Yesterday, the power was out twice, once in the morning and another time just before we cooked dinner in the oven. This is like load shedding in South Africa and was resolved for us by Louise and Danie when they installed an inverter system that allowed us to have power at all times.
Need I say we are anxious to be on the move in 15 days?
Last night, the aircon worked in the bedroom after not working for several nights, which caused us to wake up several times during the night. The thoughtful owner was more than willing to fix it, but it would be weeks before a technician arrived. As it turned out, it started working again once.
When we first arrived here on October 24, there was no WiFi upstairs in the bedroom. The router on the main floor wasn’t powerful enough to reach upstairs. It took a month for the tech guy to arrive with two new routers. Now, as of two days ago, we have WiFi upstairs. At night, when I go to bed, I often reply to messages from our readers. But without WiFi, I wasn’t able to do so.
With the power going out so often, daily life is challenging: the washer stops mid-cycle, dinner is postponed, and WiFi and streaming don’t work without power, leaving us unable to work on our laptops.
I am writing this post using an offline app I have on my phone. I don’t type well on the little keyboard on my phone and pick away using the index finger of my right hand. So it goes.
At least we won’t have to return to Manta to go grocery shopping. We purchased enough to get us through a few weeks when we were at MegaMaxi last Wednesday. At that point, we didn’t know we were leaving early and would have bought less toilet paper and miscellaneous food items. However, we have enough of everything we’ll need to get us through the next two weeks, with only 15 days until departure.
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I look forward to a Costco trip in Henderson. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have felt this way.
But, with the recent health concerns, I feel comfortable being in the US for an extended period. There’s something to be said about being in a familiar place when one is not feeling like themselves. There is little concern because we don’t have a home. We’ve learned to make wherever we may be our home, with the sole exception for this period in Ecuador.
Tom felt that way when we were in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2014 and never complained about a holiday home and its environment until now.
Tonight, we won’t be going to Kokomo for dinner. It, too, has lost its charm when the food is marginal at best and the socializing is non-existent. The residents here all seem to know one another and have little time for passersby like us. We get that. Why bother cultivating a relationship with transient tourists?
So, off we go in 15 days. Yes, I am counting them down much sooner than I usually do, anxious to move on to the next phase of our lives, inevitable and timely as it is.
Be well.
Photo from ten years ago today, November 29, 2013:
