First week in Quito

Saturday morning we went on what was supposed to be a tour of four or five towns to the North of Quito.  But, before we could even leave someone left the gate of our little B&B open and Pepper decided to take a walk.  Ginger came running to me, almost like she was telling me something was wrong.   Everyone that could took off to find him.  Steve finally found him frolicking with some of the neighborhood dogs. 

We finally got off on our tour, an hour late, but unfortunately, a lot of folks decided to go the same way at the same time, and that highway is under construction to feed traffic to and from the new airport.  We got so bogged down we decided to call off most of the trip and just go see a town in a different direction, San Jose de Minas, that happens to be the home town of our hostess, Nora.  And, of course, I forgot the camera.  You will have to trust me that it was absolutely gorgeous.  The mountains surrounding the town were so green and covered with gardens that grew almost anything you can imagine.  The corn grew at least 10’ high.  No nice flat garden for these folks. 

We stopped for almuerzo (lunch) at the family home of our guide who happens to be Nora’s brother.   We loved the town, and after lunch our hosts tried very hard to talk us into renting a house on the back of their property from them.  But, though it was a nice home, it was 2 stories with very steep steps.  They tried to sweeten the deal by throwing in all three meals for free.   If I was younger and able bodied, it would be a deal way too hard to resist.  We headed home and got back tired in spite of only seeing 1/5 of the intended towns. 

This morning, Patrick asked if we would like to go with him to a dormant volcano near-by.  I expected a lot of stone and a pit, what I saw was a beautiful green valley with farms all over the bottom of what would be the caldron.  We were up on the rim looking down with the wind whipping up the sides.  There was, of course, tourist shops – actually the reason Patrick wanted to go as he must go to the states next week, and wanted to pick up some fun stuff to bring with him.  No, we did not get away unscathed.  But, we did learn a bit on how to barter.  I now have a really nice alpaca hoodie sweater.

We are talking of renting a car in the near future and driving a loop down the Amazon side of the mountains and back up through the middle of the range (where Quito and Cuenca are) to check out all the places we have been looking at on the computer.  One of the stars of this trip is a town called Macas on the Amazon side overlooking a huge valley and river.  Patrick has told us a lot about it as he plans to retire there.  His nephew is the town mayor, so that helps.  It seems to be what we are looking for.  It has the flatter terrain, warmer weather, but not hot, huge mercados every day, something always going on, safe and friendly and a good infrastructure.  Patrick tells us we can find a nice big house there for $300-400, as it hasn’t yet been found by the tourists. 

I have my Magic Jack set up, but it is spotty.  I can’t pick up a very strong signal, but enough for email and I did get through to talk with Troy for a few minutes last night.  If you call that number, and it doesn’t ring through, it will still allow you to leave a voice mail which I can then download here. 

Week One

We have been on the road for 6 days.  That just doesn't seem possible.

We left Sunday Morning, a bit later than planned, but no big stumbling blocks.  We headed South out of Tucson and then East toward New Mexico.  That was when our first "adventure" happened.  We have good tires on the van, and no-one would have suspected that one of them would totally throw it's tread.  These are not re-treads - or at least they weren't supposed to be.  Steve was driving, and managed to get the van safely to the side of the road while I had my hands full trying to keep Ginger out of my lap.  Poor thing had never done any real traveling except from Phoenix to Tucson, and that was not a good start to her indoctrination.  We, fortunately, had brought along a full sized spare, so Steve changed the tire and we were on our way again.   Steve refused to drive the speed limit, though, afraid another tire would fail. 

We got to our first night's destination Santa Rosa, New Mexico, with little more drama (except when I tried to drain the battery by leaving the lights on when we made a pit stop).  The next day brought us to Haysville - again late.  Tasha had planned a wonderful dinner that we couldn't get to in time, but her parents got to enjoy it.  Haysville was cold and rainy, but we got all we needed to do done, and thoroughly enjoyed our time with the kids and grand-kids.

Thursday we took off for Norman and had a wonderful dinner with Hank and Carol.  Hank had just been awarded a professorship award (sorry Hank, can't remember the title) so naturally, he treated us.  The dogs had a great time chasing around the back yard of their rental home and barking at "Jackie".  Pepper could barely move the next morning.

Friday got us to Shreveport.  The surprise of the day was the beautiful country we drove through.  Gorgeous green country when I was expecting - well  - dry open Texas.  We had taken a route North of Dallas/Fort Worth, avoiding the busy freeways.  We arrived at a decent hour (finally) but the reserved room at the Hotel was not what I had requested.  I had reservations all along the route for accessible rooms - no smoking.   There we found ourselves in a smoking non-accessible room.  A call to the front desk got me a "Sorry, but we are booked up".  Later, they came to us with another room in another motel (same chain) for less money.  What happened?   Someone at the reservation desk got smoking and non smoking confused.  And it turns out a dog show was scheduled for the same day, and the whole area was crawling with poofy foofy doggys.  We finally got settled in our new room late, once again. 

Saturday started nicely uneventful.  Somewhere in Louisiana, we encountered some very rough (although, once again, gorgeous) highway.  After we got past that, the front end of our van started shaking and pulling.  We hope it will hold together another 600 miles, because there will be nothing open tomorrow, and we must move on.  If it gets worse by the time we get to Gainesville (hopefully we get to Gainesville) we may try to get it looked at before heading down to Miami.  Maybe just dump it and get a rental.

So, we have managed to get though our first week of travel. 

Bully

I started this yesterday…but just couldn’t publish it yet.   So here it is:

I have SO not looked forward to this day.  Although we are both excited and eager to get on with our adventure, we knew the day would come when we had to part ways with our beloved kitty, Bully. 

Our veterinarian, Dr. Kipp Metzger, (Animal Health Hospital in Tucson) posted on his Facebook page that we needed a new home for our Bully.  Within a day a young man from Flagstaff said he was interested.  This young man, a longtime friend and fellow bike racer of Dr. Kipp’s, seems to be a custom fit for Bully.  He has dogs (that like cats) and cats (that hopefully like other cats) and an indoor-outdoor environment that Bully is used to.  Plus he is in Flagstaff, so much more like the mountain environs that Bully came from.  I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to meet Heidi, but I assume she and Bully will hit it off as he is definitely a ladies man.  We met Dan halfway – which meant Phoenix.  

Despite this seemingly being an almost perfect match, I blubbered all the way to Phoenix, then back home again.  Poor Steve would look over at me and start in himself.  Yeah, he tries to be the tough guy…

Dan promises to keep us up to date on Bully though Facebook.  I think I will suddenly be checking in more often.

One week to go.  Most of our personal property is gone to either sale or to charity.   We have an old card table and chairs that are pretending to be our dining set, lawn chairs set up in the living room, and a mattress and box spring on the floor in the bedroom.  Most of everything we don’t need on a daily basis is packed.  The table, chairs, lawn furniture and an assortment of other things will be picked up next Friday by - again - a charity.  The mattress/box spring will be picked up the same day by the city of Tucson – with whatever trash we have managed to find/create by then.  That leaves us the wonderful mystery of where we will sleep on Friday and Saturday nights.  Maybe the back of the Van (in the garage) with a ton of packing blankets to make it sort of soft?  Or maybe the nearest motel?   We will decide that…then.