Souvenir Photo Studio, by Al Bourassa: Friday March 16, 2018 Travel+Lunch

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Friday March 16, 2018

Thursday was an extremely tough day, having to leave Cristina and our puppies, and having to return to work harder to sell the house in Cuenca. I have a much better appreciation of what a wonderful person my Cristina really is, in spite of the hardships she faces. I am extremely proud of her for handling the untimely death of her son and then to have this damned tumor on her right ovary. She has a cousin helping her now to push legal inroads into the cause of death and then the medical system which wants to waste valuable time duplicating tests already done.

She has adopted out some of the puppies so the load is getting more manageable. One mommy with 5 cute babies, 2 mildly older black females (probably Labs), then the 5 that came from Ecuador. I sure do miss the happiness of the dogs when we return from an outing and cuddling with them.

I had my last 6am walk with the 5 Ecuador dogs with Cristina helping out.

At 10:30 we left the house to walk to the bus station about 7 blocks away. I had only a backpack with a pillow and my fannypack as well. We bought my ticket for $4 for the 90 minute ride to Cali in an air-conditiond minibus and did our tearful farewells.

At the Cali bus terminal, I was asking where to buy a ticket to the airport and I was pointed right on to a bus that left immediately. I later had to hurriedly pay the driver my $2.50 for him to go through a toll station.

As a traveler I have always been extremely fortunate to always get where I was going, never bumped, etc. Only once did an an airline change my flights which royally screwed up my connections. I thought that my luck had run out because TAME, Ecuador's government-owned airline almost never made it on the way in and now there was no jet to leave at the appointed time. Finally an empty jet came and we were rushed on board 45 minutes late to go to Esmereldas and Ecuadorian Customs, where the layover was supposed to be only 55 minutes... Surprisingly, the grabbed those of us heading to Quito and plowed us through Immigration first and back to the plane, which was almost empty, and rush to Quito to catch the same darn plane, again shortening what was again to be a 55 minute layover. Every airport we have to go through security, so as we de-planed, they called those of us going to Cuenca to another special line and rushed us through and back to the same plane. Crude, but effective.

I half-expected to be asked for proof of health insurance but that didn't happen, thank goodness. I was also surprised that there was no inspection in Cuenca so I was able to rush right through, grab a cab on the street and be home by 9pm. I lasted about an hour more, preparing documents for Friday before crashing for the night.

For a week, I have not even looked at RedBubble or Fine Art America and that is going to wait again until at least tomorrow.

This morning, I was out before 9am with color copies of my Cedula and my Coopera bankbook, had to kick-start Buzzer, and headed straight to a Notary office to get them "certified" before heading to Banco Del Pacifico to see what my share of the latest payout would be. I have had reports from other people and there was no rhyme or reason to the amounts being paid.Anyway, of the $3675 owed, I got back another $1522 today. Whether we will ever see the rest or not is always a question mark.

Then I ran to the SRI office as it is the last day that I could put in my IVA refunds, and that went smoothly as well. This was all accomplished by 9:40.

There was a Banco Pichincha branch a couple of blocks away so I deposited the cheque there so I don't have to worry about utility payments for a while.

The larder was bare so I popped in to Coarl on Buzzer just to get a few necessities, like my daily salad fixings. Here is the tally as you can see on the bill below:

$0.31 - Medium head of cabbage (better for you than lettuce - good for 7 meals)

$2.20 - 7 green tart apples (my fruit for the day)

$3.51 - 7 Granadilla (high in anti-oxidants and more fruit for me)

$1.01 - 3 large ripe tomatoes (I usually buy only 1/2 ripe so they last longer)

$1.31 - 3 small-medium cucumbers

Total is $8.34 for the major ingredients for a week of huge healthy lunches.

The fixings then include salt, pepper, spices, garlic powder, oil, spiced vinegar, mayo and Guanabana (supposedly a major cancer fighter also called Soursop).

There are no rules about what can go into a salad, so nuts and fruits of all kinds can be added to taste. Occasionally I only can locate smaller heads of the green cabbage, so then I will buy an equivalent head of red cabbage and mix the two.

This is my normal daily regimen for years now and I am still the healthiest person I know, except for my stupid accident. I highly recommend this type of intake for one meal per day. Then we can be less fussy about our other meal of the day because I am a firm believer that our body needs to build up tolerances to everything. I certainly don't think that vegetarians (that's "bad hunter" in the Indian lexicon) are doing themselves any favors at all by avoiding foods. My Mom loved her salad, meat, potatoes and veggies, and would fight for the fatty parts of the meats. And she only lived to 4 months shy of 100.

THANK YOU again to all my faithful readers for hanging in with me.

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I hope you enjoy the pictures. That was the day’s excitement.

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