New Year’s Eve

Wednesday December 31

We got up early and had breakfast. We then left about 8am. Amparo, her daughter, Bernadette and the baby will leave tomorrow with her friends. Matt just took his son, Juan-Carlos. Then we picked up two boys who are the children of Ampro’s friend.

We made some stops at different stores so Matt could pick up some things for the party. Without stopping I was told that it’s exactly a two hour drive. Matt has a Chevrolet pickup truck with a back seat in it.

Matt and Ampro’s farm is 12 hectares – most of it on sides of mountains. He has a family living there that is sharecroppers. It’s good to have people living when you can’t live there full time. Otherwise people will steal what you have in the home and what crops you have. The farm cost him $40,000.

There is a home for the workers – which include a husband, wife and three children. The cabin next to that is where Matt’s family stayed. We also stayed there, too. It’s rustic there, as there is are indoor bathroom. The two bedrooms are separated by a burlap curtain. There is not even a wall between the rooms and hallway but one long burlap curtain.

He did have a cabana build which is rather large, and an outdoor dining room where there are two brick ovens build. Both building are made with wood and bamboo with a thatched roof.
About 100 feet from the house is the bathroom with a shower.

Matt has many kinds of fruit trees on his property, including papaya and avocado plus exotic fruit that I don’t know the names of. He also has yucca – which is a starch vegetable that grows underground. There are bamboo and teakwood trees, too. They also have a horse and two mules.

Matt showed us around the property. One place we walked to is down the ravine where there is a small waterfall.

The three boys that came with us rode the horse and mule (just one mule was used for some reason). They took many rides on the horse and mule with practically no stopping to let the animals rest. That is a shame. I wanted to ride but I thought I let the horse rest a bit but before I knew it they were off on it again. So, Jayne and I didn’t get to ride today. The horse doesn’t look well yet the kids rode all day.

We had lunch there but it wasn’t much. The worker didn’t cook much but Matt didn’t say or notice that there wasn’t much food.

Later in the day one worker and two boys caught fish that Matt raises in three ponds he has. He has another one but it was empty for some reason.

For dinner we had yucca and fish. I don’t recall the name of the fish but they were small and bony. I only had one fish as there is not much meat on it and a lot of picking of the bones to get to it.

In the evening we sat in the cabaña and drank wine. We told Matt about our plans of selling my properties and moving to Cyprus. He was sorry we were doing it. We told him the main reasons of doing it, which are:

Jayne’s family would not be able to visit us here and we would not be able to visit them as it’s very expensive to fly back. Also, that the house will continue to get moisture from the foundation. This will create an on-going expense plus property value will continue to drop. Ecuadorians pay less and less for a house the older it is.

At midnight we lit the fireworks to welcome in the New Year. Jayne went to bed about 1am and I along with the rest of the people went to bed about 1.30am.