Cuenca Updates: Tuesday June 19, 2012

Tuesday June 19/12 update

Bella is off for the Book Exchange, the weaving store, and for groceries.

I was up early to do my Spanish class homework. I did it first thing this morning, coffee in hand, for 2.5 hours. I do honestly know that this is the only way I will retain anything is to do it first thing in the morning when my one brain cell is active. The problem is to force myself to do it religiously.

I am going back and forth with JD’s Private Transportation trying to arrange an exciting photography trip that will be inexpensive and attractive to others too. He had indicated 6 hours in a 7 passenger vehicle, 4 adults, 3 kids, would be about $100 for 6 hours. Today he quoted me $40 each for a minimum of 6 adults for a 12 hour day. I am having trouble fathoming why the big difference today when the price should be going in the other direction….

The darn Internet has dropped twice in the last ½ hour and I can’t reach the service manager or David, the English-speaking fellow, to lodge a complaint. There is not a day that goes by without at least one interruption and there are no opportune times for such outages. We are always communicating and uploading and it is a royal pain in the ass when you have spent a lot of time putting something together only to have it all dashed away in a nanosecond. I am getting very fed up with this inconsistent service but I honestly have not found a viable alternative yet.

I was coming up the stairs this morning and both Peso and Pancho were very intent on something near the rice husk bags. It must have been a bug of some sort so I moved the freezer to give them a better view and access. Peso especially is the hunter-killer and he will wait for ages to chase down his prey. We haven’t seen any results yet though.

Bella is busy finding flights, etc for my trip next January. She is a whiz at coordinating flights, hotels, times, etc. I have stipulations to keep the number of hops to a minimum to reduce the chances of missing flights, and to also allow at least 1/5 hours for each layover for the same reason. I don’t care if I have to fly at night, just as long as the trip length is reasonable and we can avoid over-nighting anywhere, with taxis, hotels etc. I only want to handle my luggage at the beginning and end of the trips. She is great at putting all this together and I am relieved at not having to do it.

I am trying different settings on my camera, with the new tripod, to get some sharp shots of Tom. We did manage to get a few. The last shot really shows why the species is called "Sparkling VioletEars".

It is essentially coming up to our “winter” season in 2 days and yet the tree out front is already sprouting its new set of leaves! Something does not compute, but then we don’t expect our trees to be naked for 6 months of the year either. Maybe this happens twice a year here???

Our lemon trees are already flowering so I haven’t killed them yet. Bella claims to have a black thumb so I am in charge of keeping all our plants alive. We now have 9 live plants, which is up from the 0 we had in Okotoks (if you don’t count the one I had at work). Since this is a tropical area it is better to keep them on the dry side rather than over-water them.

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