Cuenca Updates: Thursday March 29, 2012

Thursday Mar 29/12 update

Bella left to meet Michael Berger at the lawyer’s office to get the final deed for the house and then to go get the utilities, water and power in to our names, and get automatic payments arranged through the bank.

I struggled from another bad night to get outside and look to the sky which was threatening in every quadrant. After starting east along the other side of the river, directly into a dark cloud, I thought better of that move and doubled back. Ignoring a slight charley-horse, I then proceeded to head south towards El Valle and a patch of blue sky.

As I was trying to get my camera going to catch a hummingbird my phone went off, but I missed the call. I also missed the hummingbird as a result. The phone rang again. It was Bella asking if I was still at home because she wanted the numbers off the meters. Nope, sorry, I’m not at home.

I was about to catch the bus to the top of the mountain when the phone rang a third time and it was Bella again informing me that the lawyers had put everything in my name (we are all male chauvinists here) and that meant I had to come and join them, so there went my jaunt for the day.

I thought I was being clever by slipping past home and getting the meter readings before catching a bus right away to meet them at the Empressa Electrical building. Who would have guessed they wanted the serial number of the meter, not the reading?? It turns out it wasn’t that important as they already had all those details.

Things go much smoother now that we have our Cedula residency papers for this kind of stuff.

Once we did the electrical, it was a cab ride downtown to the Etapa office for the water. Then another cab ride to the bank. It is a good thing we have Michael to interpret for us to make things go very smoothly.

The bottom line is that we are now officially, officially, officially owners of our castle. YaHoo!!

We stopped at Papa John’s for a quick nooner pizza before heading home again.

I made a very quick side trip to the Rotary Market to get a small carved wooden knick-knack box with a lock to keep our grocery money in. The box was a whole $5.

Once home, I was disappointed I had never got one photograph today so I figured I would check out the flowering trees in front and I might get lucky and catch a hummer.

As I was looking along our block I was struck by the different varieties of trees just in our block alone, so I decided to take a shot of each one and see if there is a horticulturalist out there who wants to take a guess at the types of trees/plants they are…. Anyone?? Oh,… and I got lucky and saw this little green hummer too.

Enjoy the pics. That was today’s excitement. Hugs to all.