a 6m length by about 5” thick, it’s just the job. As strong as it is though, 50 tonnes takes a lot of holding up, so we used just under 600 (300 cut in half) to support the ground floor pour.

I only bought the one concrete float with me & as they don’t exist here, I managed to bring back two more from Panama, which meant the “Maestro’s” could get to grips with learning how to properly trowel a poured concrete floor. They were keen to learn & armed with the right tool, quickly proficient, so now they are officially their trowels & I have a greater skilled workforce at my disposal – win win!

Once the shuttering was complete, it was time to install the steelwork that binds the concrete together & provides the tensile strength concrete alone does not possess. Between each vertical column we formed a horizontal beam that connects each frame together, but by design, is poured at the same time as the rest of the floor such that the beams are now integral to the floor & thus far stronger than a floor poured on top of a beam. This means the floor appears to be 18” thick, though as this isn’t a multi-storey car park, the rest of the floor that isn’t a beam, is only 8” thick….. which is still over twice the thickness of most local floors! To make this all function in the way it’s engineered, all the steel must be welded together. To put that into some context, a beam/column is comprised of 4 bars that run the full length (3m for columns, 5m for beams), square collars are bent around the long bars to form a box to stop them spreading under stress & there are 15 collars per linear meter. Each collar must be welded at all four corners, as well as at every point it overlaps a previous bar or a beam that connects through a column. There are 18 columns & 24 beams per floor, with all beams & columns welded to the mesh sheets that are then laid over the top. It took 4 welders two whole days to complete & as they are the only welders in town, they can price accordingly. They were perhaps not to know I have my own welding equipment in the container, so they went ahead & priced themselves out of the next floors work in spite of me advising them to price with a view to a continued working relationship. Shame, but business sense here is somewhat short sighted as I’ve said in previous posts. I needed them this time & I would’ve given them the work again for ease, but they wanted more than kissing on a first date, so there aint gon be no second.

With the welding done it was an easy pour & with four pours under our belt now, it appears almost effortless & I am very pleased with the results. In the same week, we managed to set up & pour the columns & to make use of the premixed concrete & pump, I ordered enough to fill the retaining wall so we can begin the soil spreading from the upper level, to create the right levels everywhere…or at least we will when it stops raining for more than a day or two…..

We are now in the middle of building up the ground floor walls, stripping the formwork from below ready to re-use to form the first floor. Unfortunately the basement is only 2.2m high, so with the ground floor at a far more expansive 3m, I do need to replace the bamboo, but at least I can re-use those again for the first floor as that’s back to a more standard 2.4m. As I’ve said before, I intend to clad the outside of the house with the planks, but I am open to suggestions as to what I do with 600 lengths of bamboo that doesn’t require the use of a lubricant! 😉  

Walking around inside Im starting to get a feel for what its going to be like in a few more months & I have to concede, I completely get why people think it’s a hotel, albeit bijoux. With ground & first, its a fairly spacious 3 bedroom house, but throw in the basement & now it’s a fairly large 6 bed, with even the ubiquitous “box room” coming in at a generous 3m x 4m. Im aware Im about to rationalise here, but I stand by its size…& here’s why:

Its always nice to be able to host guests & when those guests are travelling from afar & possibly ‘en group’, its always better to be together rather than people spread across multiple venues

I don’t expect this to be my final destination, so in order to maximise my resale/rental potential, I have to cater to what the local nouveaux riche demand & that seems to be, the greater number of people it can sleep, the better. Many of the large properties we looked at for retreat venues state “sleeps 18” & none of those had more than 5 bedrooms

These 5 bed properties, which granted are on the beach, rent out at roughly $5k a month & up to $2k a week during festival weekends. I fully intend to travel nationally as well as much of the rest of this continent, so whilst I may rattle around in the place on my own, it should earn me nicely whenever I’m away. Hell I could move back to my place on the beach I live in now & still cream it.

But of course I want to live in it. I have designed it for how I imagine I want to live. I have the opportunity, the skill set  & the resources, to turn that aspiration into a reality, so why not?! I could’ve tried a small test run, but I’d still have to take the bigger plunge at some point, so if I’m gonna fail, its better to find out sooner when I can still do something about it. So in short, simply because I could! 🙂

Current Situation

Ive had electricity on site for about 3 months now, with mostly uninterrupted service, so Im pleased. I hadn’t seen a bill, but its not like Id really been looking for one, its been a few years since bills landed on our mats, but things have yet to develop much in the way of automation here. They come & read the meter, then (possibly a different person), returns with all the paper invoices, no envelopes, just that thin dot-matrix paper payslips used to come on. He then stuffs these in a fence or a hole in a tree or sometimes just left on the floor somewhere near where the meter is. When one eventually finds ones bill, you take it to their office in town & pay in cash – archaic, flawed, but simple enough. My builder found the second one & proudly handed me a sodden clump of once blue paper. It wasn’t easy to tell with any certainty, but the amount looked like $51.70 – I almost fainted! Of course we are in construction & we’ve had a lot of welding, but until recently the only power tool was my battery drill, so I couldn’t see where the cost had arisen. I felt a wave of impending nausea rise as I imagined the meter spinning out of control when I plugged in all my UK bought toys. I headed for their office. The young lady behind the desk always manages to be calming somehow & as she slowly took me through the soggy text, it was clear I needn’t have worried – $50 one-time fee for the meter (the install is free, but you have to buy the kit) & $1.70 for 2 months usage. Now that’s a lot more like it!  Water on the other hand is a bit more expensive because that’s supplied by the developer via a pump from the river. It’s a $5 a month standing charge, for which you get 12 cubic meters, or just over 3000 gallons included & then it’s a few cents a gallon after that. The detail oriented amongst you will appreciate the volumetric symmetry with my storage tank, I know I did 😉

Hissing Sid

No blog would be complete these days without the wildlife section. Im afraid both these are big no no’s for my mother, so Sue, step away from the screen now….

There I was relaxing on the deck one weekend when I hear a gasp & a yelp, quickly followed by Carolina popping her head around the corner asking if I was busy as her hands were clearly full of baby. It took me a moment to understand exactly what I was looking at – a snake had fallen off the roof (hence the perfectly understandable yelp!) & was now taking up position guarding her gate. Channeling my inner Johnny Morris (Steve Irwin for the youngsters ;), I felt the right thing to do was to simply relocate it.

Being the sensible, health & safety conscious chappy I am, I thought it prudent to pop on a pair of gloves. Ive been around snakes before & even shared a house with one many moons ago when I lived with my friend Jonah. Looking back now, a wasted opportunity for learning a few things that could most definitely become of benefit. For example, Ive since found out from Jonah that I may as well have wrapped my hand in lettuce for all the protection those gloves could provide from venomous fangs. Not knowing this then, I approached with an ill-advised nonchalance, reaching my hand out & thinking it would perhaps bend its head forward so I could easily grasp its neck & take it to pastures new. With 4k UHD slowmo cameravision I saw his head begin its lunge towards my outstretched fingers.

With every passing nanosecond the head got closer & yet I could detect no movement from my hand, it hung there awaiting the inevitable, comically seeming to be about to pet ‘El Serpente’. Clearly too late, a signal got through to the hand, leaving it no more than time to clench my fist, at which point the snake hit. There was force from the ‘thud’, but no pain & no prick except for the one with a cotton glove on his hand. No sooner had it landed the Glaswegian Kiss, it spun & disappeared under the floor. I doubt it was poisonous, but I don’t know for certain, so I acknowledge my good fortune & promise to learn from it 🙂

This old chap has set up residence in my lawn & well in spite of some encouragement, he seems determined to stay. He shan’t be getting a travel box when we move to the new place 😉

A Conundrum within an Enigma, all wrapped up in a Big Metal Box

According to the World Maritime Association, it takes 32 days to sail from Bristol to Guayaquil, my container managed this voyage in just 25, suck on that Phillius! As you might imagine, it came as something of a shock to receive a call Thursday afternoon that it was due tomorrow, a week early. I relaxed a little, after all, they of course had to unload first & then there are a limited number of bays for inspections & as such, you have to wait for the call to give you an appointment. So I left it with my agent to reach out to her network & to keep me posted as I set about planning & briefing men & deliveries for the time I would be away.

I have to be honest, I wasn’t sure Id made the best decision regarding my import agent. Visually she reminded me of my visa lawyer & this was in no way a good thing. Discussions with her on the phone were challenging to say the least – she does know a lot of English words, however, she doesn’t appear to know what many of them mean, so uses them in complex arrangements that are impossible to understand. In person, she now speaks Spanish slower with far less confusion 😉 In stark contrast to my preconceived concerns, I got the call Sunday afternoon for a 7am Monday appointment. A quick shower & I got on the bus to the city. Unlike my lawyer who forced me to fend for myself, my agent sent a car to meet me at the bus terminal to take me to the hotel she had already booked. She uses them a lot, so the car is an inclusive service, but even so, it was nice to actually be getting a service.

As you would expect, it’s a laborious process getting into any port & Guayaquil is no exception. It amused me that whilst it enforced hard hat, hi viz & boots, it does not provide or supply them. They are however available for rent at the makeshift shack round the corner, just ask for my cousin Juan… $2 for hat & bib, but $10 for boots, so clearly aimed at the expats. I smiled smugly as I rocked up in my rigger boots, though they were worn as much to reinforce my occupation as construction in order to justify the entry of so many materials, tools & equipment, I was the only one sporting the look :).

Thankfully catching an inner-port-bus, we make our way across to the inspection sheds & walked the line until we found the droid we were looking. Sandra (my agent) had her port employee meet us at the container & pretty soon a team appeared, bolt croppers sought out the security seals & after a moments appreciation for what we were about to receive, the team set about emptying the 2700 cubic feet of “my stuff”. Id be lying if I said my eyes didn’t tear up at the sight of some of my things that Ive longed for. There were quite a number I’d never actually seen before though, which was quite bizarre, like a detached Christmas gift exchange. It got even weirder when having to explain later on what some of them were. Id decided from the beginning to be open & honest with Sandra, if she was to bullshit successfully for my side, she needed to know what she was dealing with from the start. We wait around a while for the inspector, so I run my hands fleetingly over the boxes as I begin the process of making sense out of the labels & numbering. The next bit is more complex than it should be, so let me try to explain the situation we found ourselves in.

There were 101 items in my lockup, there were 187 items in the kitchen delivery, 63 windows, 15 delivered by Stevie, 62 from amazon/ebay & a few other small groupings etc etc. These totaled the 479 items that my shippers packed in the container. When packing however, they put some items together, say a bedside table on the seat of an armchair – makes sense right? So they repeated this practice as appropriate to maximise use of all available space. They took inventory as they went, though as it was handwritten & taken during loading, the list was in no numerical order. International Shipping requires the issuance of Bills of Lading, which must state total number of items. My shippers stated 365 items. Let’s not get into the how’s why’s & wherefor’s of why I was doing this next bit, however, in typing up the inventory onto a spreadsheet & simultaneously translating the contents, I could not make head nor tale of what I was reading. Emails were exchanged, explanations offered & it finally clicked. Where they had, for example, placed bedside table within the armchair, this was now considered 1 item & thus when considering all the items that had been “bundled”, the new total was 365. The fact that the inventory line entry for that item now looked like this:

No15 – 2of5/28of101 – furniture – mueble – used – $0.00

did not make it easy to identify what was what, so you understand my concern as to what we were going to find when we opened the doors. A large square lump is easy to identify, so I quickly found the chair, which did indeed have the bedside table within it & with a round or two of industrial cling film to keep things together. What there was no sign of however, was a label saying #15. It did have a label with 2 of 5, as did the table with 28 of 101, making both now look glaringly like two items, simply bought together in some Seranic embrace.

A quick conflab with Sandra & all may not be so bad. The Customs agent sent a list of the boxes to be checked & these were mostly the many fridges, the TV’s & generally anything electrical, so we were to pull those out & make ready for inspection. A little after 11 the agent appears across the yard. Even from a distance I could sense unease. She was an unfortunate looking, pear shaped women who did not seem confident in her role. I was a little irked she was only wearing trainers & wore no bib or hat – it sets a bad example! I made nice though & left them to it as advised, helping only when called upon, yet watching on from a distance like I’m starring in an old Eastwood movie. Sandra had spoken to higher ups & we had been told we were going to be fine on the tools, but there were concerns about the kitchen, so this is where the focus turned. It didn’t take her long to establish the numbering did not match the paperwork & she took Sandra aside for a chat. If the contents don’t match the bill of lading, customs have the right to refuse its entry & return it to port of origin at cost. Good to know! Taking back my earlier negative objectification of the agent, she did us a solid & said she’d go for a walk whilst we sorted things out. We spent the rest of the day & we couldn’t do it, so everything went back in the container. Rinse, repeat the next day & we are back in the boxes. As we cant make it work, she wants to look in all the boxes, Every. Single. One. A pain in the ass for sure, but aside from pretending most of the brand new stuff was used, I had no real concerns about what they’d find – They accepted the brand new projector screen was old & had simply been sent away to be re-whitened, so it was mostly just about making the numbers work, but I couldn’t help feel they were also taking the opportunity to get a closer look at what might be coming in. For the most part they  were gentle & re-taped up when they were done. Luckily I had translated everything that was in my lockup, so it was easy to explain when they didn’t know what things were. That was until they got to the suitcase I’d used to pack up the last of my clothes, the suits, the over coats, the things I probably no longer needed, but were simply still too good for me to  stop wearing them. The team & the agent were being thorough, in the kitchenware box, they counted each plate & piece of cutlery. So in the case they count the 3 suits, 7 t-shirts, 4 shirts, 1 wash bag….wait, what, a wash…. bag….oooooh noooooo, no I forgot the wash bag! 1 large dildo, brown, 1 medium dildo, pink, 2 small round……… The surrounding crew of stevedores all seemed to draw & hold their breath at the same time. The agent lifts her gaze up from the clipboard briefly & looks me straight in the eye, Im stonefaced to keep from laughing at my own embarrassment & she too is business as usual, but Im sure I detect the slightest crease to the corner of her mouth & the flicker of an eyelid, so I return an almost imperceptible nod. We close the suitcase & move on, though the guys certainly seemed to find something funny for the rest of the day.

We were not so fortunate with the rest of the boxes as many of the general content descriptions the shippers used were not accurate enough ie kitchen part for microwave was beginning to suggest some attempt at deceit. Amazingly the agent gave us another day, so out everything came again, we removed every label we could find & bundled what we needed together to arrive at 365 items, which we managed eventually, so I could finally get back on a bus to head home, knowing my stuff should now all be following on behind me in a matter of days.

The boxes came out again on Friday with Sandra just for the agent to confirm the box count, which again is testament to Sandra’s talents – Im told if it cant be completed on the day of your appointment you can expect to wait weeks for another & have to pay storage whilst you do so. Getting a whole week was golden.

What we came away with is this, they cant get their heads around the kitchen or the glass. Not just because of how many pieces, why so many etc, but also in terms of how to classify them as they just couldn’t accept these items should be considered as household goods. The agent wouldn’t make the decision herself, so she called in the big guns from the upper brass & everyone took a shot at explaining things from their perspective. After much gesticulation & obvious cogitation, a decision was reached & I was given two options. I could accept that everything was too ambiguous, therefore every item in the container would be considered non household, evaluated, priced & then taxed as imported goods accordingly, requiring a period likely to exceed two months, for which I would be responsible for storage payment as well as administration charges for all their additional work. Or, I could pay a one off lump sum of $1000 dollars tax to cover everything & the container would be released as soon as the paperwork was complete. Naturally option two wouldn’t just happen by itself, so a further $2k in gratuities was suggested to ensure no one else looked too closely at what had occurred here. $3k comes to roughly 5% of total value of all new goods in the container & as import tax can be anything up to 175% on selected items, I shook his hand to seal the deal & apologised for squeezing so hard. I am now expecting delivery this week, almost exactly 1 year since I put the padlock on my storage locker for the last time before getting on a plane. Of course I will still have to get them from where I am storing them to my new house, but that will be a story for another blog, for now, stage 3 is almost complete 🙂

Can You Feel It?!

We had a small quake on Monday, at only a 5.8, it barely wobbled & lasted only a few seconds – more nervous tick than Gran Mal seizure, so nothing to be concerned over. In fact, it became something of a comedy moment because at the exact time it hit, there was a government exercise on earthquake evacuation & emergency procedures taking place in the city. There is a prominent politician remaining nameless, who is rich yet considered nice but dim & often compared to certain other “leaders of the free world”.  In a scene reminiscent of Bush jnr receiving the 9/11 news, this guy was being interviewed live on TV about the exercises when the quake hit & not knowing what to say, he just continued to stare at the plan. When his Bushism passed, he segued straight into Trumpism, somehow claiming it was intentional & an integral part of the training to make it as realistic as possible so hadn’t been published in the plan. The memes went viral, many heralding the return of King Canute & how lucky the people were to have him running important government exercises. They do indeed have a sense of humour here 🙂

Puss in Bovva Boots

Before I leave you this time, I’ve been getting a lot of messages about the kitten, so Im pleased to tell you that she’s doing really well & growing up fast. She is extremely playful & loves to bite, but when its not playtime she is also very loving & seldom leaves my side.

She makes me belly laugh at least once everyday & fills me with calm as she spoons herself into my lap when its time for bed. She knows I generally wake around 5.30, so she waits on my chest, watching for my eyes to open as she purrs into my face. I on the other hand absorb this into my dreams, so before I wake up I think Im starring in Mission Impossible, trapped under a slab of concrete with a helicopter blade whirring a few inches from my nose. After a good nights rest she is ready to play & many’s the time at least one of us has gone flying down the stairs as she leaps at my feet causing us to trip. She discovered geckos a few weeks ago, so starting working on leaping. She gets pretty far up the wall, but she’s no Peter Parker & so comically slides back down to the floor in slo-mo as the lizard gets the last laugh.   She has a strange relationship with the other two toms – 1 takes all her abuse like a cuckolded parent – think Roy Kineer as Veruca Salts father. The other Tom, aptly named Gordo (that’s fat bastard in Spanish) chases her down & swats her at every available opportunity. Though she puts up a good fight, shes barely a third his size, so eventually she bales for safety. I figured this would settle down over time, so whilst I stop it from escalating, I mostly let them get on with it. A couple of weeks ago, Gordo came home with a big lump of skin & fur missing from his chest. It seems there is a new tom on the beach that’s heard about the good eating round these parts & fancied himself a piece of it.

A week or so later we were sat on the deck, kitten on my lap, Gordo sitting in the doorway keeping watch. The new tom hops the gate & starts in along the path. The kittens hackles rise & I can feel the vibration of her growl across my legs. Gordo steps tentatively onto the path as I wait to see what will happen. The tom pauses as if assessing his chances, then turns to walk the other way as I sense both Gordo & kitten relax. Barely a second later the tom turns back as if to say “Booo” & the kitten jumps. Gordo, big proud tom that he is, literally shits himself. He sits there frozen to the spot, a puddle spreading out behind him as the other tom now wanders off, cat chuckling to himself, his dominance asserted, mission accomplished. I was beginning to feel sorry for Gordo, we’ve all been there & I felt for his humiliation. The kitten jumped down to see what was going on (& presumably to see where the hellish smell was coming from) when Gordo lashes out & swats her in a transparent attempt to regain his fake balls. True colours revealed, Gordo is just a pathetic bully. I know it, he knows I know it & he can no longer look me in the eye. The kitten knows it too, but it looks like she is just biding her time to get bigger & decide how best to use it to her advantage. Life’s never dull down here on Animal Farm, till next time 🙂

Si x