christmas letter 2017
Dear Family and Friends
Happy Christmas to you all.
It has been a momentous year for us, now retired cruisers and learning to become landlubbers in Ecuador.
This time last year we were in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, enjoying Christmas and New Year with our friends Patrick and Ellen from Endeavour and Pati and Eric from Shearwater. At that time we still had the notion that we would continue cruising after all, as we were still enjoying it and Alec was feeling good after his health issues the previous year. So we sailed across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan for a month, the third time we had been there and on to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle to its very rolly anchorage. Many cruising friends were there and about 50 boats were preparing for the big adventure of crossing the South Pacific as part of a huge rally known as 'the Puddle Jump', first stop the Marquesas, 3000 miles away.
There Alec fell sick again, with loss of energy and breathlessness. So we found an internist in Puerta Vallarta who prescribed antibiotics which seemed to cure the apparent infection in his lung within a week.
At the beginning of March we sailed south to Barra de Navidad, a little tourist village with a huge sheltered lagoon, where the patron saint is St Patrick and they have a big festival to celebrate it on 17th March, which happens to be Alec's birthday. However when the day arrived, Alec felt too ill to attend. After three doses of antibiotics prescribed by local doctors, he was no better, so we went to a recommended specialist in Manzanillo, Dr. Ivan Ocadis who immediately found the problem, a pleural effusion, fluid around the lungs and heart showing up as white on the xray, so looked like an infection - antibiotics were doing no good at all. Over a period of about six months the fluid was gradually reduced and cured by medication and part of the cure was to take regular exercise, which is difficult on a small boat.
At Barra it gradually dawned on us that maybe we should give up cruising, as maybe not so good for Alec's health. Cherry also was not enjoying it as before, part of that worrying about Alec and also wanting to pursue her recently discovered talent for drawing with pastels, which is difficult on a moving boat.
So the decision was made and on 29th April we moved ashore into a rented house in Barra and put the boat on the market. Barra is not a good place to sell a boat in the cruising off season (May to Oct), when the marina and lagoon are almost deserted. However eventually we had a couple of offers and by the end of October the sale was completed, bought by two Spanish brothers from the Canary Islands, whose mother was English. They intend to use her as an active cruising boat, which we are very happy about, first sailing her across the Atlantic to the Canary Islands. In fact they have just been welcomed with the traditional glass of champagne at the Bahia de Sol marina in El Salvador, where we spent a year when Alec was ill.
We loved the relaxed life living in Mexico, apart from the overbearing humidity and heat, made worse by the Mexican house design, where the house width is always the plot size, so built within three high walls and absolutely no air movement. We decided we liked Third World living and scrapped our original plan to move permanently to Europe. After much thought we decided Mexico was too hot and maybe too close to America and the drug cartels that still rule close to the border.
We had read up about other Central and South American countries and eventually decided on Ecuador. In October we did an exploratory trip to Cuenca which is high in the Andes at 8500 feet, so very cool all year round. We loved it but maybe a little too high, only two thirds the oxygen at sea level and also maybe too popular as an expat retirement destination, with over 5000 gringos living there permanently.
1st November we left Mexico for good, loaded with all our worldly goods in large suitcases, paid lots of excess baggage but worth it and arrived in Cuenca. Through friends in Barra, who have lived for a time in Ecuador, we had learnt about Loja, which is about one third the size of Cuenca and at 7000 feet was still cool, through often cloudy and rainy. After another exploratory trip for a week, we moved to Loja.
On 1st December we moved into our lovely three bed apartment high up on the west side of the town, with spectacular views across the valley to the beautiful Andes ranges beyond. The city of 200,000 people sits in a steep sided valley with two rivers running each side of the old town. There are very few westerners living here, maybe about 25 but there is a Loja Facebook page and through that we have made contact with about half of them. Also in the apartment above us there is a very friendly retired American couple. They even organised a welcome party for us at our apartment last Saturday, which was great fun.
Loja is advertised as the cultural capital of Ecuador and each year has a huge three week festival, with performers from all over the world. We saw little of that this year but each night there were street performers and beautiful chalk drawings on the closed streets. Most of the year there are musical performances at the various concert halls and we have already been to three wonderful musical evenings. Amazing that in a town this size, there are two full symphony orchestras! Another performance tonight, the Nutcracker ballet.
All in all, we are very happily settled in this lovely town, and will probably apply for residency early next year. Our travelling days are not yet over though, with a trip to the UK being planned for March next year.
We wish everyone a wonderful Christmas with family and friends, and a full and prosperous New Year.
All best wishes from the Yarrows (no longer gypsies)
Happy Christmas to you all.
It has been a momentous year for us, now retired cruisers and learning to become landlubbers in Ecuador.
This time last year we were in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, enjoying Christmas and New Year with our friends Patrick and Ellen from Endeavour and Pati and Eric from Shearwater. At that time we still had the notion that we would continue cruising after all, as we were still enjoying it and Alec was feeling good after his health issues the previous year. So we sailed across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan for a month, the third time we had been there and on to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle to its very rolly anchorage. Many cruising friends were there and about 50 boats were preparing for the big adventure of crossing the South Pacific as part of a huge rally known as 'the Puddle Jump', first stop the Marquesas, 3000 miles away.
There Alec fell sick again, with loss of energy and breathlessness. So we found an internist in Puerta Vallarta who prescribed antibiotics which seemed to cure the apparent infection in his lung within a week.
At the beginning of March we sailed south to Barra de Navidad, a little tourist village with a huge sheltered lagoon, where the patron saint is St Patrick and they have a big festival to celebrate it on 17th March, which happens to be Alec's birthday. However when the day arrived, Alec felt too ill to attend. After three doses of antibiotics prescribed by local doctors, he was no better, so we went to a recommended specialist in Manzanillo, Dr. Ivan Ocadis who immediately found the problem, a pleural effusion, fluid around the lungs and heart showing up as white on the xray, so looked like an infection - antibiotics were doing no good at all. Over a period of about six months the fluid was gradually reduced and cured by medication and part of the cure was to take regular exercise, which is difficult on a small boat.
At Barra it gradually dawned on us that maybe we should give up cruising, as maybe not so good for Alec's health. Cherry also was not enjoying it as before, part of that worrying about Alec and also wanting to pursue her recently discovered talent for drawing with pastels, which is difficult on a moving boat.
So the decision was made and on 29th April we moved ashore into a rented house in Barra and put the boat on the market. Barra is not a good place to sell a boat in the cruising off season (May to Oct), when the marina and lagoon are almost deserted. However eventually we had a couple of offers and by the end of October the sale was completed, bought by two Spanish brothers from the Canary Islands, whose mother was English. They intend to use her as an active cruising boat, which we are very happy about, first sailing her across the Atlantic to the Canary Islands. In fact they have just been welcomed with the traditional glass of champagne at the Bahia de Sol marina in El Salvador, where we spent a year when Alec was ill.
We loved the relaxed life living in Mexico, apart from the overbearing humidity and heat, made worse by the Mexican house design, where the house width is always the plot size, so built within three high walls and absolutely no air movement. We decided we liked Third World living and scrapped our original plan to move permanently to Europe. After much thought we decided Mexico was too hot and maybe too close to America and the drug cartels that still rule close to the border.
We had read up about other Central and South American countries and eventually decided on Ecuador. In October we did an exploratory trip to Cuenca which is high in the Andes at 8500 feet, so very cool all year round. We loved it but maybe a little too high, only two thirds the oxygen at sea level and also maybe too popular as an expat retirement destination, with over 5000 gringos living there permanently.
1st November we left Mexico for good, loaded with all our worldly goods in large suitcases, paid lots of excess baggage but worth it and arrived in Cuenca. Through friends in Barra, who have lived for a time in Ecuador, we had learnt about Loja, which is about one third the size of Cuenca and at 7000 feet was still cool, through often cloudy and rainy. After another exploratory trip for a week, we moved to Loja.
On 1st December we moved into our lovely three bed apartment high up on the west side of the town, with spectacular views across the valley to the beautiful Andes ranges beyond. The city of 200,000 people sits in a steep sided valley with two rivers running each side of the old town. There are very few westerners living here, maybe about 25 but there is a Loja Facebook page and through that we have made contact with about half of them. Also in the apartment above us there is a very friendly retired American couple. They even organised a welcome party for us at our apartment last Saturday, which was great fun.
Loja is advertised as the cultural capital of Ecuador and each year has a huge three week festival, with performers from all over the world. We saw little of that this year but each night there were street performers and beautiful chalk drawings on the closed streets. Most of the year there are musical performances at the various concert halls and we have already been to three wonderful musical evenings. Amazing that in a town this size, there are two full symphony orchestras! Another performance tonight, the Nutcracker ballet.
All in all, we are very happily settled in this lovely town, and will probably apply for residency early next year. Our travelling days are not yet over though, with a trip to the UK being planned for March next year.
We wish everyone a wonderful Christmas with family and friends, and a full and prosperous New Year.
All best wishes from the Yarrows (no longer gypsies)
Selfies are NOT my thing! Parque Jipiro
One of the two beautiful rivers running through Loja.
Another view of beautiful parque Jipiro