Cold Snap!

Mark and I have been hunkered down in the house for the past week—waiting for the bad weather to pass! It did not.

The newspaper (El Tiempo) dedicated the entire front page to the 15 days of 5 degrees Celsius weather (41 degrees at night) and promised 10 more days of the same. It’s called paradise with a cold snap!

We don’t have heating in our condo, so we’ve been opening up the oven door to take the chill out of the air which works perfectly for us. At night we cuddle up with four down comforters and I place the heating pad under the covers to warm up the mattress. I call it the poor man’s electric blanket!

But today, it was back to 70 degrees which put a big smile on my face. I was so afraid I would have to delete the word “paradise” out of the book! But Cuenca made a comeback and made me realize once again why we moved here.

To celebrate, Mocha and I took a two-hour walk around the neighborhood to visit all of Mocha’s friends, including Pepe (his friends just call him “Pep”!).

While Mocha and Pepe “talked,” I took in the sounds of the Tomebamba River, the smell of the eucalyptus trees, and the brilliant blue sky—dotted with a few fluffy clouds. It brought back memories of this time last year.

On June 3, 2010, I was jumping for joy because we had finally landed in Quito, after a whirlwind three months of sorting, sifting and packing. It seemed like a “fuzzy”” dream -- at the time -- until we got on the plane and buckled our seatbelts. Nothing will ever compare to that moment when the plane touched ground in Ecuador—to the applause of everyone on board. It was worth all the sacrifice that we went through to get here.

Meeting with folks this week—who have made the journey—brought back a lot of memories of our trip. They too, have done the tornado move as I like to call it. "Hurry up and get out of Dodge before something else happens!" So many folks are looking to retire in Cuenca because of the affordable health care that is available here and I will have to agree; there’s nothing like it in the States (nada!).

We feel fortunate to have the privilege of retiring at age 55—not many are able to do that. And if we make it until we’re 62, we can give our Social Security checks to our kids so they can use it for a down payment on a house. If we were in the States, we would be wondering how we would be able to pay for our health insurance premiums which were $1,400 a month with a $10,000 deductible!

Life is good in paradise—despite the cold snap!








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