May 4, 2022: The House We Bought in Ecuador
	March 15 - April 8, 2022: Our Spring Trip to Florida
	Return to the Index for 2022

The title of this page seems like something out of the blue, and I think that what's called for is some background, so you can understand what this page is all about. So let's get that background.

Househunting in Ecuador?!? What's Up with That?

I am pretty sure that all of you are quite familiar with the history of the United States since the turn of the millennium- and particularly with the history of our country since 2016. Trust me when I tell you that I, my partner Fred, and many of our friends don't talk of much else than the latest craziness. The election of 2020 helped somewhat, but then the events of January 6th put an end to our hope that the Trump presidency was just an aberration, and that the country, a bit battered and bruised perhaps, had finally put those four crazy years behind us.

Obviously, we were wrong, and the usual casual discussions we, and lots of our friends had been having of where we might retire to (or decamp to if things got even crazier) turned somewhat more serious. We all began watching YouTube videos about expat living, videos that touted one country or another as being low-cost, expat-friendly, or with lots to do. Fred, myself, and our close friend Greg (with whom we have traveled together quite frequently) yakked pretty often about this destination or that.

These conversations took on an added sense of urgency on January 6th, 2021, and it was shortly after that when one of us (I forget who) ran across a series of YouTube videos by "Amelia and JP" to former residents of Denver who'd moved to Ecuador- a country that we'd all three been to before and liked. We began watching the videos, which recalled and echoed our own good experiences there.

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And then one of us (again, I am not sure who) ran across the video at left. In it, Amelia and JP talked about real estate in Cumbaya, a suburb of Ecuador's capital city, Quito, the city we'd visited before when we went to the Galapagos Islands.

At the beginning of the video, the two of them, former Denver residents, had commented a number of times that real estate in this upscale part of Ecuador was quite expensive (at least by their standards). Then the video, which you can, of course, watch here, began with a tour of what looked like an amazing house. It was huge, very modern, and with great features, and I was entirely prepared for them to tell me that this was a million-dollar home.

When Amelia revealed the price of that first of the three houses toured in the video, I recall emailing Greg with a link to the video and the simple declarative: "We haven't bought this house YET??"

When the three of us had talked about where our retirement dollars might go furthest, we'd been thinking about pooling our resources and finding a single place big enough to share. And when I divided the cost of that first house by three, the figure I got was low enough that it would be entirely possible for each of us to sink that much money into an off-shore piece of real estate just in case the worst happened and living here became untenable.

We began thinking of a place in Ecuador (or elsewhere) an an insurance policy. It would be there is we ever decided that we did, indeed, need to pull up stakes here- whether for political or social reasons, or perhaps for healthcare reasons (the reason Amelia and JP moved out of the US), or perhaps simply to make our retirement nest eggs go further.

We began investigating Ecuador carefully- weather, societal aspects, cost of living, things to do, and so on- and compared it to other top overseas retirement locales. It became apparent pretty quickly that Ecuador was at or near the top of the list. A Camelot-like climate, stable society, constitutionally-guaranteed respect for the elderly and for "alternative lifestyles", low-cost modern housing, a first-world modernity, and other characteristics caused us to focus more and more on it, as other countries, for one reason or another, dropped down in our personal ranking.

We resolved that the next step had to be to travel there again, make sure that what we were learning about Ecuador, and what we remembered from our trip there eight years ago, were still true. And, if so, we wanted to look seriously at housing options to make sure that what Amelia and JP seemed to be saying was actually true. And we just wanted to spend a week there imagining what it would be like to be a long-term resident, and not just a weekend tourist.

So we planned a trip down there, leaving Dallas on April 29 and returning a week later. We actually contacted the Realtor that Amelia and JP knew who had shown them the homes in their video, and we learned that the first house at least, the one that'd gotten my attention, was still available and could be shown to us. That Realtor, Patty Guerra, lined up a number of places for us to see.

Getting to Ecuador

I am going to assume you aren't familiar with Ecuador, even though you may already have visited the web page I created shortly after our return.

Greg arranged for an AirBnB for the week (his knowledge of Spanish made things much easier), and the three of us headed off from DFW about noon on the 29th- Fred and I in coach and Greg in business class, meeting up in Miami when we changed planes.

Ecuador is almost due south of Miami. Many of the non-stop flights to Quito from the US leave from there, although other cities have non-stop or direct flights as well, including Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta and Houston. The interesting thing is, and it's one thing many folks often forget, is just how far east the entire continent of South America is. In fact, if you flew due south from Miami, you would entirely miss South America on the west (but just barely).

As you can see by the map at right, Quito is in the northern portion of Ecuador; Quito is the capital of Ecuador, but it is not the country's largest city. That appellation belongs to Guayaquil, the large port city on the Pacific. Nor is Quito the oldest or most historic city. Cuenca is a good deal older- a real colonial town that is another favorite of expats.

The videos from Amelia and JP that got us interested in Ecuador in the first place were made, by and large, while they were living in the Quito suburb of Cumbaya (Ecuador was using that name long before the folk song era of the 1960s. Quito and its environs are very much a first-world kind of place; all the conveniences that we are used to in the United States are found here as well.

The four-hour flight from Miami put us into the Quito International Airport just after 9PM on the 29th. I made reservations at the Wyndham Quito Airport, where we stayed that first night.

We had a bit of confusion trying to find our way the short distance from the airport arrival hall over to the Wyndham. Basically, we could see the hotel from outside the arrival area, but we didn't want to lug our bags, not knowing whether there were sidewalks or something like that all the way there.

After asking a few people, though, we found our way to the shuttle over to the Wyndham- a shuttle that also serviced some other places here at the airport. As it turned out, we might well have walked, but the shuttle was certainly easier.

We did not do enough each day here in Ecuador to justify having a separate album page for each day, so I am just going to divide this page first by day and then within each day by activity.

April 30, 2022

After a good night's sleep, we awoke for our first full day househunting here in Ecuador.

At the Wyndham Hotel

The Wyndham was a very nice hotel; in the States it would be considered very upscale. Yet, here in Ecuador, the price for the double room for a night was right around $80- about half what it would be at home. In the morning, before we went down to have some breakfast, Fred and I wandered around taking some pictures.

One of the first things we did was to wander down the hall from our third-floor room to the elevator lobby. Here, we found large windows looking out to the front of the long, thin hotel. The highway from the airport to Quito runs right in front of the hotel, but across the road was some of the most beautiful scenery we saw during our week here.

There were mountains in the distance and valleys in the nearground, these valleys filled with early morning fog. That there were developments on the far hillsides didn't detract all that much from the beauty of the surrounding hillsides.

At first I thought that the walkway outside our room was inside, but then I realized that at either end of the building there were open windows, and that there were more open windows opposite the single row of rooms.

This was my first introduction to the climate here in Ecuador. In the area around Quito, the weather is uniformly good all year around. While I don't have statistics for all of this area of Quito, I can tell you that the temperature in Cumbaya, the valley just east of Quito, ranges from about 80 on the hottest days of summer, to about 50 on the coolest winter nights.

But the interesting thing about the Quito area of Ecuador is that you can be at the Pacific Ocean beaches in about four hours where you will find summer temperatures in the 90s, or you can be up in the mountains above Quito, playing in the snow (almost the year 'round) in about half that time.

It has always struck us that when we walk around this area, the foliage is tropical- much like you would find in Florida- but that you are looking up at snow-capped mountains (as well as a volcano or two). But at a height of about 7000 feet (about the same height as Santa Fe, New Mexico), and being right on the equator (which is how the country got its name), there is very little variation in temperatures month to month. There is a three-month "rainy" season, but this usually means that there is a chance of an afternoon shower most days of the week.

Even so, there is enough snowfall and rain that most of Ecuador's electricity is hydroelectric (even though the country is also an exporter of oil). The point is that most buildings, like this hotel, and most homes as well have open areas where people can enjoy the amost-uniformly equable climate. In this hotel, there were also open windows behind the wood-slat curtain wall that prevents the glass wall at the back of the hotel from causing to much radiant heating.

We wandered around the hotel, and at one point, Fred took a picture of me in front of a colorful photographic display. His camera did something by itself in addition to the still photo- taking an odd little movie as well:

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Here are a few more pictures from our walk around the hotel before breakfast:

At left is a picture that Fred took in the lobby, and below is a picture I took on the large, second-floor patio that extended along the back of the hotel:

We met up with Greg, had our breakfast, checked out, and then went out to the waiting taxis at the front of the hotel to grab one to take us to the bed and breakfast in Cumbaya where we would be staying during our house-hunt. Before we headed off, I got a couple more pictures:

The Wyndham was not a typical highrise hotel, but rather a long, three-or-four story barrel-shaped affair. Since the front of the hotel faced east, there was a shade structure in front of the room windows- not noticeable when you look out from your room.

It is going into "winter" here, but being on the equator and at high elevation, there is little change in the temperature, and the semi-tropical foliage isn't affected much. This view looks north.

Our Apartment in Cumbaya

Greg had found a nice apartment in the Primavera area of Cumbaya for us to use as our home base this week; the two-bedroom, two-bath, third-floor walkup turned out to be ideally-located for our home search. Our first task was to get to it.

We had the address of the apartment, of course, and the taxi driver seemed to know right where it was.

There are only two routes into Quito from the airport. If you are going directly into the newer area of Quito, you go via the valley that Cumbaya is in, which is basically the route that we took. If you want to get to the older, more colonial section of the city, you can head a bit north from the airport, and then west into this area of Quito.

We had a bit of difficulty getting to the right address; unlike in the States, building numbers and street numbers are not nearly so ubiquitous or obvious. The fact that the building our apartment was in also had two separate entrances made finding the right one, and retrieving the keys from the lockbox a little tricky. Fortunately, we had a taxi driver who was patient as we walked around looking for the right entry.

As you can see at right, our apartment building was on the corner of two residential streets, and the block we were in was just a block north of one of the major thorofares through Cumbaya. A bit of explanation is in order as regards the building, as I neglected to take many pictures at all of it or inside the apartment.

The building was three stories, although the ground floor was mostly the entry lobbies, of which there were two. If you go into the entrance on the west side of the building, you go up one flight of stairs to the two apartments on the second floor. Our entry was on the north side of the building; going in that way, you go up two flights of stairs to the third floor landing and the entry doors for the two apartments on that floor. Our door was on the east side of the building (the right-hand part of the building in the aerial view at right).

So what was the apartment like? Well, my guess is that it was about a thousand square feet- maybe a little less. When you come in the front door, the living room seating area is to your right. Incidentally, in the picture you just looked at, that's Patty Guerra, our Realtor, who had come by the apartment on our last day so we could give her a gift as thanks for her efforts in showing us houses during the week.

Inside the front door, there are windows to your left and the dining room is ahead of you, with windows on the north and east sides of the room (you are facing east when you enter the apartment). There is a small balcony on the north side of the dining room; it had a neat rope hammock to relax in. (Actually, the only other picture I took inside the apartment was of an interesting piece of artwork that seemed to echo "Son of Man" by Magritte, but show Frieda Kahlo, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn instead.)

There were nice views from the living-room and dining area:

The View to the Southeast

Looking Northeast

As for the rest of the apartment, a hall leads to your right past the galley kitchen and then back to the two bedrooms. The master bedroom is on your right; it has an ensuite bath. The second bedroom is on your left; it uses a bath that is adjacent but not in the bedroom itself. The apartment was really spacious for the three of us; we never felt cramped and it was equipped with everything we needed.

This apartment and the one across the landing also shared the rooftop deck; the second floor apartments had a patio down below. The rooftop had a grilling area and some seating, and very nice views- like the one below that looks south, west, and north:

Cumbaya: The Lay of the Land

We are going to be wandering around Cumbaya all week looking at houses and generally trying to get a feel for what living here would be like if we make the decision to do so. We'll do some things on our own, but most of our time will be spent with Patty looking a places. So I want you to get a feel for how Cumbaya is laid out and where the major places of interest are- at least the one's we'll visit or mention on this page.

We've decided that the town of Cumbaya, situated in a valley east of Quito and about 1500 feet lower, is where we would want to be- if we decide to get a place here. You can see this area on the map above, but I want to show you a larger map of Cumbaya so I can label the main points of interest.

At left is a map of most of Cumbaya. On this map, you will see that I marked the various houses and condos that we went to look at, and I also want to call your attention to some points of particular interest.

First, you can easily see the reservoir, and it is a central feature of the valley, situated about a half-mile north of Parque Cumbaya, which is the old central square of what was, at its beginning, a typical Spanish town. A bit later on on this page, you'll see some pictures we took there.

Another major feature is the first few kilometers of the 22-km urban trail that begins near Parque Cumbaya and which then runs to the other end of the valley. We did not walk this trail over it's entire length, but we did walk from its beginning to the Scala Mall (which the trail comes quite close to).

Those are two more landmarks- the two largest shopping malls in Cumbaya. The Scala Mall is the largest mall, and it is situated at a low point on the trail near Cumbaya's best private hospital. The Paseo San Francisco, a somewhat smaller mall, is southeast of the reservoir at a relatively high point in the city. Keep in mind that the distance between the two malls is about a mile and a half, and you'll have a good idea how close everything in Cumbaya is.

So, while this was a househunting trip, we did other things as well. Most of the pictures we took were of the houses that interested us, but we took other pictures around town- on the urban trail, in the central square, on city streets, in restaurants, and so on.

Given that, what I'll do is just divide this page by day, beginning with the 30th of April after we got settled in our apartment. When there are pictures of a house, I'll put them in a slideshow so they don't take up much space on the page and you can look at them if you want. Other, more touristy pictures I'll put inline, as I've done on many hundreds of other pages previously.

The house we finally chose (and the purchase of which we have since completed, will have its own page, immediately following this one.

The Aquarela (High-rise Condo Complex)

After we got settled in the apartment, Greg called Patty and we arranged to meet her at the first property she wanted to show us, which was the third property shown in the video by Amelia and JP that you may have watched above.

We met Patty on the small drive that runs from the main street through Cumbaya and south to the front of the Aquarela complex, and here we got our first view of the undulating terraces of the buildings in the complex. The picture below was taken from that drive- Isidro Ayora- and I was standing just north of the Cumbaya Padel Center (part of an equestrian complex just west of the Aquarela).

To describe the complex, I might just as well use the description from its website:

"Aquarela was designed by Pritzker Prize winner French architect Jean Nouvel and is located in the Cumbayá Valley. It has 9 towers up to 9 stories high. Aquarela's design responds to the natural context that surrounds it, returning the original flora to the space, which undoubtedly also affects the harmony with the living species of the area. From its terraces you can enjoy an exuberant landscape and extensive views of the green spaces, its surroundings and the Tumbaco Valley. Aquarela's stone exteriors create a façade that responds to the physical space where it is located, and which are covered with plants native to the region. The project is characterized by strict compliance with the standards of the eco-efficiency matrix, where there is an awareness in the use of materials, in the construction systems and in their technical design, which generates a lower impact in the use of non-renewable resources. (saving electricity, use of drinking water, collection, reuse and treatment of rainwater, irrigation systems, etc.), demonstrating a real commitment and responsibility towards the environment. Aquarela is destined to become part of the topography of the Cumbayá valley, creating harmony between the building and its relief."

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

We seriously considered the Aquarela; it had more amenities than any other place we saw, and the views from the condo units and the rooftops were pretty amazing. But in the end, we couldn't see uprooting ourselves just to move to a condo that could literally be anywhere, nor could we find an available unit that would have enough space for the three of us.

But we did take some pictures here, from the ground floor courtyards to the rooftop decks and pools to the interiors of some of the units. Those pictures are in a slideshow, so if you want to see them you can do so easily and quickly.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each slide to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each slide will tell you where you are in the show. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

I also took two movies here at the Aquarela, and you can use the players below to watch them:

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) The Courtyard Between Buildings

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) The Bowling Alley and Other Amenities

We spent some time in the Sales Office investigating the possibility of putting a couple of units together, but it became apparent pretty quickly that the Aquarela would not be high on our list.

The Hill House (Gated Community in Centro)

From the Aquarela, we walked down the street to the Paseo San Francisco, one of the two large enclosed malls here in Cumbaya, and there another Realtor picked us up and we all went a ways further towards the center of Cumbaya to look at a second property.

The property we went to next was located in a nice gated community that was in an older area of Cumbaya- perhaps five or six blocks from Parque Cumbaya, the central square of the town. Greg was a little put off by the area just outside the gate, as if we chose this property we would be walking from it into the center of Cumbaya frequently.

But the house itself was worth looking at. The homes in this community were mostly duplexes- each building had two homes, side by side. A typical building would have a carport on either side, front doors in the middle and rooftop terraces, again on either end of each building.

The reason that I've called this property "Hill House" is that the entire community sits at the edge of one of the hills atop which most of central Cumbaya is situated. If you walk through the community, the street slopes downward until, at the end of it, you come to a walkway that leads down beside the last house on the street to a little park, play area, and picnic area that belongs to the community. This area overlooks a fairly steep slope down into the lower part of the valley, and so there are excellent views from there. (Although it is a bit of exercise to get back up the hill and back to the house we were looking at.)

As I did for the Aquarela, I've created a slideshow for the pictures we took in and around the Hill House and its community. I also made an extensive video tour of the entire house, top to bottom, so you can look at the pictures and watch the movie to see exactly what the house was like.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow As usual, use the arrows in the lower corners of each slide to move from one to another, and track your progress with the upper-left-corner index numbers.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) A Tour of the "Hill House"

The Reservoir House (Gated Community North of Centro)

The last property we went to see this afternoon I am going to call the Reservoir House because of where it was located.

Cumbaya is fortunate to have a number of reservoirs nearby, and one of them, which also generates power, is almost in the middle of town. The Reservorio de Cumbaya has a surface area of over two square miles. This doesn't sound like much; Lake Ray Hubbard, east of Dallas, has ten times the surface area, and Lake Mead near Las Vegas has one hundred times the surface area. But we should compare this lake, which is basically in the middle of town, with something more like White Rock Lake in East Dallas; it has the same surface area as the Cumbaya Reservoir (but is only half as deep).

Anyway, the reservoir is a beautiful feature for the area, and it is no wonder why numerous communities have grown up around it. We went to look at a house in a community on the northwest side of the lake, but it was a couple of streets in from the lake itself, so you could see it from the second floor.

We did not care for the house at all- and it was way outside our budget of around $350K, so while we walked through it, I didn't take any pictures at all of the house. When we left, though, we walked across the road bordering the reservoir to take some pictures, and those I want to include here.

May 1, 2022

Today is Sunday, and so Patty won't be showing us any properties today, and we are on our own. What we plan to do is just wander around Cumbaya as if we were living here, and just do whatever struck our fancy.

The Scala Mall

First, we plan to walk from the apartment, through our local neighborhood, and then down the hill to the Scala Mall; along with Paseo San Francisco (where we had lunch yesterday between our tour of Aquarela and our look at the Hill House), it is one of the two premier shopping venues here in Cumbaya.

We had some breakfast and then left the apartment about nine-thirty to walk to Scala Mall. Yesterday, when we took a taxi home from our last house tour, the taxi came by the mall and so we were able to see what streets we needed to take to get from the apartment over there to the mall.

All we had to do was to go down to the corner and make a left turn, making a right turn at the end of that block. At that corner, there was a park where we saw some folks doing group exercises in the pleasant morning. Right at the corner there was a building which we at first assumed was a park building, perhaps housing facilities for the park.

The rest of the walk to Scala Mall was downhill (a rather steep one, truth be told) to another major street and another left turn. This continued to an intersection with Avenue Oswaldo Guayasamin, which is one of the two major east-west routes through the southern part of the Tumbaco Valley. There, we turned right and walked another block or two to the Scala Mall, which is on the north side of this major thorofare.

The walk was a pleasant one, even considering the one encounter we had with the police. What was that all about? Well, take a look at these two pictures I took as we walked down the steep hill:

Just across the street from the park, and just after we'd started down the hill, I saw this cute little Swiss-chalet style house, and wanted to get a picture of it.

A little further down the street, I saw this interesting municipal installation- part of the water system for the Primavera area where we are staying.

It was right after I took the first picture above that a uniformed man came out of the building in the park and started speaking Spanish. Greg took up the conversation, the upshot of which was that the policeman told us that folks don't like to have their houses photographed by strangers. Something to do with a concern that their residences might be being "cased" by nefarious individuals. The confrontation wasn't unpleasant, and the officer was very polite; he really just wanted us to understand the issue. We parted cordially, and Greg was happy for the chance to practice his Spanish.

We continued on down to the main street, Avenue Guayasamin; near there, I came across a small store a small shop that I thought my niece and sister might get a kick out of, situated, as it was, right in the middle of town. The logos on the windows made it fairly obvious what the writing on the store window would be- "Centaurs Horse Shop".

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At the entrance to the Scala Mall, we were intitially worried that we wouldn't be allowed entry for there was a mall security person checking vaccination records. Fortunately, we all had ours either in our wallets or on our phones and, even though they were in English, they probably looked enough like the ones issued locally that we had no problem getting in.

The Scala Mall is a large one- four stories arranged around an open atrium in which there were numerous restaurants. (There was also a Food Court on the top floor.) I thought the atrium was interesting, and so I began a movie which,if you will watch it with the movie player at right, you will see was interrupted by Mall Security, again with the apparent concern that someone filming in an average shopping mall would be up to no good. I really just wanted you to see one of the two new Baskin-Robbins stores I visited here in Cumbaya.

So I only have two actual photos taken inside the mall. One was taken quite legitimately, as we came across a florist here in the Mall that had a display of real flowers set up, and it was marked as a "Photo Spot".

The other photo, the one at right, was taken from the top floor food court where we went to get a drink and a snack. The view looks out the front windows of the mall, and looks directly up the hill where our apartment is located. I can't quite pick out the street we came down, but that green space on the top of the ridge right in the center of the picture might be the park that we passed.

We relaxed here for a while, and then went out the front of the mall to take advantage of the fact that there was a taxi stand right there. We wanted to go up to the central part of Cumbaya and visit the old city square that we'd driven by yesterday on the way to the Reservoir House.

It was on the one mile trip up to the town center that I noticed something that had escaped me on the ride in from the airport yesterday. That was that the taximeter was calibrated in pennies, and it didn't go up all that rapidly! Taxis and Ubers are relatively cheap here; the ride up from Scala Mall (which we did a few times) was only about a buck and a half; it would have been five dollars or more in Dallas.

Parque Cumbaya

On the aerial view below, left, you can see our route from Scala Mall to Parque Cumbaya.

It actually looked as if we could have walked up the hill, but looking at my phone map I couldn't verify that the streets actually went through- there being a ravine of sorts just behind the mall running up northwest. So we opted for the cab.

We got the cab to let us off right at the southwest corner of the park, and we walked across the street into it. The park is a typical central Spanish square. There is a fountain in the center, plenty of benches, lots of foliage, and places for families to gather and kids to play.

The park is surrounded on three sides by little shops and many restaurants- particularly on the north side. Really, the only building of interest that borders the park is the San Pedro Church; it is situated on the west side of the square.

We walked around and sat down to enjoy the fountain, and I thought that it would be nice to find a place close enough that we could walk to this park. It was very calming, yet there were lots of services around, places to eat, little shops to look in, and so on.

We took a number of good pictures here, and spent an hour relaxing in the park.

Me with the San Pedro Church in the Background

The park was an excellent place for a movie, and of course I made one here:

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We explored some of the shops and restaurants that lined interesting courtyards near the park, and finally picked a restaurant for lunch. It turned out to be one the better burgers that I have had in quite a while. Then we set off up the street for the portal access to the ecological trail.

Ruta Ecológica El Chaquiñán de Cumbaya

We walked northwest up the street bordering the park until we came to one of the portals for the Ruta Ecológica El Chaquiñán de Cumbaya- the 15-mile hiking/biking trail that crosses the entire valley.

El Chaquiñán, as it is known, is actually the longest linear park in the Americas. In addition to the 15 miles of trail in the Tumbaco Valley, there are an additional 50 miles that wrap around a succession of valleys and mountainsides. But residents of Cumbaya and the surrounding area use the 15-mile stretch through the city for biking, walking, running and jogging, dog walking, and all kinds of activities like that.

Every so often there are "portals" to the trail. These are official entry and exit points that have maps, water fountains, and sometimes facilities for the hikers to use. Or there are services like restaurants and such at these portals.

As you can see from the trail diagram, the trail also crosses numerous streets, and these are marked by little traffic light symbols to indicate that vehicles are supposed to stop and, if there are hikers coming along, wait for them to pass before continuing.

The only section we actually traversed during our week-long stay this time was the section from Portal Cumbaya (the "beginning" of the trail near Parque Cumbaya) and the entry/exit point at Scala Mall- approximately a 2km stretch. As you can see from the little altitude chart in the lower corner, this stretch is entirely downhill. Shortly after you pass the Scala Mall exit, the trail begins to ascend fairly steadily for a while. At some point, when we are down here for a long enough stretch of time, I hope to either walk or bike the entire 15 mile length of the trail.

The Portal at Cumbaya Centro

So we found our way to the portal up the street from Cumbaya Park, shown at left, and began our walk down the trail towards Scala Mall. Fred and Greg were just enjoying the walk, as was I, but I also found lots of interesting or quirky things to photograph.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

From the portal southeastward, we passed a dog park, murals, little houses and businesses, and road crossings. At main points, expansive scenery opened up on either side of the trail, although it was mostly tree-shaded. In one section, I took a short detour off to the east where there were stairs and walkways and bridges that crossed the ravine that paralleled the trail; these walkways and bridges led across to the other side of the ravine where there were all kinds of residences, from estates to agglomerations of multi-unit apartments.

Since hardly any of my pictures require (or would benefit from) a lot of explanation, I'm just going to put the pictures in a slideshow so you can look at them easily and relatively quickly. Click on the image at right to open the slideshow in a new window and, as usual, click on the little arrows in the lower corners of each picture to go from one picture to another. Also as usual, you can tell where you are in the series by referring to the index numbers in the upper left corner of each image.

I hope you enjoy walking down El Chaquiñán with us!

In the last picture of that slideshow, you could see Scala Mall ahead of us as we left the trail. Since we were there, and since the MegaMaxi store was in that mall, we decided to do a bit of grocery shopping, picking up some things for drinks and snacks. (We also looked through the store, which is similar to a Walmart Supercenter, to see what all they had to offer, and came to the conclusion that there wasn't much except for large furniture that we couldn't get here for whatever house we ended up choosing.

Evening at the Apartment

We caught a taxi back to the apartment, and then went to the nearby neighborhood bakery to pick up some meat pies for supper, supplementing that with some of the snacks we had just bought and some of the fruit we bought at the nearby corner grocery earlier in the day. We had a nice supper and as the light began fading, the clouds to the south cleared and I went out on the dining room balcony to take a picture of Cotopaxi.

The Summit of Cotopaxi (Click on the Image to Enlarge)

Cotopaxi is an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains, located about 31 miles south of Quito. It is the second highest summit in Ecuador, reaching a height of 19,347 ft. Cotopaxi is among the highest active volcanoes in the world. Its most recent eruption began on 14 August 2015, and ended on 24 January 2016.

Cotopaxi is known to have erupted 87 times, resulting in the creation of numerous valleys formed by lahars (mudflows) around the volcano. During the last eruption, Cotopaxi was officially closed to climbing by the authorities; it was reopened in October, 2017.

On a clear day, Cotopaxi is clearly visible on the Quito skyline. It is part of the chain of volcanoes around the Pacific plate known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. It has an almost symmetrical cone that rises from a highland plain at about 12,500 ft, with a width at its base of about 14 mi. It has one of the few equatorial glaciers in the world, which starts at the height of 16,400 ft. At its summit, Cotopaxi has a half-mile-square crater which is about 800 feet deep. The crater consists of two concentric crater rims, the outer one being partly free of snow and irregular in shape. The crater interior is covered with ice cornices and is rather flat. The highest point is on the outer rim of the crater on the north side.

According to locals who speak Quechua, "coto" means 'neck' and "paxi" means 'moon'. This refers to the crater of Cotopaxi that looks like a crescent moon. The mountain was honored as a sacred mountain by local Andean people, even before the Inca invasion in the 15th century. It was worshiped as rain sender, which served as the guarantor of the land's fertility, and at the same time its summit was revered as a place where gods lived.

May 2, 2022

Today, Patty is occupied over in Quito, so we are basically on our own, with no houses to go look at. So it will be a lazy day where we just did a bit of walking around and some investigation on the Internet to see if there are any particular properties that we'd like to get Patty to show us in the remainder of the week.

Walking Around Cumbaya

At midday, the three of us took a cab back to Parque Cumbaya to take another look at the neighborhood around Hill House. From there, we walked over to the reservoir just to see what we could see.

In the aerial view at left, the southern end of the reservoir is at the top, and Parque Cumbaya and Hill House are out of the view to the bottom.

The three of us walked up to the reservoir, where we stopped at the intersection with the street that basically goes all the way around the reservoir. We knew there were a couple of properties that seemed to be in the area to our right, down the hill on the east side of the reservoir, but neither Greg nor Fred really wanted to go down there just on the off chance we might find where one of them was located (just about everything being in gated communities anyway). So I left the two of them at the intersection (they actually went inside a little shopping mall adjacent) while I walked down the hill and around the curve for a ways.

I really didn't see much, save for lots of little shops and the gates to one community or another, but it was an interesting walk nevertheless.

Anyway, here are some views from my walk:

This view looks down the hill and out across Cumbaya. The reservoir is on my left.

I have just turned around and am walking back to meet up with Fred and Greg. The reservoir is on my right.

It turned out that Fred and Greg had a good time in the little mall, particularly when they found a bakery with all kinds of goodies. This prompted us to stop at another one that we passed on the way back to Parque Cumbaya, to bring home some pastries to enjoy later.

We returned to Parque Cumbaya and sat watching the people for a while before Greg called an Uber for a ride back to the apartment.

Parque Cumbaya and the San Pedro Church opposite is a very pleasant place to be.

I am not at all sure what "Ice Cream with Cheese" is all about, and not sure I want to find out.

My Walk to Scala Mall

When Greg and Fred called for the Uber, I was still feeling a bit energetic, and so I decided to let them ride back to the apartment while I went down the street to one of the entrances to El Chaquinan trail and again walk downhill to Scala Mall. I intended to buy a few things there, and then walk back to the apartment.

I'd taken a lot of pictures on the trail on our previous walk, so today there were just a few additional pictures. The first two were taken near the start of my walk looking across the ravine at some of the nice houses to the north:

The last couple of pictures were taken at the bottom of the trail, right near Scala Mall:

Of course, I left the trail at the Scala Mall access point.

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The entrance to the trail here was undoubtedly built when the Mall was built, and it looks as if a fair amount of expense was incurred to build a very nice access point here, complete with bridges, overlooks into the ravine, benches to sit on, and so on.

I should have filmed it the other day, but I decided to do so now. So I made a movie that begins on the trail itself but then traverses the entire distance over to the mall. I think it's an interesting movie, and I hope you'll use the player at left to watch it.

I did my shopping and picked up a few things and then headed off to the apartment following the same route back up the hill as we had followed down it the other day. I thought I'd been handling the altitude fine since we got here, but it wasn't until I was trudging up the steep hill that I realized I hadn't really "tested under load" until now. I will freely admit that I had to stop to rest for a few minutes just past the water tank I photographed the other day. There was a little store with a bench out front, and I took advantage of that. Back up on level ground eventually, things were a lot easier.

An Afternoon Walk in La Primavera

Late in the afternoon, Greg and I wanted to stop by the little grocery, which was two or three blocks up the street. But we'd also seen a property description online that seemed to be not far from the grocery, so we walked across the highway to see if we could find it.

At left is an aerial view of the area we covered.

We never did find the property; as near as we could figure, it was in the gated community where we ended up, but since we couldn't get in, all we got for our trouble was a nice walk. Well, that and seeing this interesting animal tied up in a vacant lot.

Here's a closer view of the llama, and what seemed to be a pop-up nursery shop:

May 3, 2022

Today, Patty is taking us to see three different properties. One will be the first property in the video by Amelia and JP at the top of this page- a townhouse in Diamond Village between the apartment and Scala Mall- that I'll call the "JP House". The second will be a townhouse in the small gated community of Villa del Sol (and I'll use that name for it), and the third will be a detached house- "Santa Lucia 1" in a gated community of that name over near Paseo San Francisco.

The JP House

This morning we walked the short distance over to Diamond Village to meet Patty.

Diamond Village was only a 15-minute walk. We followed our route the other day to Scala Mall, and halfway down the hill from the park and police station we turned right into a cul-de-sac, and the gate to the community was at the end.

At the gate, we went through the typical procedure of Patty leaving her ID with the guard, and the four of us entered the complex. Diamond Village consisted of three rows of attached homes along two streets. At the top of the easternmost street was the swimming pool, exercise room, and party room for the complex, and the house we were to see (the one we'd already seen in the video) was right next to that. Before we look at the house itself, let me begin with a few pictures taken outside. These first two pictures were taken in the cul-de-sac and show the entrance to Diamond Village:

At left is a picture taken close to the gate, mostly so I could record the name of the development. Then I backed away so I could get part of the cul-de-sac and the entire gate area in the picture, and that picture is below:

When you come in the guard gate (there is a regular gate for people, and of course a larger gate that is opened by the guards when you drive in and out), you find that there are three rows of townhomes, with five or six homes in each row. These rows are pretty much north-to-south. Facing you is the north end of the middle row. If you live in the westernmost row, you would drive or walk around to your right and down your street, with the entrances to the homes in that row on your right (west side of the street).

If you live in the middle row or easternmost row, you would drive or walk around to your left to the easternmost street. All the entrances to the other homes are off that street. The easternmost row begins with the pool at the north end and the community room next, and then the five townhouses in that row. The house we were to look at was the home right next to the community room.

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

We didn't take any pictures of the street on the west side, of course, but we took some of our street and the rows of homes on either side- including the pool, community room, and the JP House. If you will click on the thumbnails at right, you can see these pictures.

Having looked at the neighborhood, let's take a closer look at the JP House- exterior and interior.

The JP House

Here is an excellent picture of the JP House- the townhome we were looking at.

At the left is the front wall of the community room. I should point out that the side wall of the JP House on that side, which faces east, had no windows, so there was no issue being right next to the pool or party room. Indeed, all the windows in the house were, for the most part, on the east and west sides of the house. There was one ground floor window that looked out onto the patio with its small lawn that was actually behind the community room, but on the south side of the house was the common wall with the next townhome. This is an arrangement common in townhomes, and much like my situation in Dallas.

The four-bedroom, five-bath home was quite modern, and it also seemed very new. I suspect that the people living in it were its first owners. The two windows next from the left were for the living room on the ground floor and the master bedroom above. The front door was between them and the vertical wall that separates the entrance from the two-car carport. Then there is another vertical wall and between that the the living room windows for the next townhome were first- and second-floor storage rooms. As you can see, since this is a gated community, the current owners don't bother locking away bicycles and stuff in a closed garage- particularly since the security guards have a direct line of sight to this unit.

In the video done by Amelia and JP, the house had been totally empty, but when we walked through it, a family was living there. We did see one of the staff and one of the residents, but basically we were by ourselves walking through the house.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

If I really wanted to be very detailed, I would want to add some explanation to many of the pictures we took in the house- what floor you were on, the arrangement of the rooms, which room was which, and so on. But (Spoiler Alert!) since we didn't settle on this house, all those details are moot. So, in the slideshow of the pictures we took inside the JP House, I am just going to try to put them in an order where you'll be able to relate each picture to the one before it and the one after it. This will be a little tricky as we go to the second floor, but even so I think you'll be able to make the spatial connections. We will end up with the pictures taken from the incredible rooftop deck- which was one of the features that had me put this house on Patty's schedule in the first place. I loved it in the video, and I loved it when we walked through it.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

That we didn't choose this house is no reflection on the house itself. As I will say a bit later, what turned out to be the deciding factor in our choice was location. This house was great, for a number of reasons, and had it been close to the house we finally chose, it would have been a very tough call to turn it down.

The Townhouse in Villa del Sol

As I said, we really liked the house in Diamond Village, and it moved to the top of our list after we went through it. To address our desire to be closer to the center of Cumbaya and closer to one of the malls, Patty took us back up to Parque Cumbaya.

From the park, we went over to the street that runs between the park and the San Pedro Church, and turned left (north) and headed towards the reservoir. We only walked a few hundred feet down the hill and could see the trail crossing for El Chaquinan ahead of us. Just before that crossing, we could see Villa del Sol on our left.

This listing didn't belong to Patty, so another Realtor met us there to get us in the gate. Villa del Sol is a community of maybe 12 townhomes, arranged in two rows with a street in the middle. This was similar to Diamond Village, but just smaller. At the far end of the northernmost row was the small community building and a very small pool.

We walked down the street a ways; the townhouse we were going to look at was about in the middle of the left-hand row of homes. It was fairly apparent early on that this particular property was really too small for the three of us, and we knew right away that it wouldn't make our shortlist. I think for that reason there weren't all that many pictures to take. We did get a photo outside, photos of the living areas, kitchen, and patio in back, and then photos of the three bedrooms on the second floor, along with some of the baths and TV area. All these photos are below.

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The House in Santa Lucia (#1)

After we toured the townhouse in Villa del Sol, Patty called another Realtor to make sure that arrangements for us to see a house over near Paseo San Francisco were still in place. We piled into an Uber and drove to the Paseo, walking from there to the gated community next door.

The Urbanizacion Santa Lucia (This is just the way one refers to a neighborhood, and most particularly, a gated one. The word "urbanizacion" loosely translates to "development".) turned out to be right behind the Paseo San Francisco, a very nice mall that we'd already visited a couple of times to eat at the food court.

As soon as Patty told us where Santa Lucia was, we could tell that whatever the community looked like, and however nice the house was, the location would be ideal. The Hill House also had a good location, but the neighborhood right outside the gate was just a little sketchy (old), and Greg had thought that to be a drawback.

Santa Lucia, being adjacent to the mall, was in an excellent area, although I wondered whether the location might be too convenient; perhaps it would be too busy, or too noisy. But if it weren't, well, we had the mall next door, a big grocery across the street, lots of restaurants and stuff around, and we would be an easy walk to the university and to Parque Cumbaya right in the center of town.

So we all had high hopes for the house itself, as Patty got us in through the guarded gate and we began walking down the circular street in the development. Rather than rows of houses, Santa Lucia had houses around the outside of the circle as well as some houses and a park in the middle. Also unlike the other communities we'd seen so far, the houses here in Santa Lucia were all detached and most of them were different, one from another. Some were larger than others, and there were many different styles.

We walked to the southeast corner of the development and came to another gate. This gate and its wall surrounded a group of three houses here in the southeast corner. We learned a bit later that the developer of Santa Lucia had built these three houses for himself and his family, and then surrounded them with another gated wall. So the house we were to see was one of these three houses- a gated community within a gated community!

The other Realtor had the combination to the second gate, and so we came into the area of three houses. We could see immediately that all three houses must have been built by the same person at the same time; they were in the same style and in the same white-and-black color scheme. In fact, it was hard to tell two of them apart, although the third one was a little smaller.

The house we've come to see is shown at left, and I have also marked it (Santa Lucia #1) on the aerial view above. It was a modern house, in a cantilevered style very reminiscent of some of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs. Looking at the front view, the living areas were at the front on the first floor, the kitchen and some bedrooms in the back on that same floor, and more bedrooms on the second floor.

We would also learn that the house had a basement, but access to it had been closed off inside the house as it was being used as a rental apartment for students attending the university.

I think Fred's picture of the house at left was the best one, but here is a closer view of the house that I took.

And while this doesn't have any bearing on the house, the people living there did have a totally black cat just like our own Cole. The small cat wasn't nearly as friendly as Cole is, but any household with a cat goes up a couple of notches in my book.

We didn't take a great many pictures here in this house. Again, this had to do less with our estimation of how much we liked the house- which was as much as the JP House- than it did with what the owners had done with the house- which we didn't like- or how messy it looked inside.

The Living Areas at the Front of the House

The Kitchen

No, the house was certain large enough for the three of us; and it also had a dedicated media room, which no other house had really had (not unusual, since this house was at least a thousand square feet bigger than any of the others we'd yet seen). And certainly the upstairs bedrooms and baths (most of which had pretty decent views) were more than adequate for the three of us and potential guests.

No, there were two aspects of the house that we thought would complicate things if we were to purchase it.

In the Foyer in the Middle of the House

Standing inside the front door on the first floor, we could see the dining room, small media room, and kitchen off to our left, and the living areas off to our right. We could also see the stairway to the second floor. But there was also a a kind of rounded atrium-like affair with a hanging light in the middle, and there were some circular stairs at the back of it leading down. You can see the wood rail around this open area in the picture at left.

What we learned was that this open area had originally looked down into the basement (less like a basement and more like a below-grade suite of rooms) and the half-circular stairs had led down there. I don't recall if the current owners or some previous owner had done it, but they had closed off the basement area, putting a locked door at the bottom of the stairs and a "floor" in what had been the open atrium, so that if you leaned over the rail, you would see a floor level with the floor of the rest of the first story. Then the basement rooms had been rented out as an apartment- at the moment to students from the university nearby (just on the other side of Paseo San Francisco).

For just a few moments we thought that this might be advantageous, bringing in some income and having someone watching the house when we were not in residence. But then we began to think that if we did buy a place here in Ecuador, we wanted plenty of space for visitors as well as for a proper media room and an exercise room as well. And then we started thinking that opening the basement back up could be a hassle- particularly if we had to do it long-distance. So that was a problem (although not an insurmountable one). We still saw the location of this house as ideal for our retirement purposes going forward. (I also mentioned to Greg that if we ever had need to install an elevator, there was no good place for it, as there might have been if the stairs up and down had both been surrounding the open atrium.)

The Basement Entry and Parking

The other problem that I saw had to do with the parking situation.

There was no assurance that we would ever get a car here in Ecuador; as a matter of fact, I think that chances that we ever would would be only around fifty percent, as renting one to travel around the country would probably be more cost-effective, and because if we lived in Santa Lucia, almost everything we might need would be in walking distance.

But if we did get a car, the parking was underneath the house. (The other two houses in this little area had above-ground carports.) And to utilize that parking, we would have to have access to the house through the basement, which was currently closed off to make the rental unit. We couldn't imagine wanting to trudge back up the steep incline to come in through the front door- particularly in inclement weather. (And we were also imagining getting up and down the very steep incline; every time you did, you'd be in reverse for one direction or the other.)

So that was another issue. But at just under $400K, the house was appealing- given its location.

As we were chatting with Patty and the other Realtor about our concerns, Fred happened to notice a "Vende" sign in one of the upstairs windows of the house just opposite, the house #2 on the aerial view above. The other Realtor had not known that house to be on the market at all, but she said she would look into it and let Patty know. It looked just as big as the house we'd just seen, and it had a regular carport with what appeared to be an entry around the back of the house. We thought that perhaps, since it was built by the same builder, the inside would be similar. Maybe there was also a basement, and maybe it wasn't being rented out. We asked the Realtor to let Patty know as soon as possible, because we were leaving in four days and would like to see it if possible.

Parque Cumbaya

We took Patty to get some lunch at Paseo San Francisco, and then she headed back to Quito to line up some more houses for us to see tomorrow. For our part, we walked over to Parque Cumbaya to enjoy the early afternoon. Walking over to the park, we walked the length of a particularly colorful street:

We arrived in the park, and sat down to enjoy the early afternoon. If we end up with a house anywhere in this area, I would guess I will be spending a little time here almost daily.

The park makes a great photo spot, as we have already learned. I thought I would try a selfie, and I also wanted to take a short movie. The selfie is at left, and you can use the movie player below to have a look around Parque Cumbaya:

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Once again, we thought of taking a taxi back to the apartment, but again I suggested that Fred and Greg go on back while I ambled down the El Chaquinan trail to Scala Mall, this time so I could look for a small fan for the apartment bedroom. This time, I thought, I would get a taxi from Scala Mall; having already negotiated the steep hill on the way home I wasn't anxious to do it again.

That's what we ended up doing.

On the El Chaquinan Trail

I went down to the trail, following the same route as I took the other day, and then I started down the trail. Of course, I couldn't resist a few pictures and movies. At one point that was particularly pastoral, with no views of buildings on either side, I took pictures looking up and down the trail:

I also made two movies in different sections of the trail:

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I wasn't able to find a fan at the store, but I did pick up some additional snacks. When I was done, there were no taxis waiting at the stand out front, so I thought I would go out and cross Avenue Guayasamin and hail one going in the right direction. In that picture of the avenue (looking northwest) you can see a green and yellow cab coming along in the curb lane; that's the cab that pulled over for me.

When I arrived back at the apartment, Fred had just finished taking a picture from the dining room of the mountains to the southeast when he must have noticed my cab pull up across the street. I had paid the driver and was just getting out of he cab, but by the time Fred got his picture set up, I must have already crossed the street to the apartment. But according to the time of my previous picture and the timestamp on Fred's, that was the cab that brought me home- for a buck-fifty.

May 4, 2022

Today, we have a lot of houses on our plate. Patty let us know that she was able to contact the Realtor that was handling the second house in Santa Lucia that we happened to see yesterday, and that we could see that one in the late afternoon. She had also gotten an appointment for a detached house Greg had found online. So there were going to be four houses on today's schedule.

The Architect's House

Our first viewing today was a half-million-dollar house that Greg really wanted to see, even though it wasn't close to the center of Cumbaya. Greg thought the house and the views from it might be worth considering. The three of us and Patty took a cab way up the hill towards Quito to find the house. I can't quite locate an aerial view of it, but that really doesn't matter.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

While we thought the house was very dramatic, we could tell pretty quickly that it wasn't for us. It was at least $100K more than we planned on spending, and it was very far from the central area of Cumbaya, where the restaurants, shopping, and other activities are. For those reasons, we could have dispensed with the tour, but until we got to the house, we had little idea how far away it was.

But we did take a good many pictures, and I am going to include them here- in a slideshow, of course.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

The Tudor House

The next house that we saw today was located to the east of the reservoir. We had come to understand that perhaps the nicest houses in town were either in this area or the area west of the reservoir.

In the high-level aerial view at left, you can see that the Tudor House was a good deal east of the reservoir and, more importantly, a good distance away from the center of Cumbaya.

If we zero in closer on the actual house, we can see that it has a fair amount of land area around it, and is in an area where all the houses seem to have fairly large lots. All the green area was appealing, but we could see right away that these areas would need a good deal of maintenance.

The house itself was long and thin, extending back from the auto gate and pedestrian gate that were set into a wall that surrounded the property on three sides. The house to the south was quite close, but there were few windows on that side of the Tudor House, so we hardly realized it was there. You will see in some of the pictures we took the fence and gate which is the straight line across the green space towards the rear of the house. This was not the property line, for there seemed to be some garden areas beyond it, but I have no idea how far back the property belonging to this house actually went. We never got close enough to find out what the circular structure further back was.

Looking back on all the houses we saw, this one was perhaps the most interesting- inside and out. Outside, of course, you can see why I refer to this as "the Tudor House"; it was very much reminiscent of old English houses, with the white stucco, crossed wood beams, wood-outlined windows, and so on. In fact, it seemed to me as if this house could have been simply moved to the English countryside, and it would have fit right in. There was nothing "Ecuadorian" about it, which was also true of many of the other houses in this area. All were different, sometimes vastly so, with an ultra-modern house right next to an English Tudor across the street from a Spanish Colonial and so on.

While the house was easy to describe outside, it literally defied description inside, and you simply have to look at the pictures we took to see what I mean. Some of the rooms were very traditional, and seemed right in line with the English country style- traditional layouts and furniture set against mullioned windows with lots of old wood and stone.

The kitchen seemed almost as if someone had taken an unpowered, unplumbed cooking hearth from the Middle Ages and added electricity and running water and other modern touches. It was actually very charming; Old World but modern was the thought I had.

But what really set this house apart was the way the rooms were arranged and designed- most particularly the upstairs bedrooms and sitting areas. First of all, the house seemed to go on forever, with rooms seemingly tacked onto each other willy-nilly. It struck me that finding someone in the house would be tricky- assuming they were quiet. There were simply too many places to look, too many little cubbies where they might be. And the stairs! My goodness, it seemed as if just about every room in the house had its own little loft area, and each seemed to have a different little narrow stairway in the room to get to it. Sometimes you could even go up to the loft of one room and go through a doorway to find yourself in the loft of an entirely different room!

No, the house seemed almost whimsical; it almost seemed as if it had been enchantingly designed by Disney to attract children and young-at-heart adults. The house didn't seem serious somehow; it seemed to me as if the house had been designed to entertain its occupants- to give them a zillon things to do and places to go and nooks and crannies to explore. This house was the antithesis of the "open concept" design so popular and prevalent today.

For my part, I took to the house immediately. I am one of those people who likes smaller and more numerous rooms, rather that big open spaces that dwarf their occupants. I like to feel "enveloped" by my surroundings; not made small by them. The rooms in this house, each one architecturally different with its own unique characteristics, were like those in my townhouse in Dallas. Their feeling is one of coziness, and they are filled (perhaps even overfilled) with furniture and knickknacks. But I could also see that this house was probably twice the size of the townhouse back home.

Anyway, walking through this house was probably the most enjoyable time I, myself, had going through any of the houses we saw. But entranced though I was with everything I found inside, it didn't take me long to realize that the upkeep of all these spaces would be a real chore; one would simply have to have staff. This would be particularly true if one were in residence only periodically. So there was that. One would also have to have a car- or at least know an Uber driver very, very well. The house was in its own little world, but that world was quite far from all the sights and sounds and tastes (and shops) in Cumbaya, and even to drive into town to get to them would take a while, as the trip would be mostly on narrow, winding, residential lanes.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

So I loved the house. If I were going to stay in a small town in Europe for a summer, this would be exactly the kind of place I would try to find. If I had a family with kids (and a maid) this house would be absolutely fantastic. But for three retired people who, as they age, will need to rely more and more on the plethora of services older folks avail themselves of? Sadly, this would not be the place for them. But I, particularly, was so "into" this house that I took way more pictures of it and in it than in or of any other house we saw, and I hope you will take the time to have a look at them. We'll begin with some outside pictures, then head in the front door, work our way to the back of the house through the first floor (where there is actually one maid's bedroom), as well as the kitchen and storage/laundry rooms, then come back to the front of the house and go up to the second floor to walk through the bedrooms (even though there are back stairs).

Click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

This is what upper-class Tudor England would have been like if both indoor plumbing and electricity had been invented a few centuries earlier than they were.

The Eclectic House

Patty had one more listing she wanted to show us over in this area east of the reservoir; this one was a good deal closer to the center of Cumbaya.

In the aerial view at left, you can see that the Eclectic House is part of a little community of three houses that are inside a gated area with a single driveway for all three of them. And in the aerial view below, you can see about where this house was located in relation to the center of Cumbaya, which is just out of view to the lower left.

Let's take a look at the house itself, and I'll offer some comments on what we thought of it.

So what about the "Eclectic House"? Well, first of all, the design of the house was in generally a similar style to the Tudor House, but the English influence wasn't so pronounced. That's why I called this the "eclectic" house- because it seemed to be a mashup of a number of styles. It reminded me of something I might see in Marin County north of San Francisco- very "hippie-like".

The house wasn't as large as the Tudor House, nor was it laid out as well. One interesting feature was an interior "sky bridge"- a walkway suspended in midair that led from one set of rooms to another, and from which you could down into the first floor. You'll see it in the slideshow below.

I suppose that another major difference was that while the Tudor House seemed to be prepared for prospective buyers to come through, this house was not. It felt as we were actually interrupting a typical day of the house's occupants. When Patty and another Realtor brought us in, a young man (the owner's son, apparently) was sitting at a very cluttered dining room table doing all sorts of work. Most rooms were a mess, and we were asked to be quiet upstairs as the owner was in the middle of a Zoom meeting.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

This house, inside and out, seemed not to have been kept up nearly as well as the Tudor House; everywhere we looked there were little things that needed doing. It almost made me wonder if the owner was serious about selling the house for a good price, as a thorough clean-up and perhaps a bit of staging would have been the advice of any Realtor worth her salt.

For this tour, we took a look at the first floor living areas, went upstairs to see the bedrooms, and then came back down to have a look at the kitchen area.

Click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

I was very much taken with the Tudor House, and I'd found myself wishing it were a little cheaper and much closer to central Cumbaya. As far as this house was concerned, I was more curious about just seeing how unusual it was inside than I was at all serious about considering it. We really don't want our retirement to be all about doing all the work that this house seemed to require.

The House in Santa Lucia (#2)

The last house we saw today was the second house in Santa Lucia, the one just across from the house we saw yesterday. Patty had been able to get a hold of the owner and their Realtor and after we had some lunch at Paseo San Francisco, we went over to take a look. In case you have forgotten, you can check the maps and aerial views earlier on this page; I won't repeat them here. But here is what the house looked like:

We had a good walkthrough of the house. The owner's wife was there, as was her Realtor, and both of them were very accommodating in giving us all the time we wanted to look at everything. And look at everything we certainly did.

Of course, we took lots of pictures, too, and I could have chosen again to put them here in a slideshow for you to see. But I'm not; I am going to put them on their own album page, along with a lot more explanation of the various rooms and how everything was laid out. Because, you see, this is the house that we chose to begin the purchase process on.

It fit all our criteria. It was big enough, it was in excellent shape, and the owners were even willing to convey a good deal of the furniture they had in the house, because they were downsizing and were not going to need it. The very next day we got Patty started on the process. I can report now (since I am creating this page in November, 2022) that we were able to complete the purchase of the house in about 60 days, and it is now ours. We will be making our first trip back down to Cumbaya as homeowners this coming January, and we hope to have all the essential furniture in place within a month, and have made a start on the few additions and changes we want to make during that time.

With Patty's help, we have retained two young lawyers, and they have been representing us with the HOA, making sure the house is being maintained, paying bills, and so on, until we can get down there.

So, if you would like to take a tour of our new house in Ecuador, I hope you will simply go to the next page in this album and do so.

Before you leave this page, though, there are a few additional pictures to include, pictures taken on our last two days here in Cumbaya.

May 5-6, 2022

With our house hunt over ("Decision made? And are you going to love it? Or are you going to list it?") and with a verbal agreement for the transaction already, our last two days here in Ecuador were more relaxing. I have some additional photos to include here from the 4th, 5th, and 6th.

On the 4th, in between the "Eclectic House" and returning to Santa Lucia, the four of us had a late lunch just off the square in Cumbaya, and here are a couple of pictures from the restaurant:

I have another group of photos from May 5th, when the three of us went to the clinic at Paseo San Francisco to get our Covid tests so we could board our return flights. (We were all three negative.) We got the tests and then decided to just wait around for the results so we could make sure we had the results on our phones.

After getting our tests done, we thought we would hang around the mall until the results came through on phones, just in case we had to go back and goose them (which I eventually did for my own test). The left-hand picture is the central courtyard of the mall, open, like Scala Mall, to the sky. And the right-hand picture is the front of the mall where we sat down for a while to wait for the results.

Out in the traffic circle in front of the mall there were some large sculptures, so I went out to investigate. Fred took a picture of me making a movie:

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible)

And here are a couple of the pictures that I took of the sculptures when I got out to the traffic island:

Our Return Home

Having done what we came here to do, we were understandably satisfied with ourselves and our trip. On Friday afternoon, we got an Uber out to the airport and a little after two we were in the air back to Dallas via Miami. The last two pictures I have from this trip were both taken as we came in for a landing at Miami International:

We've circled around to land to the west, and that is Miami Beach and Biscayne Bay off to the right.

And here is a good picture of downtown Miami.

After a two-hour layover in Miami, we were off to Dallas, arriving there just after 11:30.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	May 4, 2022: The House We Bought in Ecuador
	March 15 - April 8, 2022: Our Spring Trip to Florida
	Return to the Index for 2022