A week went by, and now it's July. At least it seems like that when you travel for a couple of months. We were glad to get out of the storms and bugs in Florida, and ready to try our luck in Ecuador again. We returned to Cuenca for a few days, planning to visit the shock wave guy for a follow up, and have someone look at Joan's shoulder, which was deteriorating. The shock wave Dr. was in the USA visiting his kids, so we just saw the original ortho guy and got some ultrasounds and xrays of Joan's shoulder. Good news was no tears in the tendons, but the down side is that nothing can be done about it except long painful rehab. He started her on anti-inflammatory medicine with glucosamine and sent us on our way.
We decided that the only reason to return to my Dr. was to tell him I was good, so we took off to Malacatos. I am more mobile than I have been in a couple of years and loving every minute of it, with the possible exception of the soreness from overdoing it now and then. We returned to the same house, as we had paid a portion of the rent to secure a spot for our Ecuador possessions and to skip looking for a new rental on return.
This is an example of how things go for the unwary. The ceiling of this A frame house is supported with Ubingue wood timbers which is an extremely hard and totally water resistant wood, an excellent material for floors. It was very expensive 3 years ago when this house was built, and is virtually unavailable now. The background wood is actually floating floor, totally unable to tolerate moisture or wetness. There is no rhyme or reason to this, so the owner needs to pay a lot of attention to the building process.
We visited the property, and everything seemed intact. We started looking for a tractor guy to fix the road and ran around in circles for a few weeks trying to line something up. We were convinced by an english speaking local to hire a more expensive guy with a bigger tractor because of the extent of the damage to the road. It was to cost $25 instead of the usual $20/hr. Turns out he was the one who had finished the construction on the road originally, but had not been paid to finish it well. He showed up a week or so later than promised and tore into it. He worked miracles with the big tractor, moving very large rocks into the ruts and holes, filling them in with material from above.
Everything flows down hill in the mountains, so the fill was just pulled from the high side or gathered from the rubble which had tumbled down from above. As I was to learn over and over, things are not always what you expect. When he finished the road in one day instead of the 3 or 4 we had expected, he told me it costs $350 instead of the the $25/hr. I had been promised by his friend. It was still a better deal than a smaller tractor for several days, but my expectations were not met. Never let anyone do anything for your without a clear understanding of the cost. The people we deal with are almost evasive when you asked what they charge or what a job will cost. This seems to be because they hope it will take a long time so they can make more money.
The next step was to build a bodega or shed on the property to give us a place to keep tools and materials for the house project and also to enable us to apply for electricity. The guy I was considering for the house project agreed to build the bodega for a fixed price which we found reasonable, so we went for it. They worked for about a week and finished it up on time and only slightly over budget. It turned out that the dump truck bringing rocks, gravel, sand and bricks could not make it up the final part of the driveway because it was too steep, so all the materials were dumped at the entry to the driveway and ferried to the site with the contractors 4x4 pickup truck. This added a bit of unforeseen time and work to the project, which resulted in an extra $100 and a day more time. We were pretty satisfied with the results and now had a one car garage with steel doors for a base in the mountains.
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| Moving the rocks |
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| The Finished Bodega/Garage |
We were now in need of electricity for the construction of the house. We had been told that if we apply with 5 other neighbors, the government would set up the electricity for the neighborhood without cost to us. I spent a few days looking for some neighbors, but they are few and far between. The first one I asked about this asked me "Why would I want to pay for electricity?". Hard to make payments if you garden and tend cows for a living. This was beginning to look like a long process as it is driven from the national level, and wouldn't even be budgeted until the fiscal year following approval. We decided to see what the electric company wanted to just hook us up. We had been told that it would cost $3000 and take three months, but when they came, they said we would need four poles. a transformer and permission to cut trees on the neighbor's land. The proposal came by e-mail a few days later and it would cost $6500 and take two months. I got a call from the engineer the following morning asking when I wanted to start. I told him not now as I didn't have that much money lying around. I think I can buy a generator and run it for 5 or 10 years at that cost. This will also allow us to get on with the house project without having to rent a generator for the work.
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