Tuesday, September 5th
Today was full of excitement. We woke up and had already decided with my brother, Edgar, that Alexey and I would go to our Land in Dos Bocas where we spent last Sunday BBQing. See, the problem is that the guy who takes care of the land for us, Willian (yes, his name is Willian not William), does not have electricity yet. The problem is that the guy who was the previous owner did not pay $2000 worth of bills with the electric company. In this jurisdiction, the bill remains with the land, not with the bill owner. So that means that for Willian to have electricity, we need to pay $2000 which we won´t. So my brother, with his new company, Powersun (free plug here) has installed a small wind turbine with batteries hoping that this would give him some electricity until we figure out the paperwork.
Our mission today is to try to streighten the wind turbine which appears to be tilted. This may be the reason why Willian still does not have electricity even with the turbine. Before we attempted this, we stopped by the nearest bigger town of El Triunfo to figure out what necessary paperwork was needed for us to get Willian the electricity that he needs, locally. We also ate encebollados once again at a local eatery for about a buck.
Now it was time to use our ingenuity. We had some tools, limited materials and lots of energy. After a while, it was clear that we needed some breakthrough. Nails: we got them off the wodden walls of Willian´s house; Adjustment Level Block: we got a piece of wood and drilled two holes on it; Level Meter: well, we did bring one of these luckily.. In any case, it took us a while but we straighten it enough to figure out that the level had nothing to do with the poor performance of the turbine. There was simply, no wind! Alexey jumped on the roof and moved the turbine with a broom but it seem to work ok, meaning not much friction. Oh well, we did our part.
We now decided to pack up, say good bye to Willian and go to the beautiful city of Cuenca, high up in the Andes. If you have ever been around here, you know that you should never attempt to go through the El Triunfo-Cuenca road at this time. It must have been about 2PM. The road promised to offer the best of its hills and fog.. We certainly felt it.
Passing through thick, meaning, thick fog was really scary. It was as if the sun suddently dissapeared. We were simply guided by the sounds of the ocassional huge buss coming full speed ahead. El Snoopy was performing ok while we were still at sea level. However, once the slopes started, we were doing 15km/h max! Also, there was thick black smoke coming out the exhaust. We tried to do our best and kept it going between 1st and 2nd gears.
Crossing the El Cajas National Park was amazing!! This is certainly a paradise that not many people get to see, we took lost of pictures. When the El Cajas park ends, there is a beautiful valley where I have decided to retire someday :)
We got into Cuenca and quickly got a taste of traffic once again. We searched for a hotel.. it had been a while since the last time we did this, so we were a bit rusty. Alexey found one just on the corner of the market (later I learned this is not a good area to stay). We stored El Snoopy at some guarded parking lot and brough our turbine fixing tools into the room just in case.
We went out on the town and got to see the architecture. It is very pretty and historic. There are quite a bit of tourists too. We now go for dinner at a tourist hangout spot. The food was decent but not extraordinary. I really wanted to have trout which is the local delicacy but had no luck.
Later, we went back to the room and fell asleep. We were exhausted!
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