Some Improvements, New Challenges

Saturday was a good day. We found and purchased a crappy set of expensive sheets and we took a potential car to the mechanic and he said the equivalent of “look no farther, my friends.” This was good to hear, after several exhausting days of looking at cars, test driving a car that broke down along the side of the road, and test driving another that first we had to put gas in and then it had really poor steering. This one is a ’98 Grand Vitara, also crappy and expensive, but well taken care of. We paid Mocho, the mechanic, $10 for the check, and were told that with $500- 600 of repairs, it shouldn’t give us any trouble over the next year and it should be easy to sell. This story is to be continued…. On Monday we are moving on to the next stage of buying the car: negotiating a price, making sure it hasn’t been involved in any criminal activity, and having a notary stamp a contract which says that we own the car. If all goes well, maybe, just maybe, we will eventually have a car. Then we’ll need to learn to drive here…
Updates on the house. Some things are better and others are worse. Last week, our 5 gal.bottle of clean water ran out. It took three days to get a new one, because the bottle itself costs $12 and refilling the bottle only costs $1.75. We had to wait for the guys who work up here to come, then they had to take the bottle down, and then they brought up a filled bottle for us. It would probably be worth the $12 to have TWO bottles so that they could be rotated, and we would always have water. So we got back to the house this past Friday evening, and same story with the gas tank. I wanted to make dinner, and found out that it was empty. When we went to town on Saturday, we told our friends. They gave us the keys to the lab up here, and said that there was a tank we could use until we could get ours replaced. So we went to the lab, and found that the tank was locked in a new building for which we didn’t have the keys. Only one person knew where the keys were, and his phone battery was dead so no one could reach him. We finally got ahold of him, switched the gas tank, and found out that the other tank was almost empty. Meanwhile, we ran out of money on our phone and can’t make any more calls until we go recharge the account in the city. Oh, and the things that are better: we now have carpet, and sheets, and some clothes on hangars, and our clothes are sorted and organized (although still in suitcases), and we have a pretty blanket to cover up the Tiger blankets that are famous here for their warmth and ugly design, we have our desk and our toiletries organized, our sleeping bags are hanging neatly from the ceiling, and we bought a beautiful piece of art work that is hanging from our wall. It is a ceramic plate painted with a scene from the city. There were many to choose from, but Brad made the final choice based on my poor Spanish skills. We were riding on the bus past a building that said “derechoshumanos” and I thought it was a building for straight people. Brad said it means “human rights,” and this very building is in the beautifully painted plate that we purchased. We still need some shelves, a curtain, and perhaps a space heater.
Brad was sick today. He woke up feeling fine, but after a few hours decided that he wasn’t well enough to partake in field work. I went by myself, didn’t have any luck finding frogs, and lost track of time when my watch said 2:40 each time I looked at it. When I returned to the house, Brad had been sick several times, and looked awful. I’m not sure what he ate that I didn’t, but I was glad we weren’t both sick. We were debating what to do since we were out of money on our phone, when it began to rain. It down poured. I thought about walking to the Ranger’s house about half a mile down the mountain, but we decided that it was unlikely that anyone would be there late in the day. Brad didn’t feel well enough to walk down the mountain himself, and I wasn’t so confident that we would be able to find a taxi to take us into town on a Sunday afternoon. We decided to wait it out. By evening, he was feeling well enough to drink a cup of tea and play some cards. Hopefully the night goes well.
We’re thinking about renting an apartment in town. You can get something decent for $150, and something furnished with utilities (including direct TV and internet) included for $430. The cheap one doesn’t even come with a stove (although we were told they are cheap, $30). The main thing we are interested in is a hot shower and the convenience of being able to do things in town. Without a car (again, we’ll see how things go Monday), it takes us about 3.5 hours travel time to get to town and back (an hour and a half of that is walking up and down the mountain). Brad needs to be able to get to the hospital without sweating through his clothes, and we have to take care of business in town. Tuesday we meet with Jose, the guy who is supposed to be helping make the house comfortable for us and helping me coordinate my research. I guess we’ll find out in the next few days what we’ll need to do.