We lost Athena on Wednesday. That morning we weren’t woken up by her meowing at the door at 6am. That morning she wasn’t sitting on Roger’s chest meowing in his face to get up and feed her. That morning she wasn’t under our feet meowing for breakfast in the kitchen. That morning she wasn’t fighting…
Progress Progress Progress
It’s been feeling like we’ve had a cloud over us for some time now but as we’ve learned to take that big deep breath, we’ve now been seeing changes. Good, positive changes. Not every step forward is followed by a step back. It helps that Tali, Max, Athena, and Jup are always ready to cuddle…
Surrender and Acceptance
It’s been more than two years since we dreamed about moving down to Ecuador to start a hostel brewery! It’s been a funky, long, and tiring trip and we still have a long way to go. But only recently this year have we started to feel more at ease. Sometimes we have to surrender and…
Welcome Tali!
So it’s almost two weeks since we got Tali! We’ve been wanting a dog since we got down here, but we were thinking it would be too bold to get a puppy before construction. So it was a little unexpected but not totally surprising when Malena called Thursday evening excited saying “I almost adopted a dog!”…
“Miercoledi”
So we’re tackling “Operación Roger Aprende Español”. Every morning, with Malena’s guidance (and copious coffee) we tackle a page from a dictionary (it has pictures!!) that is split into topical sections. So far covered the calendar, numbers, and dates. Roger is incredibly confused. Intestinal Fortitude We got munchy at the mercado while picking up some…
Familiar Smells
Carnaval So we walked into a warzone. Willingly. Cascada Peguche near Otavalo is a beautiful place, with a beautiful waterfall feeding a speedy little river. When we were in Quito last week the staff at the hostel said “don’t go to Peguche for Carnaval, it’s brutal, people are savages, don’t go!”. So needless to say…
Election Leads to a Run Off
So last weekend known as the Dry Weekend, was pretty much dead everywhere including the nightlife, which we kind of expected but was hard to learn first hand. We decided to go out of town for a day anyways to tour Ibarra’s Yahuarchocha lagoon with a backpack full of booze but it turns out that…
More Panic More Paperwork
Our agent had some happy news for us around Valentine’s Day, our container arrived in port a week early! And with that, more paperwork on short notice. Thankfully another long trip to Quito wasn’t necessary as we could get the papers we needed from offices in Ibarra and Otavalo, sooooo much closer. Fingers crossed, the…
Death by 1000 paper cuts
We’ve spent most of this week doing what feels like the most painful process of this whole move. Getting our documentation sorted out! It only took two trips into Quito, (pre-sunrise, 6am, 3 hour bus ride from Cotacachi) multiple cab rides to multiple offices and waiting in long lines, one instance where there were 131…
Week 1: Late arrivals and not so happy cat reunion.
We’ve been here a week! Wahoo! We were supposed to be here two weeks ago, but due to a lost passport mishap which we only realized the night before, we had to cancel our flights, make a few trips to the consulate and finally rebook one week later. Our Flight: Travelling with two cats turned out…