New Barrio

January 31, 2012

Sarah's new house
and our lot to the right

Todd and I would like to welcome one more new neighbor to our charming Jardines de Olon neighborhood – Sarah R. who recently bought our house, furnished. Sarah is an Aussie who currently lives in Huntington Beach, and is well-traveled, remarkably energetic, diversely talented, and has experience buying international property. I’ll be talking more about her in future posts, but suffice for now to say that we are delighted to have her as a new neighbor, since our project this year will be building another house on the lot we own next door.  Sarah wants to continue making the house available for guests, and Todd and I will continue to manage it for her.

Closer view of the lot

We closed on the deal last week during our stay in Guayaquil.

In the meantime, Todd and I have rented a 2-bedroom/2 bath newly constructed Ecuadorian home in Olon for the next ten months. It’s just a short walk away from Jardines - we needed to be near the construction site, and close enough for Daisy to find us without having to cross the Ruta del Sol highway.

And boy, are we grateful to have scored on a local place during this busy holiday time of year, when rentals of any kind are difficult (if not impossible to find), and especially one as nice and new as this one. We have spent the last few weeks getting our stuff moved in, but we still have a ways to go to get settled and organized.

Keep in mind that local long-term rentals generally run around $200-400 in our area, and come without furnishings, fridge, stove, (and often without hot water showers, though our baths do each have decent “suicide heater” devices that are so far working great). Our kind landlords left a bunk bed in the house for us to use (we are going to convert that bedroom into our office and guest room). We have since then bought and had delivered a queen bed for our bedroom and a full size fridge, which we would have to eventually buy anyway for the house we will be building.

We really, really like our new barrio (further north in town, behind the police station and near the Olon CLP bus terminal). All of our neighbors are friendly, and we are getting better acquainted with this side of town. And since most of our neighbors are Ecuadorian, we have all the more opportunity to immerse in the community and practice our español.

We’ve had a few glitches: a few of the windows weren’t sealed properly, and with the nightly downpours we’ve had lately, we had a few leaks in the new house that have since been fixed. And once again (see “On the Move Again”), we are at the mercy of the city water system because our cute place does not have a cistern. The city turns off the water nightly at 10PM until around 6AM, which can be inconvenient at times, but one gets used to it.

Daisy (in the middle)
Making friends is her business

Showing her friends around

Daisy likes the new place too, but Jardines de Olon will always be her “hood” and she lacks for no attention around there. She follows us over to the new place often, and has spent a few partial nights at the new digs (we have a nice walled in back patio and driveway area) and she has made a few friends herself in the new barrio.