Enjoying Salinas

Dear Family and Friends,

We drove to the coast on Saturday, the day before the census. We picked up Charlie and Bruce and left Cuenca about 7:30 am and did not have much traffic until we hit Guayaquil. For the next hour we had a marvelous nail biting tour of the city....some places we saw several times. Eventually, we came out the other side of Guayaquil on the correct highway to the beach.

Sunday was a lock down day. We had to stay indoors from 7:00am until 5:00pm. This is how the census is done in Ecuador. Everyone, except police, emergency workers and census takers are required to stay in their home during this time. The police were out to enforce this requirement.

We are staying in a 3 bedroom condo on the beach. We are observing the world from the 16th floor. Sunday was like a science fiction movie.....no cars, no people, nothing going on outside.

Our census takers came to count us around 11:00am. Thanks to Charlie, our appointed interpreter, it all went very well. We had six census takers for the four of us. The census takers were high school students.

Below is Charlie answering the questions for us.


We have been having a wonderful time and although I had hoped to be posting more to the blog about our trip, the internet here is frustratingly slow.

We have been playing a board game we brought along called Upwords, eating lots of wonderful seafood, and yesterday we drove up the coast to visit Bob and Rox.

We stopped on the way up to do some shopping. Here is Charlie with a vase he picked out.



Bob and Rox took us to the famous Casa Blanca restaurant in Montinita. We had a great visit and a delicious meal. Bob and Rox are great hosts.


Here are Chuck, Rox, Bob and Bruce enjoying the sunshine while Charlie and I shopped.



We are taking Charlie and Bruce to the airport in Guayaquil on Saturday and picking up Randy and Karen, who are arriving at the airport from Cuenca to join us for our second week.

Oh, and least I forget, we saw the new unit Bob and Rox have created to rent to guests who want a fabulous Ecuadorian beach experience. It is absolutely beautiful....great work. Their pictures do not do it justice. A nice quiet place to relax. We will go back and rent from them on another trip.

We are having a wonderful vacation from retirement.

Hugs,
Nancy and Chuck