It has been a tough week for me. I got sick last Saturday night, with some sort of stomach virus. It got so bad I got dehydrated and then my BP started climbing too high and I had to take meds to bring that back under control. Yesterday I was finally feeling better, then my BP tanked, so I had to back off the meds again. In the middle of all of this, I am struggling with the altitude. While it is only about 1800 feet higher than where we lived at San Joaquin, it is a dramatic difference on our lungs. At 6500+ feet Lisa and I both have struggled just a bit. Today, I am out working in a new garden space, and feeling pretty good. I have attached a picture of the new space and current progress.
Rosa is making great progress at clearing weeds from the fruit orchard, it looks a hundred times better. I will do a video tour and send that out later. Many of the fruit trees were so overgrown with vines, they were being suffocated. Now they have room to grow and are not fighting for water and nutrients. We had a dump truck full of mulch delivered yesterday which we will now put down where Rosa has weeded and cleared. The mulch is shredded sugar cane stalks and leaves after the extraction process has occurred. We got 8 yards delivered for $60.
We had to go to Loja this week to get Lisa’s visitor Visa extension taken care of. She almost became an illegal alien! We heard that my Residency Visa has been approved, but nothing has come via email yet. Once we get that, we can apply for Lisa’s Residency Visa. Then, maybe she won’t get kicked out of the country! While in Loja, we purchased a new water heater which won’t be here until Wednesday. We also had lunch upstairs at the Mercado, which was a fun experience with live music and lots of great food.
The weather has been a little on the cool side, with lots of clouds. Yesterday we got full sun and it was a little warm. We like the cool nights, which are perfect for sleeping. We still think we have the best weather on the planet here. It is so interesting how you can drive 15 minutes in any direction and experience a different climate.
We are meeting with a Notary in Vilcabamba this afternoon so that we can get an employment contract notarized. This is between Francisco, Rosa and Lisa and I. This is necessary here in Ecuador to prevent claims against your property. While we allow Francisco and Rosa to live here free, we must show on paper that they are paying $200 per month in exchange for work done on the property. Otherwise, it’s possible that they could claim we gave them the property! We don’t think for a moment that either of them would ever do this, but the attorney said we must have it, so there you go!
I am attaching a few pics of various things, so enjoy!
Dios te Bendiga!
April 2018
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