Beer-Thirty

July 29, 2011

Our friend Jorge owns the nearby tienda that Todd and I frequent (“Bandito George”).  We have become quite fond of Jorge over the years, and he has been a good friend to us too, along with his oldest son, Teo.  Jorge is a hustler, and he works hard. In the last year, he has also opened up a cabana on the playa (we call it “Jorge’s on the Beach”) where he does a booming business during season selling snacks, renting beach awnings, and offering fresh coconuts trimmed, punctured and “strawed” for the juice; he will then carve and bag the coconut meat when customers are finished with their drink. 

Lorenzo & Jorge

We often go there to share a nice frosty beer or two at noon time (and when Jorge’s at the Beach is closed, we park ourselves outside his street-side tienda).

It’s kind of become pleasant routine after our morning work is finished; it’s a time for Todd and I to go over our plans/agenda for the rest of the day.  Typically, a few other local Ecuadorian neighbors are hanging around too. Often Jorge’s 8-year old outgoing granddaughter Mallory is around. She is smart as a whip, has a great desire to learn Ingles, keeps a notebook to write her new words in, and so she and I practice simple words together when we can.

When my brother Jack is in town, he has embraced our noon ritual and mentioned in a recent email that he missed having beers at Jorge’s. One local that often lingers around Jorge’s is “Lorenzo” (very friendly, but of dubious gender – and I don’t mean this meanly. To further confuse the matter, Lorenzo has a similar sibling – we think a twin – and it’s easy to confuse the two). Todd and Jack and I usually sit around telling funny stories and laughing a lot during beer-thirty, and Lorenzo always enjoys these conversations, though he doesn’t speak a lick of English.

Occasionally he pipes up with a comment, though we don’t understand him any better than he understands our chats. He’s taken a shine to all of us, but especially my brother, and every time Jack would laugh, Lorenzo would heartily laugh along, which sent us all into further fits of giggles, Lorenzo included. Fond memories and fun times.

A couple of nights ago, Todd and I bought a bottle of rum from Jorge. When we later opened it, we noticed that the lid wasn’t sealed as usual. As we were pouring ourselves a couple of drinks, we also realized it smelled nothing like rum, but more like “cana” (the cheap sugar-cane based liquor popular here, but given the concern over the tainted and deadly alcohol incident in the Los Rios province lately, we weren’t taking any chances and tossed our drinks down the sink). We returned the tampered rum bottle to Jorge the next day, who graciously replaced it with an unadulterated bottle of new rum.

The most interesting thing was that he then proceeded to put our opened and quarter emptier bottle back on the shelf…I don’t suppose it’s likely he has any type of “return authorization” policy with his vendors, and more than likely he will re-sell it again to some less picky local at a discount. I might add that I’ve noticed in the past a few stores around here with bottles of alcohol, or cola, or water that seem “less than full” on shelves or in fridges,  and I generally scrutinize before purchase, but that night we were in a hurry to get to a party.

We’ve been quite the social butterflies lately and it seems like every other night one of our friends is giving a dinner or a party or inviting us over for cocktails. It’s been fun, but frankly I’m getting sorta worn out…. Part of getting older, I guess.

A little over a month ago, Todd and I went to the 4^th Anniversary of the Montanita Spanish School and a birthday tribute/memorial to Warwick (“Waz”) White, founder of the school.  Waz (a New Zealander) died almost a year ago in tragic accident in an eastern European country shortly after participating and placing (winning?) with an Ecuadorian team in a triathlon type competition. Waz was a great guy, a friend of ours, much respected around here, and one who is still dearly missed by many.

His sister Jacqui has since moved here to over-see his affairs, along with her three adolescent/young adult kids. She’s a great gal too, works hard, and has become a friend of ours as well.

Jacqui & Todd

We’ve also had more of an opportunity to spend with Ladd & Marilyn (and Dallas, Ladd’s mom) from New York State during their month stay in nearby Curia.  Such fun people! They’ve been looking for Ecuador property and aside from their time here, they also explored Quito and Cuenca and surrounding areas.  While they were on the coast, they took a number of side trips and we believe their hearts have been captured by the Bahia/Crucita area (about 6 hours north of us) and we’re happy to think they will eventually migrate to Ecuador. They left yesterday morning for a few more days of exploration in the Banos region before heading back to the States.

On their last night here, they invited us to their Curia place for cocktails and dinner, and we had a wonderful time with them. We had a chance to see a number of pics that Ladd has taken (a talented photographer and author of a fledgling and promising blog called “Next Stop Ecuador”).

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post about them – they very thoughtfully brought us a few things we’ve been craving, I suppose from reading this blog, since we didn’t specifically solicit these items, but I very nearly fell at their feet when they presented these to us (see pic below).

I feel safe to say that all of us expats living here regularly, unashamedly, and perhaps promiscuously send wish lists to all of our friends and visitors coming to visit, but L&M unexpectedly brought these goodies, and we are ever so grateful.  How they managed to get the Jimmy Dean sausage down here in good shape, I still can’t figure out, but I have died and gone to heaven now.

A couple of nights ago, Todd and I attended a baby shower for TJ and Whitney of Casa del Sol, who are expecting a baby boy next month. Their/our friends are a little bit younger bunch than us, but probably the crowd we count as our closest friends. All have been here as long as or longer than us, trying to make a living – not retired – and just a great group of amigos; a nice mix of expats and locals. Hell, most of them are the same age as my kids (in the early to late thirties age bracket) and more of them are enticing their parents (our age) to join them living here too, so it’s become more and more like a “family” group of comrades. The “kids” party late while us older folks eventually tiptoe off to bed or a quiet game of cards by 11:00 PM. (A big shout out to Judy – if you are reading this. She is our young friend Leslie’s mom, who is temporarily back in States. Hurry back).

Tonight we attended the 10^th birthday party of Polette (“Paulett”/Paula), daughter of Susana (the “esposa” of our long time, four year friend German Mike).  We are particularly fond of Polette, especially since we lived next door to them for nearly 5 months in a rented apartment during the Dec-Mar busy season last year while our beach house was booked with vacationers). During that time, I taught Polette a game my siblings and I used to play growing up, called “Gotcha”….This is a version of “tag, you’re it”, but instead of punching someone on the arm, you stick your tongue out at them…The idea being that you don’t want to be the last one to see a tongue stuck out at you last, or you are “it”.

My siblings and I were great at doing this at the dinner table, which would alternately either annoy or amuse our parents, and we came up with some very surreptitious techniques to “get” each other at mealtimes.  Even now, as middle aged folks, we still do this when we are together, and I taught it to Polette, who always plays it with me now.  She in turn shared it with some of her young friends, and the birthday party tonight (which is very big deal here with lots of food, games, decorations, music and 10-yr old kids dancing) did kind of evolve into a “gotcha” marathon.

SO, FOR MY SIBLINGS AND MY KIDS AND OTHER FRIENDS WHO KNOW THIS GAME:

I am signing off with this picture:

GOTCHA!