The start of the site selection.

Well, we've been working on the property and Barb has decided to start clearing what she thinks is the house site. She walks the southern half of the land, stops at a spot, looks around and thinks - this would be a good spot for the house. She has done this proceedure a half dozen times, I kinda hate to tell her the other half of the property is north of where she has been scouting for a house site. She is out there on hands and knees cutting brush with a pair of lopers - before it's done she will change her mind.

My task of clearing the driveway is slow going so I took a little break yesterday to see how hard the digging is going to be for the footers on the addition to the guest house.

That is some pretty nice looking dirt. I don't think we will have any trouble growing stuff here. The grass around the addition and the southern half of the property is Tussock grass as opposed to the 6 foot razor grass in the driveway and the northern half of the property - the difference being the composition of the soil.

We are still trying to get a transformer set on the pole 100 feet from the guest house, I suspect it will take as long as our residency paperwork did, with ever changing requirements and no one knowing anything about it. The project will progress, with or without electricity, someday when we least expect it they will show up to do the work.

On the Cuenca front - everything is good in Cuenca, Barb is getting pretty good at this spanish stuff. I have to take her with me to the hardware store to translate, there are some things that pointing won't get. Barbs cat is growing like a weed and is turning into quite a handsome lady.

Here we go

In the last two weeks I have made a half dozen day trips to LaPaz, to scout out supplies for the eventual building project on the property there. The hold up has been getting all the legal stuff done on our Ecuadorian residency - and now it is finally done.

When we visited here back in September of 2010, we were assured of a 10 day completion time on our papers provided we got all our proof documents apostiled in the U.S. before we came back to Ecuador. We did and even sent the, now official papers and document ahead of our departure from the U.S. so they could get a jump on the process. The day after we came back to Ecuador we visited our lawyer and were told everything was in order and the process would be complete in 2 weeks, no more. Now that the process is complete, I can tell you the process took exactly 6 months, no less. The moral of the story is this - the law doesn't change here but the administration of the law changes daily. Sometimes you get lucky and things work out - when we bought the car here it took 45 minutes, taxes, tags, registration and title - done. When I bought the land in LaPaz it took 2 days from the time I said I want it, to the time I was handed a clear title and water rights to the property. Things are done a little differently here but it has nothing to do with who you know or some other factors that are widely claimed, it has to do with who is messing around with the processing of the law.

Now that, that is all cleared up I can get down to business. The driveway to the house site on the LaPaz property is about a quarter mile long and grown up with razor grass about 6 feet tall.

The stuff with the fluffy heads is the grass I have to cut down with hedge clippers, then dig the roots up with a pick and hoe. I've got it about half done, a bull dozer would come in handy about now.

This is a view from the driveway looking due south. On a clear day there are a half dozen mountain ranges in the background. Once the driveway is cleared out and I can get some sand, gravel, steel and blocks delivered I can start on the Guest House. It really feels good to be working again.

30 days later and maybe a solution in sight.

My last post over a month ago acknowledged the end was in sight for our residency paperwork and that the legal stuff had been completed. Well here's a update on that process. In the last 5 months we have continuously been submitting documents, paperwork and waiting on the political system that has changed the process for residency 3 times since we started the process, the latest being 2 weeks ago. Barb and I both have our Censo cards which register us in Cuenca and is a prerequisite to the Cedula which is a national ID card in Ecuador and we have the little silver stamp in our passports. To this point we are into a 10 day process that has taken 5 months and still isn't complete. We are legal but not registered. This isn't a real big problem except that the national ID card is required to be able to do some stuff like buy a car, get a drivers license and open bank accounts. The point is the political system here is constantly changing in ways that affect everything - it's a frustrating system that is hard to get used to - I guess that is why there are so many ways around things here, at some point the way around may be the law.

On the building front in LaPaz - zero progress because of the redo, undo, restart and new regulations involved in our residency statis. Someday something will get done but I am no longer willing to speculate on when that will be.

The flower market on Mariscal Sucre in Cuenca.

 

Caught up in other things.

Well I am supposed to be working on the new place in LaPaz but we have gotten caught up in other stuff.

First it was the Carnival, which lasted 5 days, and I didn't want to press my luck with police check points everywhere - you know driving without a license, no passport and an expired visa. Maybe we should check on our visas, so that would be the second thing slowing down progress. One day turned into two which produced results in 5 more days. We'll have our residency visas Wednesday, then we need to go to Quito for Cedulas and of course our Censos for Cuenca. So I guess it will be a couple of weeks before we get back to business.

In the mean time Barb has decided to start her animal collection.

This is where she started, at the Feria Libre in Cuenca. After hours of looking around - there must be a thousand vendors there - for the vendors with dogs and cats, oh did I mention she had directions - this is what she found.

She has a way of finding the most deserving animals for a new home. Her name is Mocosa Poco (little brat). In less that one day she has taken over the house and is lying asleep on my lap as I type this post.

Back to work - finally

Well, I think we are finally settled into the new apartment in Cuenca. Barb has yet to set up her office area, she is still working on a plastic card table with one bookcase and a plastic patio chair. I'll see if I can talk her into picking out some office furniture this week, then my job here will be done.

We have made several trips to the property in LaPaz in the last few weeks to determine the priorities of projects, get the land registered and test out the endurance of the new car - the road to Nabon will test the limits of any vehicle.

These young heifers have been hanging out on the place for a while, the land is flatter and the grass better than their home place about a half mile away.

The first thing that needs to be done in LaPaz is to secure the property. Because of the easy access from a brand new road going to Loja from Cuenca, the entrance to the property looks like a nice area for a rest stop. I met a military transport there yesterday who had that exact thought in mind. At any rate it seems my vacation in Ecuador is over - it's time to go back to work.

Las Cabras Viejas

Finally - some linear progress. We have been in Ecuador almost 3 months and have been working on visa paperwork for nearly 5 months in total. Our passports have been in Quito at the Immigration office for the last 3 weeks, our T-3 visas are expired  and no one knows when or if we will ever see our passports again. So where is the progress ? Well, we have been continuiously making circular ( chasing our tails ) progress, taking care of setting up internet, water and electric utilities, direct t.v., only to have to redo the entire process 30 days later. We are approaching the 90 day mark and we are having to redo it all again. I guess because we don't have our paperwork ( cedula and censo ) they don't take us seriously. It really doesn't matter, we knew coming into this country there was a lot of political and public hijinks, we were hoping for the best.

This is a picture of the linear (foward) progress. I finally found some land that had a legally clear title, water rights in writing, legal access and electricity on the property. The process wasn't exactly in a straight line, but of course I am not legal here, so I had to get a Ecuadorian to buy it on my behalf. During the closing process it became clear the Ecuadorians don't like gringos buy property outside the designated gringo areas. I've been told to let a Ecuadorian handle any problems from the neighbors - I got the message - there is only 1 neighbor who is over a half mile away and there is no one else in the entire valley. It is a nice property with frontage on the Pan American Highway and the lawyer who closed on the purchase said I doubled my money the day I paid for it.

Barb and I will go to the canton ( county ) of Nabon to register the property day after tomorrow, then we'll see how things go.

One step further

For a few weeks, we had been "sweating out" part of the process of getting our residency visas.  When we came back in December, we were told that we would have them in 30 days -- our paperwork was all in order.  Our lawyer needed another copy of my passport with the date my tourist visa ran out, but that was easily taken care of.  She sent all our paperwork to her colleague in Quito for presentation to the Ministry.  Well, the very next day, the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, fired the Minister because there was rampant corruption (selling of visas, for example) in the department.  He appointed a new minister, but the office was closed for a month for house cleaning.  It reopened January 12.  We kept waiting and waiting, but no one seemed to know what was going on.  Our visas were due to expire on Feb. 17, and we had return tickets to the US for Feb. 7.  (One of the requirements to get in the country on a tourist visa is, of course, a return ticket, although no one checked to see if we had one either time we entered the country.)  We went to our lawyer and told her that if we didn't hear that our visas were approved, we would be leaving the country on our flight.  Within a couple of days, the lawyer in Quito called our lawyer and told her that our visas HAD been approved.  Our passports were sent to Quito for the application of our "silver certificates"; we should have them back this week.  We then go to Quito to get our national identity cards -- our cedulas -- and then we have to get our census cards -- our censos -- here in Cuenca. 

This means that we can look for property in earnest.  We had found a couple of places on the internet that interested us.  We saw one on Friday -- very beautiful, but remote with no access to it and no way to get electricity to it.  It was in a valley, and we suspect it floods (a river runs through it) and that it is government land; it is past the checkpoint to El Cajas National Park.  We were scheduled to look at a place in Nabon, about 50 miles from here, on Monday, but yesterday Ray received an email from the real estate agent we talked to, telling him that the property had been sold.  There is another place, also in Nabon, that we are interested in, but we haven't heard back from that real estate company yet.  The system here is unlike that in the US.  Anyway, we're giving it another month, and then we'll evaluate and make a decision.

Until next time, be well.