So one of our neighbours had a small brown dog, a tiny little thing who’s got some issues. We first named her “swallowyoursoul” ala Deadites from the Evil Dead movies because she’d go absolutely haywire barking with her teeth bared and a dangerously unhinged look in her eyes if you went within 10 feet of her house. We’d be half-afraid of her wanting to literally swallow our souls. Well over time we got used to her, and she got used to us. Even occasionally started following Tali and Gandalf on walks and making attempts at playing. She looked more sad than dangerous. And hungry. She was far too skinny, ribs and hip bones showing like a frail statue of a dog made from popsicle sticks, and she devoured any extra food we put out for her. She wasn’t the “cute fluffy” dog, she was the hungry violent barking guard dog, kept on edge to be dangerous to intruders.
When Malena was back in Canada for a few weeks, Roger saw that newly minted “Soul” was plumped up with puppy-belly. An unfixed female dog generally doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter with a ton of aggressive unfixed males wandering town. Then suddenly she vanished. Every once in a while puppy sounds could be heard but Soul was nowhere to be seen. Well a couple weeks later she reappears. And is an absolute wraith. Not an ounce of meat on her, and looking desperate.
The neighbours had blocked the spot under their gate where she used to squeeze in and out. Malena asked them about her and they admitted they had gotten rid of her because “she got herself pregnant”.
Well she’s damn stubborn and found her way back after “been gotten rid of”, wherever that was. Good on her.
Anyway it was an ugly scene, we’re upset, and have been feeding her and so have several other people in the area. She’s even taken up residence with another family down the road which makes us way happier to see her actually happy as well. She’s been wagging her tail more and more, has more meat on her bones and looks way less frail. She still comes around to play with Gandalf and in the last few days she’s even let us pet her which she’s never done before. Previously, if we’d ever put out our hands towards her she’d immediately duck and slink away.
She’s a sweet little dog. Skittish, violent, and nervous because humans hands and human ignorance made her so. Glad to see she’s got a more stable environment now.
Almost there… construction nearly over-ish
The structure of the hostel is almost done! Which means lots of last minute decisions as it wraps up. It’s been quite a learning experience and frustrating when we catch mistakes for things we should have noticed months ago. Luckily the Maestro has been patient and able to comply. Remember back when Gandalf and Tali ate our architecture plans? Well those plans had notes of changes we discussed with Patricio, and they were never carried over to the new copy we made. So inevitably some things were missed and it’s been a very round about way of fixing things. More material, more time and getting better at tactfully requesting changes from our Maestro whether it’s something he missed or something we forgot to tell him.
Nonetheless, we are making progress, we now have water and electricity! We are now working on our windows and doors and hopefully soon we can get some stairs! We’d like to chill out in our place without having to climb up a ladder balancing beers and chips and other trays of treats.
Guess what? The platform is finally gone.
The previous owner had a platform for storing gas tanks, which was very much in the way of what will be our future staircase and a general nuisance all around. When the backhoe came in for “dig shit up like a boss” Round 2, it also knocked out the platform. So now we have a patch of soil where that platform used to be, and it is also Athena’s new and hopefully final resting place.
Stress management
It’s been a rough few months. Roger getting lost in translation, Malena interrupted with questions from crew, translating and then making construction decisions together. Roger going out and buying stuff during the day, both of us still cooking for a crew of 4, piles of dishes and so very little space to work in the kitchen. The amount of dust we have to sweep daily and the allergies!! The annoying allergies that get’s you so damn cranky you hate life. Then there is the limited space we’ve had in our bedroom, having to jump over piles of clothes or bags, living out of a suitcase still, as if we were students in a dorm. Sigh.
There’s been lots of wine and beer drinking, sometimes during the day. Monday to Friday just seems like a blur of tasks that never end. Every day at around 9pm we feel like crashing as we prepare to wake up at 6am the next morning to repeat our routine, unlock all our doors, shoo our dogs from jumping all over us, open gate, take out garbage, feed the dogs, the cats, the stray, sweep our room, boil water and put out some mugs for the crew to have some coffee, then finally make ourselves breakfast and coffee/tea. We try to remember to brush our teeth in there somewhere too.
The weekend is simply too short of a breather. Saturdays going out to Ibarra or Otavalo to get stuff we can’t get in Cotacachi, tiles and toilets and faucets and piping and handles and etc. … well the list goes on. Sunday mornings we catch the food market at 8am and buy groceries for a week.
Then there are the random shit stuff that happens like no internet for 4 days and then running out of our data plan (we may have netflix’d a bit too much tethering from our phone in lieu of no wifi), then our electricity was out while the guys tested out electrical in the new house. We also had a week with no water, so we had buckets of water set aside in our already very crammed kitchen, which we realized later the dogs and cats were drinking out of… argh. And then there is our dogs that are still about a year old so they have so much effing energy they are constantly causing trouble. We have to remind ourselves that this is temporary, and yes we seriously did have our Rick and Morty moment.
We had a deal. Calling out a rip off
We hired a granite guy to install our granite counter in our kitchen. After coming to take a look at what we wanted done he quoted us 4 days of labour. He had promised he’d come with materials the following day (he already brought a duffel bag full of his equipment), to start work. Before leaving he had asked us for $200 for materials so we gave it to him, not really knowing what was required and paying for a portion upfront has been normal so far. In true Ecuadorian fashion, he did not come by the following day, instead came by two days later with simply a backpack. Malena had asked him where his materials were, and he had said in his backpack, so she asked him to show us his materials since we’d given him $200 dollars. He was a little shocked that Malena had asked so bluntly and when he opened his bag she started counting each product, small tins of special glue and silicone and other stuff we don’t know about, but in total the cost added up to maybe $16. She asked where the rest went and he had said that it was for other stuff he had in his duffel bag. He’d already brought over the duffel bag on the first day, it was his tools which he owned and didn’t need us to buy. Malena rolled her eyes and let him be. He knew he was caught ripping us off, but we let him do his work and decided we would confront him at the end of the day about showing us receipts.
Near the end of the day he says it should only take him one more day. (originally we agreed a price based off of 4 days of work). So at this point we are a little annoyed because he lied about how long it would take and he lied about material cost. He then has the audacity to ask for $20 dollars for his ride from Ibarra to Cotacachi. The bus ride is $0.55. So we basically realized at this point this guy simply thought we were suckers. Malena confronts him and says we are discounting $180 from what we owe him since he did not use that money for materials. The guy disagrees and both him and Malena have a huge and loud disagreement match which ends up with him demanding to call the police. Malena responds with how glad she will be to have a cop come by and witness how much he is ripping us off. In the end, we stood our ground and did not end up being the “gringos” that get taken advantage of.
So after some yelling he finally leaves our property with half of our counter top finished. Great … this was the only guy we knew about and there is nobody in Cotacachi who installs granite. He had done all the hard parts (cutting and sanding all the sections out) so to end the story on a good note, we got our crew to simply put all the pieces together and it actually ended up costing us less. Luckily one of the crew members had done this once before so they could handle the rest. And we do really like our kitchen counter.
Concert from the terrace, Cotacachi isn’t just a leather town, it’s also known for it’s music
So we’ve been so damn busy that we feel we are missing out on events happening in town simply because we just wanna crash at 9pm because we are just too damn tired to do anything else. We managed to catch a bit of a concert here at Parque Matriz and discovered Pilsener has released 1 litre bottles. Yes. 1000ml of beer in a single serving. Proper.
Anyhoo, that was a while ago now but only a week ago we hear another concert happening. A much larger one, out on the edge of town as part of a month of festivities here in Cotacachi. We decide to crack open a beer and stand in our new second floor terrace and just watch the concert from a distance. It was a blob of light, but the sound was enough to drink and listen and bob our heads to. That was a moment of peace as we had one of those, holy shit this new house(hostel) is ours. A nice fuzzy feeling knowing we’re doing the right thing creeps in now and again.
Can’t wait to start brewing more often again
We are currently in phase 2. Building a basement for fermentation is under construction!
It’s seemingly been ages since we’ve brewed a batch and there’s an entire barrel full of malts, and drawers or hops and yeasts in the fridge we haven’t had time or energy to use yet.
8-Legged Hyper-Intelligent Freaks
Just a reminder that spiders are everywhere and holy crap are they smart. They may be tiny, but when there is eye contact with those little buggers, they know you know they are there. The moment you blink they disappear. Or sometimes the other way around. Malena had a moment of sadness when we had to move Athena’s grave due to construction. She was wiping her face with her sleeve one moment and the next, there is a spider right on her sleeve, luckily she noticed right before wiping her face again.
OH SHIT!
There is also a giant spider that Roger noticed under the BBQ not moving, but a second later it took off and vanished almost as though it knew it was spotted. Seriously this thing was the size of Roger’s hand and crazy fast. So now it’s possibly hiding on the property somewhere plotting it’s next move.
And no you don’t want pictures. So here’s some amazing graffiti near Parque Matriz instead.
Running into crazy homicidal German shepherds
Yes, this is what happened to Malena. She went for a run at 6am with Tali and Gandalf. On her way home there is a man who owns 3 german shepherds with his gate open as he took his car out. From a distance Malena stood frozen, realizing the dogs were out. Usually they are barking loudly behind a gate and literally lunge between the bars and try to nip at your clothes as you walk by. They’re large and exceptionally terrifyingly uncontrolled animals.
This time they were out and two decided to go for Gandalf and Tali. As one runs towards them, lunging to bite, Gandalf jumps up to play, but realizes the malice in the dog, Tali gets scared and at that point they are all going crazy and Malena has to let go of their leashes. (She has them on leashes since her running route is along the mountain road with cars). While Gandalf escapes and runs off, the other german sheppard keeps going at it, with his mouth on Tali’s tail just swinging her like a rag doll. All Malena could do is scream and try and split them up, but scared she will get bit she tries to kick them apart, but the dog is just a savage after Tali.
Eventually Tali runs off and the damn dog keeps chasing her. All meanwhile the owner of these psycho dogs just smiles, laughing, and thinks the whole thing is a damn joke. Eventually Malena grabs a large rock and throws it at the dog attacking Tali, but by then the owner of those crazy dogs had realized how sever this whole thing was and came to get his dog.
After yelling at the guy Malena had to go running to find where Tali and Gandalf had gone. From a distance she could see Tali, rattled by the whole thing, wandering aimlessly and stressed out in the middle of the street while cars are honking. Malena runs to catch up and finally gets a hold of Tali’s leash and headed home, hoping Gandalf was smart enough to head in that direction. She was and when Malena got home, both of us checked on Tali and luckily she was okay. Poor thing was just so stressed out, as was Malena.
Max and Jup
Max’s death wish: pretty much every time we have the gas grill fired up he tries to get on the counter to sniff and eat what’s in the pot. Every time we yell at him and get him off the counter. But he tries and tries again. He evidently has no concept of how flammable he truly is.
Jup and Max are far more confident now and wandering the property more and more even with Tali and Gandalf roaming. They’ve learned not to bolt, as the dogs see anything moving fast and immediately go into chase mode. We also made a hole in the storage room door as well so they have more places to explore dog-free.
Our first guest!
So we had our first guest. Ken came down from Toronto for a couple weeks to explore Ecuador, his first time here. Went to explore the gorgeous town of Baños in the south among other explorations.
Also, the cable car to the top of the mountain overlooking Quito is awesome, we all did that too. May look barren but it’s beautiful in it’s sparse landscape and yes, you will not have a lot of oxygen that high up. But it’s still awesome.
We also put him to work helping us lift furniture up a ladder to the second floor since we don’t have stairs yet. And of course he joined with our daily dog walks, meeting several other furry butts along the way.
Happy Thanksgiving!!