The Best Advice about Ecuador

I've written before about the sage advice given to me years ago by a Cuencana: "Try to get one thing a day done here. Everything else is a bonus."

But sometimes there's more than one thing that needs to get done. We had a busy afternoon planned a few days ago--eat lunch, purchase a baby gift for the baptism celebration featured in the previous post (if you didn't see it for sure go back and take a look!), buy groceries, shoot home and put them away, then turn around and leave again for Cynthia's followup eye appointment. Trust me, trying to get that much done in only a few hours is asking for trouble.

Sure enough, as we ate at San Pedro, the organic restaurant I wrote about recently,

rain started falling in buckets. We lingered until it tapered off, then headed over to the children's clothing store in the small mall on the ground floor beneath the Supermaxi.

Even though we've lived here a long time we sometimes forget we're actually in Ecuador, which in this case means we neglected to remember that all the retail stores are closed from 1 to 3. (Sigh) This immediately threw us into scramble mode, because now we had to skip the gift buying and double back after the doctor's appointment. (Double Sigh)

So--new plan. Grocery shop---oh, quick aside. After months of being MIA, Peter Pan peanut butter finally arrived back on the shelves. Don't know how many gringos are fans of the honey roast variety but even at this ridiculous price I'm guessing it will all be scooped up.

---taxi home--haul everything upstairs--back downstairs--taxi to her appointment at Exilaser. Dig Cynthia's groovy post-op sunglasses.

Doctor Miotto declared the surgery a complete success, which Cynthia demonstrated by easily reading so much further down the eye chart than ever before that I was blown away. After she gets the other eye done in a couple of months she'll never need contact lenses again (which she's worn since her early twenties). Now that's impressive!

After the appointment we trudged through the rain, which had started again, back to the clothing store, then walked home as the precipitation had thankfully stopped.

Nobody felt like making dinner after all that running around so we had a margarita, went up the street to a Mexican place for food and another margarita to celebrate Cynthia's good news plus just making it through the day, came home for an episode of Downton Abbey and an early bedtime.

Mi amiga was right, but sometimes you have to suck it up and pay the price.