Daily life at the casitas

Our normal routine is to work a few hours in the morning with breaks to stare at the ocean waves followed by a simple lunch and a walk in to town or a nap.

The walk is about an hour on the beach except at high tide. At high tide you'd have to walk in the soft sand and it would take longer. Luckily the tides are in our favor.

Puerto de Cayo has a dozen restaurants along the Malecón (beach view) - seafood and beer are not unlikely in our day. The town is very small, less than 5000 residents, and has four or five shops around a town square with some food. Enough for us to pick up some meat, eggs and veggies for dinner. Then a short walk to the gas station to catch a local taxi. The ride home is $2.

There in no hot water in the casitas and the water is not potable. We can boil water to wash dishes or pretreat it with chlorine. Drinking and cooking water comes in 5 gallon jugs.

The shower head is electric; it heats the water as it comes out. They call them suicide showers. Don't touch it when the hot water is on; you will feel a jolt.

The clothes washer requires a bit more intervention than at home but it is automatic. You manually control the water addition, then open the drains when the timer turns off the cycle, close the drain and add the rinse water, open the drain again, then transfer the clothes to the centrifuge to spin them "dry". Then you hang them on the line. Until today we haven't had much sun but the wind is strong and things dry quickly.

We have both a gas stove and an electric skillet for cooking and a random collection of leftover spices, some not marked, to keep the cooking interesting. Right now we are waiting on the veggie truck. He comes on Monday morning and is like a mobile roadside stand. There is another truck that delivers later in the week but apparently this guy has better prices and is the local favorite.

Since today looks to be a sunny day (rare here in Winter) we will pick up trash along the beach as our "work" and then head out on a bus to Las Frailes; it is part of the National Park of Machalilla). It's about 20 minutes South of us and has hiking trails and a good swimming beach.