Welcome back once again everyone to another slice of my life here on Ecuador’s Pacific Costa.

As the title may suggest, not much happened in January, so it passed by pretty much unnoticed. Of course the weather took a definite upturn & the somewhat Spring-like variability of December gave way to a fairly consistent streak of 30+ & clear blue days. Im sure you don’t really care whether I am toasty warm or slightly cooler, but I mention this only by way of contrast to the beginning of February, as this generally marks the start of rainy season. The faithful among you will recall last years “river incident”, I knew what was coming, yet still I was amazed at how much water fell from the sky in a single night. As usual though, this rain then interacts with all the non-tarmac roads, producing varying depths of mud. This mud is then tracked onto all the tarmac roads & well, it all just becomes a big ol mess. The extra amazing bit for me is how everyone just gets on with it. A wise man would no doubt counsel acceptance on my part & if it wasn’t entirely avoidable, I would let it go in a heartbeat, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The local officials are spending money on getting more tarmac applied to roads, but no one ever does anything about the drainage & I feel frustration when I see it.

 

I read recently about a guy in India who sadly lost his wife to a recoverable illness. They lived in a remote village, high in the Indian mountainside. It is 70miles from their village to the nearest hospital by road & they could not get her there in time to save her. Of course the husband was devastated, but rather than wallow in self pity, or for that matter, move to another village, he took a pick & shovel & began to dig into the mountain at the other end of his village. Day & night this man dug & shoveled, for twenty years. He had nothing else to live for but to dig this mountain. By some point during the 21^st year he had created a channel wide enough, low enough & accessible enough that a horse & cart may pass through to the other side of the mountain, where 1km further on was the hospital his wife had never made it to. When asked why he did it, he simply said, so that no one else would have to die because they couldn’t get to the hospital.

During my “I can do anything!” days, I fantasize that I fall over in the mud just as one of the local electricians drops a live cable. KerrrZaaapKapow & I emerge from the gloop as a flood prevention & water recycling do-gooder who channels their problem into a filtration & redistribution plant. Who was that Hydro-Planning Hero kids??

That was ‘Super Surface Water Drainage Man’!!

Well it takes my mind off choosing floor tiles & all the other little decision debates going on in my head at the moment 😉

 

Filling in the Gaps between Spaces

We continue to progress well with the build & we are fast approaching all the fine finishing decisions

When last I wrote, we were due to pour the roof, which we completed the second week of Jan. I was fairly comfortable the weather would remain dry & thus the lorries wouldn’t cause too much disruption to the road for this, out last pour, until we get to the swimming pool. Ruefully thinking, “be careful what you wish for!”, it was a gloriously sunny day. Unfortunately that quickly became a 33 deg frying pan up on the roof & we struggled to keep the concrete cool. For those that don’t know, mixing cement & water produces a chemical reaction. It is this process that turns it hard, but during that reaction, it generates a lot of heat. When that heat also occurs on a hot day, it can cause the concrete to dry out before it has time to set. This can cause anything from surface spider cracks through to the whole pour having to be removed & replaced. So in amongst the guys with big hoses spraying concrete, we had guys with buckets running up & down ladders, wetting the concrete down like a dolphin in transit. We did suffer quite a bit of surface spidering, not least because I later discovered the drivers were adding another chemical that slows the setting process. This works for a long time whilst in the truck, but too much causes the mix to dry out even faster when its poured. Fortunately the slurry we immediately filled them with hasn’t cracked since. As an added bonus, it started to rain in the evening, so Im pretty confident we kept her in check long enough, she isn’t moving & is solid beneath the surface.

So with the roof done that’s the skeleton complete. We’ve now continued on with the walling below, but first we had to put up a perimeter wall on the roof (so no one [else] falls off) & also around the skylight penetration. Ive yet to completely get my head around the skylight assembly, so for now, the 3m x 3m opening has a plastic tarpaulin keeping the rain out. Unfortunately, we didn’t complete the entire perimeter walling, leaving ourselves some space for continued access. What this meant when the rains fell, is that the water had an easier route off the roof than flowing down the drains, so we ended up with an awful lot of water in the basement. Its no big deal of course, its not like we have carpets down or anything & it will dry out quickly. Id just like it to be a little closer to wind & weather tight now we’ve begun that stage. To that end, I hope to be in a position to start fitting windows by the end of next week. 🙂

If you own a truck, small lorry or van in Ecuador, then you have to be licensed to carry anyone else’s goods. Fortunately for me, one of the guys who work for Jarett owns a truck along with several of his friends & family members. So every few weeks when they haven’t been busy, we take a run up to my container & bring back materials for the build. I have all the windows, the sliding doors & the bi-fold frames on site now, along with the glazing for everything except the bi-folds. I also have the skylight frame & a big stack of parts I wasn’t expecting. I originally ordered a static skylight, which I have an engineered solution for having it slide open on the horizontal plane. To make this work, I ordered a rain sensor from the window supplier so I can set it to close automatically should it need to. In so far as I can tell, they have sent me additional frames & motors such that each of the 1m x 3m panes will operate & open independently. In essence it seems I now have a dual function skylight. I would like to think the window company did this to try & make amends for the fubar level mess they made in delivering my order. I suspect though that a businesses true weaknesses are exposed when they can no longer even err in their own favour….What supports my theory over their redemption, is that all the fittings for all the windows, frames doors etc are packed in individual boxes & shipped separately, meaning I had to empty the entire container to locate them all, which like, took like, forever maaaan. Upside though, the kitchen is now all collated & stacked at the front of the container ready to go when we need it & I have a few more comfy cushions at the beach house 🙂

With walls going up, access is becoming less direct, so we’ve put the stairs in from basement to ground & will hopefully pour 1^st floor to roof next week & ground floor to 1^st floor the week after that, so at least we can dispense with ladders. The ladders will in fact be needed elsewhere as we begin the bamboo construction of scaffolding for the external rendering, hopefully by the end of Feb, or before my next blog episode, which ever happens first 😉

You may recall I only built the walls up to 1m high in what will become my studio. On a whim I called in on a local guy that works with glass & aluminium for a quote. Unsurprisingly he came right round & whilst he couldn’t get his head around fixing directly to the blockwork, he took measurements as instructed. It took him a few days to cost it & at $500 fitted, he was back a week later to do just that. Usually they would wait until its been rendered before fitting, which means it will fit badly & leave unsightly gaps all around it. If outside this also means it will leak, even with substandard silicone smeared all over it. Im not sure what Ted Moult would’ve thought of it, but Im pretty pleased with the result. The windows do slide & the door does lock, its not un-stylish & it does the job 🙂

I kissed a girl & she liked it….

Other than seeing Bob when I go to my container, I like to hang out & spend time with him every now & then. In an endearing way, he reminds me of Sam Elliot & I enjoy sitting on his porch, slurping our way through chilled water melon, telling war stories & putting the world to rights. Man stuff.

Bobs girlfriend is Venezuelan & an absolute darling. She came here escaping the poverty & lack of opportunity back home. Being Latin, she has a large extended family, with many passing through Bobs place like its Grand Central. Even if they don’t sleep there, they all turn up at weekends to do laundry & have a big cook up. All of the women wait while the men eat, apparently they aren’t done fussin with the food in the pot, though it always seems perfectly ready on the plate in front of me. So over time, not unlike a scene from an old movie trope, one of the nieces takes a shine to yours truly – might I be interested in some company? A pretty, always smiling girl, on the very sturdy side of robust, think hockey goalie – she wasn’t my type. Im all about the fun though & its been a while since Ive been on an actual date, so yes, why not. We tried to diarise, but with her crazy work hours & me not wanting to put myself out too much, we never really made it work & she had to return to Venezuela.

But then she came back.

We didn’t get to do the date, but we did hang out at Bobs & before I knew it, she was coming to stay for the weekend. She speaks no English, so the subtleties & nuances associated with dancing around a potentially tricky conversation, were lost on both of us. I was pretty sure Id gotten the “single & remaining that way” bit across. I covered I was inviting her as a friend for fun only & a bit of a holiday for her. Thus I had zero expectation & zero intention, but Im not a complete moron, I knew where this was headed.

I go to meet her at the bus stop one Saturday afternoon & after a quick tour, a beer & a catchup, it was off to buy some ingredients for dinner that a cursory assessment by her, confirmed I didn’t have. I scored a minor victory by being allowed to stay in my own kitchen & cook something, but anyone who has ever been in a kitchen with a Latin woman will understand why I let her take over whatever she wanted. The meal was tasty, however, by about half way through, I realised I had run out of things I could say or indeed could think of to say, in any language. I realised I had started & then carried every conversation since she arrived & despite me trying to make it as easy as I could, I was getting nothing back & getting quite bored. It wasn’t yet even 7.30pm.

After a couple of hours sitting outside, finding some escape in the waves whilst she scrolled facebook, I silently thanked the good fortune of a second bedroom & rose to bid her a good night, I was certainly tired. “ok, great, mind if I hop in the shower quickly first?” You have a shower in the spare bedroom, you can have one when you like. “aren’t I sleeping in your room?” errrr, look, you are lovely, yada yada yada, but there’s no spark here & so it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. “we are both adults, there doesn’t have to be a spark, you just have to know how!” I still wasn’t entirely comfortable, but there comes a point past which you begin to care less about the fall-out while resistance becomes futile……Not unsurprisingly, it didn’t go particularly well.  Almost like neither of us wanted to be there. It was detached & awkward. There will be no Oscar nomination & Valentino, pay no heed, no need nor cause for concern.

Over a lazy breakfast I pushed for a little clarification. A tinge of regret was creeping in & I was thinking about damage control, but then I got distracted thinking back to “Friends” & the episode where people linked back to other people, so you had to close the link to prevent a secret getting out 🙂 While I was distracted, she started talking. Turns out  the Spanish for ‘friends with benefits’ is ‘Amigos Dereche’, which is not really where my thinking was going, but it was a start & apparently supported my belief in her understanding of my continued singledom. I reminded her I didn’t want a girlfriend anyway & also, just to be safe, that I wasn’t looking to be a sugar daddy either, though if I were, well I’d pick a different sport to hockey.  She agreed completely with everything I said as I didn’t actually say the bit about hockey. She also did not want a boyfriend, just a nice man who wouldn’t beat her or treat her like a 2^nd class citizen. I did a little more digging. Seems she was pregnant at 15 by a guy that punched her, a lot. She managed to avoid having to move in with him & stayed at home with her parents to raise the baby, though in time she met another guy, who turned out to have the same pugilistic tendencies as the last. So she carried on by herself, worked hard to provide for her son & was eventually able to buy her own house in a quiet neighbourhood, but that’s now worth a little less than bugger all following the collapse of the Venezuelan economy.

 

As you might imagine, this softened my resolve. I would continue to see her at Bobs & of course I would regularly see her Auntie, so I didn’t want there to be any bad feeling. Yet the role reversal, whereby I was the one night stand, left me wondering what was the etiquette on this side of the bed. I smiled as I envisaged myself in bed, coquettishly pulling the sheet up to my neck as she strides around the room trying to find last nights clothes – Don’t call, I holler at her retreating back. This then is the point where “he” would head to the pub to regale his mates with tales of conquest. She would double shower hoping to erase the shame & heads to her mates for wine & an hour or two of “all men are bastards”. Except I was the she, but I wasn’t shamed, I was glad I had bought a bit (albeit it awkward) of tenderness & laughter in to a tough life. I wasn’t looking to scarper, but then I didn’t want to be the primary focus of someone else’s attention either.

We agreed then, that FwB did not mean regular & a Friday night wouldn’t automatically mean the whole weekend, amongst other ‘rules’. Yes I was being unromantically pedantic, it was intentional! Whilst I concede I can be an acquired taste, compared against her previous suitors, Im George Frickin Clooney! So with a lot of references to the big screen version of FwB, I explain how when two wonderful people spend time with each other, one always falls for the other in spite of their best intentions. With absolute clarity I knew it wouldn’t be me, but Id lay money she will be doodling my name in her text book by Monday afternoon…..

 

I should perhaps clarify, that whilst I am older than her father & quite a bit older than her mother, she herself is 30, which to my mind, is the last piece of the tri-factor puzzle that ends with a picture of a happy smiling family on it & the guys face is frozen in a WTF did I just let happen.

As Robbie would say, “Warning Will Robinson, Warning!”

When the legal team is happy & all the paper-work’s been signed, we actually relax into a reasonably comfortable cohabitation. I get on & do whatever I would have been doing as if she wasn’t there, while she starts to reorganise my kitchen in between FB & cooking. Now that I knew the rules, I could play the game, so it was a different story to the previous night come bedtime….I’d like to start by thanking all my fans, everyone that helped me over the line & of course Jesus & everyone at the Academy, for presenting me with this coveted award……….;)

 

She catches the bus Monday morning as I take the bike to work, I wish her well & hope she gets the job. She does get the job – $15 a day cleaning hotels in Manta, 4hrs north by bus & she pays her own food & transport. That $15 is worth the equivalent of $75 when she sends it back to her grandmother (finally one older than me!) to take care of her son, so from her perspective, it’s just good enough to be able to live here whilst sending most of the money back home.

Her administration qualifications aren’t recognised here, whilst it makes them no less easy to obtain, I suspect their accreditation is only national. So the long & the short of it is, she doesn’t have many other options. Now that is the reality of economic migrancy.

As predicted though, by Wednesday evening I was getting “missing you” messages & Thursday followed with “cant wait to see you”.

I told you, I friccccckin told you this would happen……..

 

Now That’s What I Call a Referendum

 

On 4^Th February, Ecuador was asked back to the polling stations to answer a series of questions about what the Government is doing & how the people feel about it.

There are seven points in all, 5 called referendum questions & 2 questions for the people, so Im not really sure what their differences may be. They generously give you a paragraph about the point, then sum it up with “in other words” & then you get to say yes you agree with the statement or not. They are mostly about spending on construction, generating funds for the construction, control of mineral mining & other assets along with a few other municipality statements, that to me at least, just seem to be trying to gauge the mood of the crowd. This becomes further evident as one of the points was;

“ In other words;  sexual criminals of minors will never leave jail. Vote Yes!”

 

Its Only a Matter of Time

 

It was one of those total wet days, the mist particles so fat they were practically droplets & the rain itself so fine it penetrates all known fabric. Even in my so’wester I was wet through in minutes. I cant keep my goggles clear, so I take them off & have to squint to avoid being needled. I am going very slowly. After a long straight, the road to my house throws in quite a few tight bends, but I know them pretty well by now, so even going slowly I lift my head up off my chest & drop the throttle in plenty of time before the long sweeping left. Head up, wrist straight, but nothing else appears to change. Then in quick succession, my heart rate escalates & the neurons begin to fire in my brain.

What is the problem? Throttle is stuck open & I am now approaching the upcoming bend far too quickly for the current conditions.

Is not a conscious thought, but I kind of sense my brain taking a wild stab at how long I have before I part with the road, or more seriously, meet with the barbed wire fence on the other side of the verge. Not long seemed to be the general consensus. We’ve covered that Im not a biker before, but Ive got a reasonable handle on the application of physics in certain situations. If I just pulled the clutch, the lack of friction would cause me to actually go a little faster, so I had to get down through the gears & quick. I was trying to touch the rear brake each time I de-clutched & so of course with the rain & mud it didn’t take long for it to first lock up & then begin to fishtail. It was time to deploy the final safety measure, so I stuck out my legs trying to reach the ground as I pictured Steve McQueen hung up on the Nazi wire, but I hit something & it threw me off the seat. Coming down I slam the throttle, it releases as I loose my grip on the clutch in second gear & the knobbly tyre on the back bites into the grass embankment. Next thing I know Im out of the bend & slowing down on a bike now no longer screaming. Not that I could hear it over my own screams still at full volume inside my helmet. I carried on to work gingerly, it was raining too hard to stop for a cigarette, though words fail me when I try to describe how much I wanted to, needed to in that moment. Breathing my heart back down to normal, replaying the scene over & over I finally understand why a lot of Ecuadorian drivers constantly pump the throttle. I was now doing the exact same thing, trying to convince myself it wasn’t going to stick again. After some consultation with local experts, it seems its not uncommon for a number of reasons, all of which I had attended to, but it still sticks in the wet from time to time. Ive learnt now that I just have to accelerate a small twist more & that frees it, but this cant go on. I need four wheels & a metal box around me.

Awight John, Got a New Motuh!

I know a guy who knows a guy who thought he saw a guy that has a truck for sale. It’s the second vehicle of a visiting gringo who is looking to upgrade. Unfortunately the guy sounds a bit of a div as my other guy has just spent the last 9 months sorting out the paperwork for his other vehicle. Apparently he was unaware he should retain the paperwork as he didn’t understand what it said & they didn’t look like documents he would usually associate with owning & operating a vehicle. Luckily my guy assures me the papers for the other one are all present & correct as he checked those as part of the job. He’s been told of my interest & Ive submitted an offer, though he doesn’t know I know how much he bought it for, so my offer is currently under consideration. I know we’ve been here before, but this is a much newer vehicle than before, so Im a little more optimistic. After Christmas I went with a buddy to Guayaquil to go car shopping. It was far from successful.  To flesh that out a little; Toyota main dealer has a single pickup, twin cab hilux, 2014 for $52k. Chevrolet, the peoples car of Ecuador had no pick ups at all. 6 weeks of calls chasing & not so much as a sausage. So you see why I am jumping all over divvybollox.

 

It doesn’t need to be this way either

 

Im considering a top ten list of things that irk me about living in Ecuador, it cant all be paradise of course. 😉 As in all cases, there will always be something that takes the colour out of the grass, but if the combined impact of them doesn’t out balance all the other pleasures, then that’s a happy life by my understanding! 🙂 Anyway, in lieu of a list, I will highlight how one has come to directly affect me.

I arrived home one day to find a huge 22 tonne, 360 excavator, removing the old building on the corner of my “street”. None of my business, but they had 20t dump trucks ferrying the spoil away all day, which did churn up the entrance a bit, No biggy though. I awoke the next morning to a mountain of crushed stone blocking the road. The same dump trucks must’ve delivered it during the night. Luckily, thanks to some time well spent watching ‘Kickstart’ as a kid, I managed to get me & the bike, up on the pegs riding over the top to freedom. When I got back that night though, the adjoining road had been blocked with stone & fill material. My road now had an additional twenty tonne pile of sand & a mixer. This was going to get messy. There was no boss on site & the project is for the Comuna, by the Comuna (Comuna appointed contractors, relatives etc). This means that not only can they do what the hell they want, but the bit that really galls me, they can get all their materials in advance of when they need them, but then give no thought or consideration as to how that might impact anyone else. My mother sees this as rude, but I always felt that it is a lack of awareness of anything that isn’t impacting them directly.

Which I grant you, is odd within a community lead society.

As inconvenienced as I was, it was nothing to that of Enrique & Carolina. Ours used to be the only decent access to the beach, as it only lead to the beach, the other two which lead to beach bars have been destroyed by traffic. These are both in a permanent state of flood or mud at this time of year, so taxis will no longer go down any of them & of course E & C struggle trying to pull the pushchair over the stone & mud….& if she has to do it on her own with shopping, well she just cant!

 

So Enrique went to  El Presidente of the Comuna, who wasn’t available, but his underling basically told him, “so what, you are all just foreigners!”. Im not sure what the Venezuelan term is for ‘lost his shit’, but by all accounts Enrique unleashed a torrent. I say all accounts, I mean each time Enrique tells me it becomes more elaborate. Joking aside though, if that’s

true then it is a shame & maybe my mother is right, but it highlights what has become a common theme with most of the people I meet, they seem to have no grasp of future consequence or benefit, at any level. They’ll take a dollar today because they don’t see the promise of $3 tomorrow.

 

Possum Bacon, Now there’s an Idea

Lastly for this issue, Ill leave you with an update on animal farm. I came down stairs one morning & switched on the light to find a possum staring at me from the kitchen, neither of us really sure what we were looking at. It took a moment for us both to react, then I went for the camera & it went for the cupboard. Id read that one should grab them by the tail, which I did – not very pleasant  in a James Herbert kinda way as I felt gristle & bone articulate beneath the waxy, scaly skin. I gave an almighty tug & its claws had no purchase on the tile as it sped back towards me.

Pulling the kind of wheel-spinning run only cartoon characters can manage, I let go at the same time his rubber got sticky. He shot forward, but managed to arch in midair & hang a left to dash out of the kitchen, straight for the front door. He was out & gone before I could get another shot off, but somehow I get the feeling that now he knows there’s food & its not a guaranteed death, it wont be long before Im pulling his tail again.

 

AWOL  MPD

One tail I haven’t pulled in a couple of weeks is that of the handsome boyfriend aka stripey grey cat. I saw him last a few days after this photo – his acceptance of the hierarchy & cementing our bond by bringing me a treat. I bought him a nice shiny collar with a bell to celebrate, but it hasn’t rung around here in so long I think he’s either been taken or lost. Such is life, though I guess I will find out soon enough if he left any heirs to the throne with the kitten. She be all growed up real quick like now y’hear. She be a swishin & swooshing around dem ol boys, so I whoops dem with the broom & says to dem, now go on, go on now n you get yaselfs aways from her. But I cants b sure o nuttin

 

& to close out this week, a big shout to my lil sis who celebrated her birthday last week 🙂

Carnival starts here next week, so I’m battening down the hatches & trying to avoid the spray foam! Till next time folks, Take Care.

Si x