29 November 2018

She was fantastic! After such a long flight/drive we finally saw her and hug her! She was standing there, as good as we left her, just waiting for us. No too much dust, the fridge started on the first try as it did the battery, the gas, the electricity. All perfect…it did feel like home. I just realised then that it felt like home because is the only home we have had in almost 5 years. The only known thing, the familiarity. And after only 2 days of cleaning and organising we took her on the road again. That feeling of driving once again, that feeling of freedoms, it was exhilarating! We were very emotional; which was exactly what we needed after seeing Archie in video over the phone celebrating his first year ?

We took a familiar road and ended up on Puerto Lopez once again, for 2 days. This is the place of nice bike ride on the beach, the slow pace and the huge prawns just out of sea. We also took our kayak for a quick spin as the sea was somewhat choppy…still very funny to paddle to the end where the fishermen are, buy some prawns and paddle back.

Laguna El Salado, near the border with Colombia 

Canoa

A perfect place to work. Once again, we are in Canoa. The place of looooong and desertic beaches. Spent a few days here and unlucky a fall from the bike took my shoulder in such a pain. They told us to go to a “sebador”, someone who puts bones back in place? Arrived to a small town, there were so many people in the “waiting room” (hammocks outside the place). We waited for 6 hours, the pain was so bad but not as bad as what was waiting for me! He literally pulled my arm around and OMG thought I couldn’t take it at all. I cried so much! A few injections after to calm me down and still can’t recover….

Ibarra

Stuck. Literally and symbolically. The shoulder is no healing but now we also have the water pump and the water tank broken. And so, with lots of “ifs” and “buts” we stayed at this great camping for 4 days! Hecti repairing and repairing, me not doing much… just worry about the work I have to do and can’t do and, in the meantime, we met this great Colombian family and a promise of new encounters.