Well, after a year of talking about it and months of prep (trying to make sense of air travel to this part of the world) and 30 hours of airports, flights and layovers we have arrived at Casa Isabella. We landed last night in Manta at 7:30 and were met at the airport by Jo-Lynne. A bubbly, beautiful woman who has been living in Mirador for 3 years. She de-stressed the moment from the minute we greeted.
Our very first experience in Ecuador was arriving at the grocery store half an hour before it was closing and let loose with a cart to get our startup supplies. We will be keeping a list of items and prices as we go and learn more about how to get the bargains. Our initial shopping excursion cost more than usual I guess because we were buying paper products, detergents, food, to beer and wine etc. First bill at SuperMaxi was $165.
Any time I mention a price I will simply use US dollars. It would not be fair to convert to Canadian because what cost $1.30 today could cost $1 next month.
There is a corner store here on the project. Did a price comparison to what was in the grocery store and markup isn’t terrible. Will do for the things that you don’t want to carry on the bus.
Met our hosts this morning, did a walkthrough of the house and asked a lot of questions. Pretty much set up except for the wifi in the house. Need the IT dude to show up and troubleshoot but until that happens I am happy I packed a LAN cable in my tech stash. Works well but I have to go to the laundry room to connect. Oh well, pretty unimportant in the global sense of things.
Took our first walk along the beach this afternoon. If I were younger I would shout “surfs up dude” but we were more than happy to listen to the crashing of the waves and watch the various sand crabs scurrying as you approached them. Pellicans flew in formation overhead.
