Being an ExPat - What it is Like to Live in Ecuador: Portoviejo

Showing posts with label Portoviejo. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

New Beginnings - Life Goes On

We are awakened sometime in the night by another tremor. Maybe it is a dream.

I slept fourteen straight hours. My wife only managed four. Not a dream.

The next day a number of good things will come to be. We hear from Tamy and Jared. They and their family are all fine. This communication is possible because the cell phone companies have all opened their lines for free. No international calls unfortunately. Other friends have reached out to our family and friends in the U.S on Facebook VIA their landline/modems. Yes, landlines are up and running. My friend David is actually able to leave my Father a phone message.

Our local tiki lounge/restaurant Rimini, has a generator and have a charging station set up. We can charge our phone. Our main tienda has opened it's doors and we buy supplies. There has been no price gouging. As a matter of fact, shop owners seem to be giving discounts for those in need. Local restaurants like Motumbo are cooking food before it spoils and serving free lunches. We buy food. The weather is almost perfect. We are in the beginnings of Ecuadorian winter. It is cool and clear.

Though the Manta airport lost its tower there are helicopters and planes flying in and out constantly. No commercial flights. These are all aid flights from Quito, Guayaquil, and other countries.

Ecuador President Rafael Correa, declares a period of mourning. It will last 8 days.

Our village is still facing issues. Water is not available. What we have in our cisterns is all we have. We learn that many people get their water delivered on Sundays. That did not happen for obvious reasons. Our section of the village got theirs on Saturday. We were lucky. Bottled water is nowhere to be found.

Trash pick up has been skipped twice now. It is piling up. Not a sanitary state. Some are burning their refuse in vacant lots. We may have to as well.

Yes, there are more quakes but none even close to the initial one. These are off the coast though and we have to stay vigilant. Tsunamis are a real possibility.

We are now seeing pictures of other cities including Portoviejo. It is worse than we ever imagined.

The following day there are more tremors. The electricity service is restored! It is only day three and we are ecstatic. Tamy and Jared stop by. We are told we are not to go to Portoviejo. It is very bad there. We ask how their house fared. They avoid answering. We have seen pictures of the road near their home. There is a huge crack in the road and a car has driven in. We realize their house must have been damaged at the least. They like us, are in shock and don't want to answer so we let it go.

We still have no phone minutes to make international calls or cash, but Tamy is going to get us cash. There are a few working ATM's in Portoviejo. We give her our ATM card. She will get us cash. We are told not to go to Manta either.

Helicopters have landed less than 2 blocks from here with emergency supplies. Garbage is being picked up.

The next day WiFi is restored. We spend hours contacting family, posting to Facebook, letting everyone now we are OK. In truth we needed this to move forward, get over the quake. The inevitable question is asked. "When are you coming home?". We are home. If we have to go, we will decide where that might be then. We never ran from hurricanes, we won't run from this.

The next day and we have cash. We will not starve. We donate a small sum for relief efforts immediately Right now it is all we can do. Tamy tells us her house cracked in half. It sunk 30 centimeters and the water pipes burst. "It is life." she says. "It is not important." The people of Portoviejo need their help and they come first. My wife and I cannot help right now. It is too dangerous. Tamy and Jared only go into the city because they have to. Their family lives there.

The next day our landlords arrive. Their family is OK as is their home. They fix the front gate and make other minor repairs. The house is fuego (strong) and we will not have to move.

Water is flowing into our cistern which never leaked. All our friends are OK and all our services are back. It is unbelievable.

Life is slowly returning to normal in the village of Crucita. The mourning period had passed. The music that infuses our life is returning. More and more shops are opening, More and more street vendors are around. Yesterday, we saw bottled water being delivered. Yes, life is returning to normal here but just a few miles away it is a very different story. We have only been here a short while but things will never be the same. Sometimes change is tough. Most times it is tough. The Government of Ecuador has done very well managing this event. The people of Ecuador are nothing short of amazing. We are in awe of them. Chao!

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Sunday, April 24, 2016

The Day After - Of Rationing, Worry, and Hope

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©2016 TJ & Tamera Overman, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ReUse by permission only.

*We have no pictures to post as there was no electricity and we were conserving our phones for calls if service came available.

Dawn. Cool and calm. There are no birds chirping. No geckos croaking. There is only silence. This is not at all normal.

No way to get information. We can't know what is ahead. We can only imagine and that is a walk through my head I do not want to take. Want no longer matters here. Need is the only thing that matters here.

My wife and I have foregone sleep. It will not come until our bodies must have it. We know that now. Our minds are racing. There are too many things to consider. Too many DO IT NOW items that are essential for us to survive. Step back and organize. Pick one task and focus on that task. We are putting together our essentials grab bag in earnest.

Cash, passports, bank cards, vital paperwork, change of clothes, keys, drinking water, matches, flashlights, etc. There is still no power. Probably for some time. We still have no way to contact anyone. We might have gotten word out to our families if we had minutes on our phone. I procrastinated. No minutes. No word.

Now we turn our attention to water. We have 2 gallons of drinking water in the dispenser. Another gallon in our freezer. Not enough for 3 days let alone the weeks it could be before we can get more. The cistern. The lid blew of it last night. Is the cistern itself damaged? How much water was in it? How much is in it now? We check. It is almost completely full. Properly rationed we have water for at least a month, probably two. The water must be boiled before drinking though it is treated. Regardless, we must be very careful with it. Sickness will not do. The only way to get the water is to lie down on the ground and lean into the cistern. I am not comfortable with that. Aftershocks are still occurring. It must be done. I do it. All is not as it should be.

Luckily, we have just refilled our propane tank. it should last six months with normal use. I estimate 5 months when factoring in the amounts of water we must boil. We will not have an issue there.

Food is next. Generally, we live sparingly. We are only two. Tiendas and fish markets abound here. We were lucky though. A good friend has visited, leaving just days ago. We stocked up on rice, beans, lentils, oatmeal, and other dry goods. He brought me a huge jar of peanut butter too. The meat will not last with no refrigeration and must be cooked and/or eaten. There isn't much. Shrimp, chicken, ham, and bologna. There are no canned or frozen vegetables. Why would there be? We buy them fresh off of street vendors or from our tiendas every few days. We have 8 limes, 4 green peppers, four red onions, garlic, 2 tomatoes, 1 and 1/2 loaves of bread, butter, 6 eggs, plenty of spices, salt. and 2 apples. We have enough food altogether to last for 14 days.

Cash. Here is a problem and a very large problem at that. We did not go to the ATM yesterday. No ATM's working now. Not here anyway. We have $24 dollars to our name. In the bank? Enough. On the credit card? More. Can we use them? No. When will we be able to? Where will we be able to? We have no idea. When will we know? We must spend this $24 wisely. Will there be price gouging? I don't know but I think there will. Maybe not for locals but for gringos? I think so. I do. This is the scariest thing in my mind. How will we eat? If prices stay as they were $24 could easily buy another month of food including feeding the cats, if we spend and ration properly. If they don't we might be in real trouble here. What if we can't leave the house? What if there is looting and rioting? We will wait and see. There is no alternative.

Now we know we are in decent shape. It is not great shape but I fear it will be better than many other's. Will people try and take what we have? We are gringos in a poor country not our own. Everyone here is so nice but if my kids were starving I would do anything. So would anyone else. I do not want my wife scared but we are a team. She has to know. I say it out loud. She already does. She is smarter than I am. I am smart enough to know it. This is nowhere close to perfect.

The church bells are ringing. Why? We can see the steeple from here. The cross from the steeple is not there. Oh, yes. It is Sunday. Church is in session. The first normal thing today. It is most welcome.

There is nothing for it. We are going to have to leave the implied safety of our eight foot concrete walls. We must go out. We need minutes for our phone. We need to see whether anything is open. We must determine the disposition of other people and whether we will be able to buy food and drinking water. Reconnaissance mission. Best to do it now, early. We have to buy what we can just in case there is none a week from now.

We're off. Multiple tiendas are open against all odds; generators thrumming. This could be good news for reaching our families. We usually obtain phone minutes from these tiendas as you can't buy them online unless you have a credit card through an Ecuadorian bank. There are two ways to get them. The shopkeepers can add them themselves using a terminal or we can by a tarjeta (card). The cards are like scratch off lottery tickets. You buy them and get almost the amount of minutes you pay for but, you could double or triple that amount with luck. They cost $1 extra. You dial them in from your phone. These are our best bet as the terminals can't possibly be working. Three open tiendas. No tarjetas.

They do have supplies however. Good to know. They are getting local deliveries from farmers too. Very good to know. We will not starve. We have time to talk about how best to spend our limited cash. They are all out of water. Not good to know. Thank God for our cistern. I hope it is not leaking.

Our short term survival is ensured.

Long term survival is at the plate.

We decide to sit down at one of the many covered benches that dot the Malecon. The sky is clear, and the ocean is most beautiful. Another piece or normality in an increasingly surreal day. We discuss some things. No one is on the beach with one exception. A father and his toddler are splashing in the shallows. They are here on vacation maybe. Why doesn't matter. The toddler needs normal.

No buses are running. They are our primary form of transportation. We wonder how Portoviejo, our personal major supply port has fared. If it is bad will Manta be any better? When will electricity be restored? Are our friends OK? We have only seen our neighbors. Just then we spot our friend Fernando at Robert's Tienda. He sees us too.

He is fine. His wife Jessica, was away at the time. She is OK. Fernando was at church when "it" happened. It was not good. The roof came down on them. Amazingly, no one was seriously injured. He has water and food. He hopes his wife can get home. We tell him if he needs anything to let us know. He asks if our family knows. When we say no he says he will post something to Facebook when phone service comes back. He has a few minutes on his phone. It isn't enough for an international call. He needs what he has so he can stay in contact with his wife. We would not dream of using his minutes.

We ask him what if any, news he's heard. Portoviejo is bad. He is going there if he can get there. He tells us the main road has huge cracks in it. There are no buses today. The road is severely damaged just before it reaches the bridge over the Portoviejo river. This damage is no more than 30 meters away from our good friends Tamy and Jared's house. We are very worried now. Manta will be our only hope it seems. He knows Manta suffered damage. The Manta Airport tower. It is a tower no more. It is flattened. Hopes for a working ATM are hovering just above zero. We are off the edge of the map.

As we say goodbye Fernando tells us to be careful and vigilant. He has the same fears we do. We share the sentiment and are off. Home. We need to boil water. I need to measure the water level in the cistern. This will be a daily occurrence. A leak could be devastating.

Home now. It is past noon and is the hottest part of the day. We are thankful winter is beginning. Just two weeks ago the hottest days of our time here accosted us. March is the hottest month. Now it is not only bearable, it is actually pleasant. I cook our first ration of beans and rice. There has been no sleep. Maybe tonight.

BOOM! Another aftershock! Now another! No damage, no problem. For now.

We eat and head to the roof to view the sunset. It seems important somehow. The sun is a golden orb, magnified by the atmosphere. It is the most beautiful sunset we've seen here yet. We turn to look over the mountains. There is a magnificent rainbow in the clouds. It is a huge half circle of wondrous color and light almost directly over us. Breathtaking. We hope it holds promise. We hope it means life. We hope.

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©2016 TJ & Tamera Overman, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ReUse by permission only.

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Friday, April 22, 2016

The Quake - A Normal Day, Until-

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©2016 TJ & Tamera Overman, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ReUse by permission only.

"What is that? What's happening? "It's an earthquake! We have to get out of here!"

Rewind.

It is a beautiful, sunny day in Crucita. The ocean is Caribbean blue and glassy. Almost no waves or currents are discernible in the beautiful sea. The breeze is cool and the sun is hot. The day is perfect.

We have very little to do today. Some laundry perhaps. A trip into Portoviejo for cat food. Why not, though there is enough food for another two days. The bus ride is always enjoyable as is the city proper. The mall is very busy. The teen aged girls are dressed to the nines. The boys, are in pursuit. The city as always; is bustling with life. Street vendors peddle their wares. All is good.

We buy our cat food and linger in the air conditioning for a bit. We are happy.

The bus ride back is uneventful. I stand as my wife sits in the last available seat. Many from the city are heading to Crucita for an afternoon and evening on the beach. The bus is always crowded on Saturday. All is normal.

We arrive at our stop. As we make our way down our street my neighbor, fellow musician and friend, Fernando approaches. He is on his way to church. He is doing well. We are doing well. Chao!

Back home now. My wife is enjoying the cool breeze while working on her latest blog post.
I am taking sun in the courtyard. The is a resounding BOOM and the ground seems to quiver. It sounds as though there might be construction nearby. It feels as though they have dropped large boulders out of a dump truck. Five minutes later comes another BOOM. It feels the same.

"Did you feel that?" I ask my wife. "Yes." she says. "It felt like someone dropped something heavy close by."

"I think it might have been an earthquake." I say. I am half joking. No one else seems alarmed. The moment passes and we forget it. For now.

Our friends Tamy and Jared call. Jared wants me to go deep sea fishing with him, his brother, and cousins tomorrow. I am excited to go. I haven't been fishing in a long time.

"We are out of minutes on our phone. We need to recarga (recharge)." says my wife. "We can do it in the morning." I say. I want to make dinner and watch a movie. We eat. We watch the sunset over the Pacific from the terrace as we do every night. Music comes from everywhere as it does on the weekends. The Malecon is beginning to heat up. We decide on a movie and settle in to watch it. It has been a good day. It is peaceful. All is right.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOOOOM! It now sounds as if a giant bowling ball has been hurled at us, rolling towards us as great speed. Is the earth moving?

My wife yells "What is that? What's happening? "It's an earthquake!" I yell. We must yell to be heard. "We have to get out of here!" We get up to run. We are on the second floor of a concrete house. We have to get down the stairs and out of our courtyard or be crushed. It is the only thought in my mind. My wife is thrown off her feet by the quake. I turn and she is flat on the ground looking up at me. Her eyes are huge. The electricity goes and we are plunged into night. She screams again. "What is happening?" I scream "Earthquake! We have to get out of here now!" I grab her and pull her to her feet. She is frozen with fear. I am on the verge. We have no time for fear. The quake seems worse in the dark. Maybe it IS worse.

I pull her to the stairs and she is frozen no more. We hurl ourselves down the stairs and are lucky to make the ground floor. We must avoid falling plaster and chunks of concrete. We make the gate. No keys. I run into the dining room and grab a set. The key doesn't work. The steel tongue of the lock is bent. We cannot get out! We are surrounded on three sides by concrete and plaster. There is a disconcerting sound above the rumble of the earth. The sound of huge rocks being chewed by a living thing. It is the sound of concrete and brick moving against each other. The houses are moving against each other. Slamming together. Brick against concrete. The sound is as loud as the quake. Deafening.

Then there is another sound. Sloshing. I become painfully aware we are standing over our cistern which is full of water. If the concrete slab gives way we might fall in and drown. A single brick comes loose from the wall above us and misses us by a foot. It leaves a red blotch on the cement. The cistern's cement cover is blown into the air 2 feet away and breaks as it lands on the ground. The force of the moving water is greater than its weight. Great gouts of water are being thrown out of the opening. We cannot stay here. Our neighbor Maria is pounding on our gate screaming for us to get out. "Esta Bien!" I yell so Maria knows we are OK. "Otro puerta (other door)!" My wife yells to Maria.

"The back gate!" my wife cries to me. The way leads under our house though a breezeway. We have no choice. She is right. We make the gate. It unlocks easily and we flee down the alleyway. Brick walls come crashing down around us. We make it to the beach. It feels as though we have been on a small boat all day and just stepped onto the dock. The ground lurches and rocks slowly as the quake ends. We feel dizzy and disoriented. No time for that either.

It has been less than a minute though it seems like forever has passed. How we are uninjured I don't know. Our eyes lock. We have the same thought. The beach may not be safe. We run up another alley. Back towards our home and neighbors. Uphill. Higher ground. Our neighbors are here in the courtyard, as wild eyed as we. We speak in broken Spanish. "Tsunami", they say. Slow down. "There might be a tsunami." That is what they are saying. We run to the house to grab our passports, documents, and shoes. We are going to have to run for the mountain behind us. Another neighbor appears on his motorcycle and says "No tsunami, no tsunami!" Leo asks him what he knows. The epicenter has been determined. Esmeraldas, to our north. There will be no tsunami. There will be no more information tonight. This will have to be enough.

We may still have to flee. This may not be the end. Our neighbors return to their home as do we. Blankets, pillows, chairs, and water. Quickly! We meet again in the courtyard. We wait safely away from falling debris. Leo offers me a cigarette. I accept gladly though I have quit again. This is no time for quitters I tell myself, trying to grasp any shred of our situation.

Cars are streaming out of Crucita now. To where I don't know. I search my mind for knowledge of quakes. We have never experienced one before. Was this a big one? We don't know. Our neighbors are saying there have been none like this in their lifetime. They don't know either. Aftershocks are certain. They could be almost as bad. What if the worst is yet to come? We wait in the darkness. Hours pass. We chance our homes again after careful inspection. Yet another quake! Not as strong as the first but it is enough to send us all to the beach. Many are here now. We find out one of our neighbors has been killed by falling debris. I realize we are all in shock. As we sit there there are two more quakes; each less intense than the last.

At four in the morning we make a decision. Back home. We must sleep and the worst seems to be over. It this a good decision? I don't know but we have little choice. We have no information, no way to get news, no way to call anyone. We must sleep because we may be walking or running soon. We insure everything we must have is by the gate. The keys are in the lock. If we have to bug out we are ready.

We have time to think now, laying in the silence and darkness. Are our friends in Portoviejo OK? No electric probably means no water. It means no access to cash. We have no way to contact our family and that thought makes things much worse. We realize this could get ugly very fast. Survival mode. If it is as bad as we fear we must assume the worst and prepare accordingly. We try to sleep doing just that. Sleep will not come. Not until the next afternoon.

Questions? E-mail us!

©2016 TJ & Tamera Overman, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ReUse by permission only.

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Friday, January 29, 2016

Tamera's Take: Everything's Eventual, Cats & Cell Phone Communication

Tamera's Take is about being here.
Are you ready? I am.

Before any "constant readers" start plotting my death (and you know who you are), yes "Everything's Eventual" is the title of a book by SK. Just as SK uses songs, life events and literary quotes to punctuate his stories, I am using his book title to punctuate my story. How do I know he does this? Because I have been a constant reader for over 30 years. I read my first SK novel while I was pregnant with my daughter. The book terrified me. I loved it. I still read his books.

The rainy season has begun.

Anyway, I thought about using "The Cell", but that was too obvious. Are we okay now? Good. Then I will continue.

Last week in "Octopus's Garden, Cats & Water Always Wins", I wrote about not having enough time to blog because of everything that has happened to us in the past couple of weeks. Eventually though you have to just suck it up, quit whining and write (or paint, or clean your house, or whatever it is that you need to do).

Stephen King said it. He is right.
Eerily always right.

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Roof Top Terrace

At this moment I need to move from the rooftop terrace that I love so much, and get out of the sun before Senor Sol burns a hole in my retinas. It may only be 8:30 am but the sun is serious around here. Downstairs I go.

That is better - sort of. I have lost my view, the ocean breeze and the sound of tropical birds, but my eyesight is thankful that I relocated to the shade of the first floor patio.

The view from the roof was especially beautiful today.

Our Beige and Sage Colored Mountains

When we arrived in Crucita late November, we were told that the rainy season starts in December and continues through February or March. November is the end of the dry season. That was evident. Everything was dusty and dry. There are mountains along the coast of Crucita. They were beige with tinges of sage green here and there.

We looked forward to the rainy season so our mountains would turn green. December came and went. Where was all that rain we heard about?

Beautiful Rocafuerte

A few miles inland everything was green. We know this because we visited a number of towns in the Manabi province during the past two months.

Portoviejo, Charapoto, Rocafuerte, El Pueblito, La Boca, San Jacinto, San Clemente, Bahia, San Vicente, Chone, and Manta.

There was rain. It just never made it to the coast.

That all changed about seven days ago.

We have been able to call our friends and family back home using a Skype phone account. This is a little different than the Skype you can use for free on your computer (or smart device). Free Skype does not work on every computer (or smart device). Also, our bank is not going to "Skype" when they need to contact us. We pay $13.50 each month for Skype phone subscription to receive a U.S. VoIP phone number and unlimited use of that number. We can call anyone in the U.S., and anyone who has our number can call us. It costs them nothing to call us.

We use the cheap LG smartphone that we brought with us. It is not an "unlocked" phone, and does not have an active cell phone plan. But that does not matter. As long as we have access to WiFi, we can use this cell phone for calls to/from the U.S.

What is the downside? There are only two downsides. First, we have to have access to WiFi. Second, we cannot use it to call anyone with an Ecuador phone number, and vice versa.

We have WiFi set up at our house and free WiFi is available at many restaurants, hotels, malls, and even some buses. This is not a problem unless our electricity is out, or we are nowhere near a free WiFi hotspot.

San Vicente. Across the bay from Bahia.

We have only lost electricity a few times and never for more than an hour.

That all changed five days ago.

We need to be able to make phone calls to people and businesses in Ecuador. Skype Phone was not the solution to that problem.

If you are only going to be here for a short period of time, you can use a U.S. cell phone plan (Verizon, AT&T, etc) with an international calling feature. You may have read other blogs advising travelers to bring an unlocked cell phone, so they can use one of the local cellular carriers.

Why go to the trouble of bringing an unlocked cell phone? Because cell phones are supposed to be very, very, very expensive in Ecuador.

At least this is what we read and heard.

We agonized over this dilemma.
We are not short-timers.
We did not have an unlocked cell phone.
We waited until the first week of 2016 to get our Ecuadorian cell phone/number. There was no reason to wait. It was much easier than we ever could have imagined. Lesson learned.

You can shop for just about anything in El Centro.

There are various options for obtaining local cellular service in Ecuador, but for us it made the most sense to buy a smartphone and use a prepaid (prepago) chip.

There are a number of cell service carriers in Ecuador. The two main service providers are Movistar and Claro. We chose Claro, and bought a new Samsung Galaxy. It came with an Amigo Chip that gives us 2 for 1 on every dollar we spend to recharge (recarga) data/talk/text.

In addition we have unlimited "Whatsapp", that allows us to talk and text for free with anyone else who has Whatsapp. Total cost for the device, sim cards, amigo chip and promtional plan, was less than $140 USD. We will probably spend no more than $10 per month to recharge data/talk/text (megas/voz/mensaje).

You can get a basic cell phone for less than $20 USD. You can get a basic smartphone for less than $50 USD. If basic is not your style, no problem. You can get the brand, style and features you want in a price range that meets your needs.

Blah Blah Blah

Good luck with getting "unlocked" cell phones in the U.S. anyway without paying a fortune. I do not know why, but the cell phone carriers in the U.S. are the only ones that lock their devices so that they cannot be used with other carriers.

If you want to bring your cell phone, there are technicians in Ecuador that can repair and unlock most cell phones for a fee. If you are in Portoviejo, go to El Centro shopping district. Keep in mind that once unlocked it may or may not work on other networks.

Note: At the time of our arrival in 2015, Ecuador Customs allowed each traveler to bring only ONE cell phone. There are also customs restrictions on other electronic devices, such as laptops, tablets, digital equipment.

Check the Customs Regulations before you travel.

By now you may be wondering, "is she ever going to finish the story about the rain, green mountains, blah blah blah?".

Yes.

Everything's eventual.

Then it started to rain.

Rain. Finally.

I cannot express how happy I was when it finally started to rain. Not just drizzly little droplets that look more like mist and disappear instantly when the sun comes out. Or worse, appear in the middle of the night when you are not even sure that it rained.

This was big rain. This was soaking rain. This was last Saturday.

So what if we miss a beach day. There will be plenty more. Besides, all this rain is going help turn our mountain green. Sunday. Still raining. No problem. Bring it on.

We have not lost power. Our WiFi is a little wobbly but still doing what WiFi is supposed to do.

Midnight on Sunday night, or Monday morning depending on how you look at it, everything stops. No electricity.

No electricity means no WiFi. No WiFi means no Skype Phone.

Everything is going to be okay. Our laptop was fully charged. Our Claro cell phone was fully charged. The power is never out for very long. I did all of our laundry two days ago. I had already packed our necessary documents into the laptop bag for our morning meeting on Monday. Manta Monday. Manta Monday with our Attorney at the Immigration Office.

Waiting on the Malecon for our attorney to pick us up.

At 7:00 am on Monday, the electricity was still out. Our attorney was picking us up at 9:00 am. One more thing that does not work without electricity - the water pump. We have bottled water for drinking and cooking. The water for the rest of the house comes from our cistern.

The electric pump in the laundry room brings the water from the cistern to the kitchen and bathrooms.

Not today. No electricity. No showers.

My husband and I are resourceful people. We have been camping many times. We have been through our share of Hurricanes in Florida. We have a gas stove and five gallon bottles of water! Camping showers done. Stove top coffee made. We are ready on time.

Still raining. Still no electricity.

I felt like "Rainman" taking these pictures from the car.

My first trip to Manta and I saw almost nothing, except flashes of green things as I looked through the windows of the car. I assume we drove past farms, trees and mountains. It was hard to tell through the rain and fogged up windows. I also saw the ocean and big boats. They were the gray things floating in the gray water, that I saw through the fogged up windows of the car that was driving in the rain.

Tamera was very tired and just a bit cranky from having had no sleep the night before.

Very cool whale sculpture at San Clemente beach.

I was also under a bit of pressure. I was the designated translator between the four of us (who were in Manta that day to apply for 12-IX Visas) and our attorney. Our attorney does not speak English. I speak the most Spanish out of the three Americans and one Canadian. Our attorney was there to speak to the immigration officials on our behalf and file the necessary documents. But we still needed to speak with him. There were questions to be asked and answers needed. Anyway, I was the designated translator.

I will not go into any more details about our experience at the immigration office, except to say that the staff were all very efficient and courteous. Our attorney was very skilled, very efficient and very nice.

The day was a success. We should have our new tourist visas by Monday or Tuesday.

I gave the attorney our new Ecuadorian cell phone number. He is supposed to call me when our Visas are ready.

The view from the rooftop terrace is especially beautiful today.

It is green. Very green.

Questions? E-mail us!

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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Tamera's Take: Art is Where You Find It

Tamera's Take is about being here.

Are you ready? I am.

In the absence of all my art supplies I have been relegated to taking photos of other forms of art. Art is not necessarily in the "eyes of the beholder". It is definitely where you find it. I can find art just about anywhere. Or maybe it finds me.

Either way, here is some of what has captured my attention since we arrived in November. Some are actual murals; some could be considered graffiti; some are architecture or simply the abstract colors of fading paint; and then there are collages formed in the natural course of things.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.