We made it to Cuenca on Friday, the 4th with very
few glitches. The young men we hired to
wrap and pack our furniture and appliances showed up almost on schedule on
Thursday and did a pretty good job.
Nothing got broken or lost. The
driver was at the house right at 7:30am on Friday. They loaded the truck and we were on our way
by 9. We arrived in Cuenca safe and
sound 5 hours later and only had to wait an hour for the truck. They unloaded and hauled all our goods up
three stories, then left to go home around 5pm.
Leaving Sucua was kind of sad. I did like it there and the house was
nice. I’ll miss the foliage, the people
(especially Sonia, our landlady who came by on Thursday and sat with me for
about an hour almost in tears. We
communicated with my awful Spanish and Google translate. She had not seen that before and was having a
great time “talking” with it) and the warm climate. I won’t miss the almost constant rain, the
bugs, or the long treks into town for everything – if it was available.
Our internet is supposed to be turned on Tuesday, the 15th. J In the meantime, the coffee shop convenience
store on the first floor has free Wi-Fi, so I’ll be able to check email and
publish this.
It is so handy having a small market right down on the
street level. They carry just about
anything we would need in an average week – although likely cheaper at the
larger stores, Super Maxi and Coral.
Anything other than food-stuffs though, we will call a cab and head for
the bigger stores or malls.
The dogs are starting to settle in. Ginger likes to look over the balcony at the
goings on to our North – the cabbage patches.
After closer inspection, it turns out the cabbage patches are not only
cabbage, but chamomile, something that I think is broccoli, some I cannot
figure out and a few plots that are just starting to come up. They rotate the
crops so that something is almost always ready for market. We watched a couple ladies come out to the
patches with large baskets on Friday night and picked part of one of the
patches. Then they hauled all those
baskets off to the market. The next
night more folks showed up with even bigger baskets, and picked more of the
plot, then covered the baskets and left.
I’m not sure when they took them away, but they were gone by
morning. This has been going on every
night since we arrived. They bring in a
couple of young bulls to clean up after they are done picking. The bulls got Ginger’s attention. I
noticed last night they were cutting the chamomile.
This condo has more space than we know what to do with. For now, we are going with the minimalist
look. Eventually we need to buy another
bed/mattress, and furniture for the guest bedroom, and a bookcase/entertainment
center for the living room. No hurry –
still don’t have a TV. We will soon start our doctor and veterinarian
hunt. I have some recommendations from
“Gringo Tree” that I will check out.
